Page 521

Voyages in the Southern Hemisphere, Vols. II - III

Table of Contents On this day ... 23 May 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 Range from Botany Bay to Trinity Bay Index Search Contact us

Range from Botany Bay to Trinity Bay (continued) The people who were left on board the ship said, that while we were in the woods about twenty of the natives came down to the beach, abreast of her, and having looked at her sometime, went away; but we that were ashore, though we saw smoke in many places, saw no people: the smoke was at places too distant for us to get to them by land, except one, to which we repaired: we found ten small fires still burning within a few paces of each other; but the people were gone: we saw near them several vessels of bark, which we supposed to have contained water, and some shells and fish-bones, the remains of a recent meal. We saw also, lying upon the ground, several pieces of soft bark, about the length and breadth of a man, which we imagined might be their beds; and, on the windward side of the fires, a small shade, about a foot and a half high, of the same substance. The whole was in a thicket of close trees, which afforded good shelter from the wind. The place seemed to be much trodden, and as we saw no house, nor any remains of a house, we were inclined to believe that as these people had no clothes, they had no dwelling; but spent their nights, among the other commoners of Nature, in the open air: and Tupia himself, with an air of superiority and compassion, shook his head, and said that they were Taata Enos, ’poor wretches.’ I measured the perpendicular height of the last tide, and found it to be eight feet above low-water mark, and from the time of low-water this day, I found that it must be high-water at the full and change of the moon at eight o’clock. Voyaging Accounts © Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 521 - 522, 2004 Published by kind permission of the Library To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/521.html