Page 81

Voyages in the Southern Hemisphere, Vols. II - III

Table of Contents On this day ... 13 April 1769 Endeavour Voyage Maps James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia Transcript of Cook's Journal Joseph Banks's Journal Sydney Parkinson's Journal Arrival at Otaheite Index Search Contact us

Arrival at Otaheite (continued) We stood on with an easy sail all night, with soundings from 22 fathom to 12, and about seven o’clock in the morning we came to an anchor in 13 fathom, in Port-royal bay, called by the natives Matavai. We were immediately surrounded by the natives in their canoes, who gave us cocoa-nuts, fruit resembling apples, bread-fruit, and some small fishes, in exchange for beads and other trifles. They had with them a pig, which they would not part with for any thing but a hatchet, and therefore we refused to purchase it; because, if we gave them a hatchet for a pig now, we knew they would never afterwards sell one for less, and we could not afford to buy as many as it was probable we should want at that price. The bread-fruit grows on a tree that is about the size of a middling oak: its leaves are frequently a foot and an half long, of an oblong shape, deeply sinuated like those of the fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence and colour, and in the exuding of a white milky juice upon being broken. The fruit is about the size and shape of a child’s head, and the surface is reticulated not much unlike a truffle: it is covered with a thin skin, and has a core about as big as the handle of a small knife: the eatable part lies between the skin and the core; it is as white as snow, and somewhat of the consistence of new bread: it must be roasted before it is eaten, being first divided into three or four parts: its taste is insipid, with a slight sweetness somewhat resembling that of the crumb of wheaten-bread mixed with a Jerusalem artichoke. Voyaging Accounts © Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 80, 2004 Published by kind permission of the Library To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/081.html