On this day ...
9 December 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
Bay of Islands round North Cape to Queen Charlotte's Sound
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While we lay becalmed, several canoes came off to us, but the people having heard of our guns, it was not without great difficulty that they were persuaded to come under our stern: after having bought some of their cloaths, as well as their fish, we began to make enquiries concerning their country, and learnt, by the help of Tupia, that, at the distance of three days rowing in their canoes, at a place called MOORE-WHENNUA, the land would take a short turn to the southward, and from thence extend no more to the west. This place we concluded to be the land discovered by Tasman, which he called CAPE MARIA VAN DIEMEN, and finding these people so intelligent, we inquired farther, if they knew of any country besides their own: they answered, that they never had visited any other, but that their ancestors had told them, that to the N.W. by N. or N.N.W. there was a country of great extent, called ULIMAROA, to which some people had sailed in a very large canoe; that only part of them returned, and reported, that after a passage of a month they had seen a country where the people eat hogs. Tupia then enquired whether these adventurers brought any hogs with them when they returned; they said No: then, replied Tupia, your story is certainly false, for it cannot be believed that men who came back from an expedition without hogs, had ever visited a country where hogs were to be procured. It is however remarkable, notwithstanding the shrewdness of Tupia’s objection, that when they mentioned hogs it was not by description but by name, calling them Booah, the name which is given them in the South-sea islands; but if the animal had been wholly unknown to them, and they had had no communication with people to whom it was known, they could not possibly have been acquainted with the name.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 372 - 373, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/367.html