On this day ...
5 February 1770
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
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Soon after the ship came to an anchor the second time, Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander went on shore, to see if any gleanings of natural knowlege remained, and by accident fell in with the most agreeable Indian family they had seen, which afforded them a better opportunity of remarking the personal subordination among these people, than had before offered. The principal persons were a widow, and a pretty boy about ten years old: the widow was mourning for her husband with tears of blood, according to their custom, and the child, by the death of its father, was become proprietor of the land where we had cut our wood. The mother and the son were sitting upon matts, and the rest of the family, to the number of sixteen or seventeen, of both sexes, sat round them in the open air, for they did not appear to have any house, or other shelter from the weather, the inclemencies of which, custom has probably enabled them to endure without any lasting inconvenience. Their whole behaviour was affable, obliging, and unsuspicious; they presented each person with fish, and a brand of fire to dress it, and pressed them many times to stay till the morning, which they would certainly have done if they had not expected the ship to sail, greatly regretting that they had not become acquainted with them sooner, as they made no doubt but that more knowlege of the manners and disposition of the inhabitants of this country would have been obtained from them in a day, than they had yet been able to acquire during our whole stay upon the coast.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 403, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/403.html