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JOURNAL
OF THE
RIGHT HON. SIR JOSEPH BANKS
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/b24764784
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JOURNAL
OF
THE RIGHT HON.
SIR JOSEPH BANKS
BART., K.B., P.R.S.
DURING CAPTAIN COOK’S FIRST VOYAGE IN H.M.S. ENDEAVOUR IN 1768-71 TO TERRA DEL FUEGO, OTAHITE, NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA,
THE DUTCH EAST INDIES,
ETC.
EDITED BY
SIR JOSEPH D. HOOKER
WITH PORTRAITS AND CHARTS
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MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO.
1896
All rights reserved
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Hydrographer of the Admiralty
My dear Admiral — Allow me to dedicate to you, as the able Editor of Captain Cook’s Journal of liis first voyage round the world, that of his fellow-voyager Sir Joseph Banks, in token of the great assistance afforded me through your labour on the aforesaid work, and as the efficient and accomplished tenant of an office for which I have ever entertained a profound respect, that of Hydrographer of the Admiralty.
Let me at the same time take the opportunity of coupling with your name my tribute to the memory of three of your predecessors, who honoured me with their friendship, and encouraged me in my scientific career as an officer in the service to which you belong — Admiral Sir F. Beaufort, Admiral Washington, and Captain Sir F. Evans.
Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
J. D. HOOKER.
The Camp, Sunningdale, May 1896.
PREFACE
My principal motive for editing the Journal kept by Sir Joseph Banks during Lieutenant Cook’s first voyage round the world is to give prominence to his indefatigable labours as an accomplished observer and ardent collector during the whole period occupied by that expedition, and thus to pre- sent him as the pioneer of those naturalist voyagers of later years, of whom Darwin is the great example.
This appears to me to be the more desirable, because in no biographical notice of Banks are his labours and studies as a working naturalist adequately set forth. Indeed, the only allusion I can find to their literally enormous extent and value is in the interesting letter from Linmeus to Ellis, which will he found on p. xl. In respect of Cook’s first voyage this is in a measure due to the course pursued by Dr. Hawkesworth in publishing the account of the expedi- tion, when Banks, with singular disinterestedness, placed his Journal in that editor’s hands, with permission to make what use of it he thought proper. The result was that Hawkesworth 1 selected only such portions as would interest
1 Dr. Hawkesworth devotes his “Introduction to the First Voyage” almost exclusively to the services which Banks rendered, and gratefully acknowledges that all such details as are not directly connected with navi- gation are extracted from the diary of that naturalist. But for the purpose of identifying the work of each observer this is insufficient, and barely does justice to the second of the two authors, who is in reality responsible for the greater portion of the book. In reference to Hawkesworth being employed as editor of Cook’s Journal, the following passage is extracted
c
PREFACE
viii
the general public, incorporating them with Cook’s Journal, often without allusion to their author, and not unfrequently introducing into them reflections of his own as being those of Cook or of Banks. Fortunately the recent publication by Admiral Wharton of Cook’s own Journal 1 has helped to rectify this, for any one comparing the two narratives can have no difficulty in recognising the source whence Hawkes- worth derived his information.
Another motive for editing Banks’s Journal is to empha- sise the important services which its author rendered to the expedition. It needs no reading between the lines of the great navigator’s Journal, to discover his estimation of the ability of his companion, of the value of his researches, and of the importance of his active co-operation on many occasions. It was Banks who rapidly mastered the lan- guage of the Otahitans and became the interpreter of the party, and who was the investigator of the customs, habits, etc., of these and of the natives of New Zealand. It was often through his activity that the commissariat was sup- plied with food. He was on various occasions the thief- taker, especially in the case of his hazardous expedition for the recovery of the stolen quadrant, upon the use of which, in observing the transit of Venus across the sun’s disc, the success of the expedition so greatly depended. And, above all, it is to Banks’s forethought and at his own risk that an Otahitan man and boy were taken on hoard, through whom Banks directed, when in New Zealand, those inquiries into the customs of its inhabitants, which are the founda-
frorn Prior’s Life of Malone : — ■“ Hawkesworth, the writer, was introduced by Garrick to Lord Sandwich, who, thinking to put a few hundred pounds into his pocket, appointed him to revise and publish Cook’s Voyages. He scarcely did anything to the MSS., yet sold it to Cadell and Strahan, the printer and bookseller, for £6000. . . .”
1 Captain Cook's Journal during his First Voyage round the World in H.M. Bark “ Endeavour ,” 1768-71, with Notes and Introduction by Captain W. J. L. Wharton, R.N., F.R.S., Hydrograplier of the Admiralty.
PREFACE
IX
tion of our knowledge of that interesting people. And when it is considered that the information obtained was at comparatively few points, and those on the coast only, the fulness and accuracy of the description of the New Zea- landers, even as viewed in the light of modern knowledge, are very remarkable. Nor should it be forgotten that it was to the drawings made by the artists whom Banks took in his suite that the public is indebted for the magnificent series of plates that adorn Hawkesworth’s account of the voyage. Still another motive is, that Banks’s Journal gives a life-like portrait of a naturalist’s daily occupation at sea and ashore nearly one hundred and thirty years ago ; and thus supplements the history of a voyage which, for extent and im- portance of geographic and hydrographic results, was unique and “ to the English nation the most momentous voyage of discovery that has ever taken place ” (Wharton’s Cook, Pre- face), and which has, moreover, directly led to the prosperity of the Empire ; for it was owing to the reports of Cook and Banks, and, it is believed, to the representations of the latter on the advantages of Botany Bay as a site for a settlement, that Australia was first colonised.
The following brief history of the Journal itself is in- teresting. On Sir J. Banks’s death without issue in 1820, his property and effects passed to the Hugessen (his wife’s) family, with the exception of the library, herbarium, and the lease of the house in Soho Square. These were left to his librarian, the late eminent botanist, Robert Brown, F.R.S., with the proviso that after that gentleman’s death, the library and herbarium were to go to the British Museum. Banks’s papers and correspondence, including the Journal of the voyage of the Endeavour, were then placed by the trustees in Mr. Brown’s hands, with the object of his writ- ing a Life of Banks, which he had agreed to do. Age and infirmities, however, interfered with his prosecution of this
X
PREFACE
work, and at his suggestion the materials were transferred with the same object to my maternal grandfather, Dawson Turner, F.R.S.,1 an eminent botanist and antiquarian, who had been a friend of Banks. Mr. Turner at once had the whole faithfully transcribed, but for which precaution the Journal would as a whole have been irretrievably lost, as the sequel will show. Beyond having copies of the manuscript made, Mr. Turner seems to have done nothing towards the Life, and after a lapse of some years the originals were returned, together with the copies, to Mr. Knatchbull Hugessen, who placed them in the hands of the late Mr. Bell, Secretary of the Ptoyal Society, in the hopes that he would undertake to write the Life. For their subsequent wanderings and the ultimate fate of many portions, I am indebted to Mr. Carruthers, F.R.S., late Keeper of the Botanical Collections at the British Museum, who has favoured me with the following interesting letter concerning them : —
British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road, South Kensington, S.W.,
14 th July 1893.
Dear Sir Joseph — Since I saw you about the Journal of Sir Joseph Banks in Captain Cook’s Voyage, I have been making further inquiries regarding the original document.
The Banksian Journal and correspondence were sent to the Botani- cal Department, after correspondence with Mr. Knatchbull Hugessen, to remain in my keeping till the death of Lady Knatchbull, when it would become the property of the trustees. I was instructed to deposit it in the Manuscript Department. This was in October 1873. Some time thereafter I persuaded Mr. Daydon Jackson to look at the correspondence with the view of preparing a biography of Banks. This he agreed to do. I wrote to Mr. Bell, who informed me in a letter written 14th February 1876, that he had tried to get Lord
1 It was when on a visit to my grandfather in 1833 that I first saw the original Journal in Banks’s handwriting. It was then being copied, and I was employed to verify the copies of the earlier part by comparison with the original. I well remember being as a boy fascinated with the Journal, and I never ceased to hope that it might one day be published.
PREFACE
xi
Stanhope to undertake the biography, when he found that he could not himself face it, and thereafter Mr. Colquhoun and then Mr. John Ball, F.R.S. I obtained from the box, by leave from Mr. Bond, then Keeper of MSS., in the beginning of 1876, the transcripts made for Mr. Dawson Turner by his two daughters, which have remained under my care in the Botanical Department.
The story of the originals after I parted with them is a distressing one. Some seven or eight years ago Lord Brabourne claimed the letters as his property. Mr. Maunde Thompson remonstrated, and told him that they were to remain in the museum till the death of Lady Knatchbull, and then they were to become the property of the trustees. Lord Brabourne would not accept this view, but claimed them as his own, and carried off the box and its contents. They were afterwards offered to the museum for sale, but the price offered by the Keeper of the MSS. was not satisfactory, and the whole collec- tion was broken up into lots, 207, and sold by auction at Sotheby’s on 14th April 1886. The Journal of Cook’s voyage was lot 176, and was described in the catalogue as “Banks’s (Sir Joseph) Journal of a Voyage to the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand, from March 1769 1 to July 1771, in the autograph of Banks.” It was purchased by an autograph dealer, John Waller, for .£7 : 2 : 6. Mr. Britten has gone to Waller’s to inquire after the Journal. Waller did not specially remember that purchase, and he does not believe he has got the manuscript. So where it is now no one knows.2 As you will see, the earlier portion of the Journal was missing in the lot sold. Waller bought in all 57 lots. The letters were broken up and sold as autographs ; those that he purchased and did not know, like those of Brass, Nelson, Alex. Anderson, etc., and were of no money value, he would probably at once destroy, so he told Mr. Britten. So now all is gone— for whether the letters are preserved by autograph collectors, or were at once thrown into the wastepaper basket, they are equally lost to science. The 207 lots realised in all £182 : 19s. !
The result is that the Journal and letters transcribed for Dawson Turner, and now here, are the only ones available. I am thankful they have been saved out of the catastrophe.
Your transcriber is diligently at work. — I am, faithfully yours,
Wm. Carruthers.
1 That is some time after leaving Rio, and before arriving at Otahite.
2 I have since ascertained that the Journal came into the possession of J. Henniker Heaton, Esq., M.P., who informs me that lie disposed of it to a gentleman in Sydney, N.S.W.
CONTENTS
Biographical Sketches of Banks and Solander . . Page xxiii
Naturalists and Voyagers mentioned in the Journal ,, xliii List of Officers of the “Endeavour” and Banks’s Staff ,, lii
CHAPTER I
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
Departure — Birds and marine animals — Species of Dagysa — Madeira — Dr. Heberden — Madeira mahogany — Wine-making — Vines — Carts — Vege- table productions — Convent — Cliapel wainscoted with bones — General account of Madeira — Peak of Teneriffe — Marine animals — Cross the equator — Climate of tropiics — Luminous animals in the water — Trade winds — Brazilian fishermen — Sargasso weed — Rio harbour . Page 1
CHAPTER II
RIO DE JANEIRO
Obstacles to landing — Viceroy memorialised — Boat’s crew imprisoned — Vegetation, etc. — Ship fired at — Leave Rio harbour — Description of Rio — Churches — Government — Hindrances to travellers — Population — - Military — Assassinations — V ege tables — Fruits — Manufactures — Mines — Jewels — Coins — Fortifications — Climate .... Page 26
CHAPTER III
RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO
Birds — Christmas — Insects floating at sea — “ Baye sans fond” — Cancer gregarius — Fucus giganteus — Penguins— Terra del Fuego — Staten Island — Vegetation — -Winter’s bark, celery — Fuegians — Excursion inland —
XVI
CONTENTS
Great cold and snow-storm — Sufferings of tlie party — Death of two men from cold — Return to ship — Shells — Native huts — General appearance of the country — Animals — Plants — Scurvy grass, celery — Inhabitants and customs — Language' — Food — Arms — Probable nomadic habits — Dogs — Climate ......... Page 43
CHAPTER IV
TERRA DEL FUEGO TO OTAHITE
Leave Terra del Fuego — Cape Horn — Albatross and other birds, etc. — Multi- plication of Dagysa — Cuttlefish — Cross the line drawn by the Royal Society between the South Sea and the Pacific Ocean — Tropic birds — Occupation of Saturn — Freshness of the water taken on board at Terra del Fuego — Speculations respecting a southern continent — Marine animals — Suicide of a marine — Scurvy — Lemon juice — Lagoon Island — King George III. Island — Means adopted for preventing the scurvy — Preserved cabbage ........ Page 62
CHAPTER Y
OTAHITE
Reception by natives — Peace offerings and ceremonies — Thieving — Natives fired upon — Death of Mr. Buchan, the artist — Lycurgus and Hercules — Tents erected — An honest native — Flies — Music — A foreign axe found — Thefts — Names of the natives — The Dolphin’s Queen — Quadrant stolen — Dootahah made prisoner — Visit to Dootahah — Wrestling — - Tubourai offended — Natives at divine service — Cask stolen — Natives swimming in surf — Imao — Transit of Venus — Nails stolen by sailors — Mourning — Previous visit of foreign ships — Banks takes part in a native funeral ceremony — Travelling musicians — Canoes seized for thefts — Dogs as food — Circumnavigation of the island — Image of man made of basket- work — Gigantic buildings ( marai ) — Battlefield — Return to station — Bread-fruit — Excursion inland — Volcanic nature of the island — Seeds planted — Dismantling the fort ■ — Banks engages a native to go to England Page 73
CHAPTER YI
OTAHITE TO OHETEROA
Departure from Otahite — Huahine — Ulhietea — God-houses — Boats and boat- houses — Otahah — Bola - Bola — Return to Ulhietea — Reception by natives — Dancing — Pearls — The King of Bola-Bola — Native drama — Oheteroa — Dress — Arms Page 110
CONTENTS
XVII
CHAPTER VII
GENERAL ACCOUNT OP THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS
Description of the people — Tattowing — Cleanliness — Clothing — Ornaments and head-dress — Houses — Food — Produce of the sea — Fruits — Animals — Cooking — Mahai- making — Drinking salt water — Meals — Women eat apart from the men — Pastimes — Music — Attachment to old customs — Making of cloth from bark — Dyes and dyeing — Mats — Manufacture of fishing-nets — Fish-hooks — Carpentry, etc. — Boats and boat-building — - Fighting, fishing, and travelling ivahahs — Instability of the boats — Paddles, sails, and ornaments — Tallies — Predicting the weather — Astronomy — Measurement of time and space — Language — Its resem- blance to other languages — Diseases — Medicine and surgery — Funeral ceremonies — Disposal of the dead — Religion — Origin of mankind — Gods — -Priests — Marriage — Marais — Bird - gods — Government — Ranks — Army and battles — Justice Page 127
CHAPTER VIII
SOUTH SEA ISLANDS TO NEW ZEALAND (THAMES RIVER)
Waterspout — Comet : its effect on natives — Diary at sea — Condition of ship’s supplies — Port Egmont hens — Land of New Zealand made — A native shot — Conflict with natives — Capture of a canoe — Poverty Bay — Natives come on board — Their appearance and clothing — Boy seized by natives — Appearance of the land — Occupations of the natives — Bracken as food — Mode of fighting — Religion — A large canoe — Natives throw stones on board — Coast along New Zealand — Habits of natives — Transit of Mercury — Shags — Oysters — Lobster-catching — E 'eppahs or forts — Thames River —Timber trees Page 179
CHAPTER IX
CIRCUMNAVIGATION OP NEW ZEALAND
Tattowing — Thieving of the natives — Cannibalism — Rapid healing of shot- wounds- — Native seines — Paper mulberry — Native accounts of their ancestors’ expedition to other countries — Three Kings’ Islands — Christ- mas Day — Albatross swimming — Mount Egmont — Murderers’ Bay — Queen Charlotte’s Sound — Threats of natives — Corpses thrown into the sea — Cannibalism — Singing - birds — Fishing- nets— Human head pre- served— Discovery of Cook’s Straits— Native names for New Zealand, and traditions — Courteous native family — Leave Queen Charlotte’s Sound — Tides — Cape Turnagain — Coast along the southern island — Banks’ Peninsula — Appearance of minerals — Mountains along the west coast — Anchor in Admiralty Bay ...... Page 203
CONTENTS
xviii
CHAPTER X
GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND
Its discovery by Tasman — Mountains — Harbours — Cultivation — Trees — Suita- bility of Thames River for colonisation — Climate — Absence of native quadrupeds — Birds — Insects — Fish — Plants — Native and introduced vegetables — Absence of fruits — New Zealand flax — Population — Qualities of the natives — Tattowing and painting — Dress — Head-dresses — Ear- and nose-ornaments — Houses — Food — Cannibalism amongst men — Freedom from disease — Canoes — Carving — Tools — Cloth fabrics — Nets — Tillage — Weapons — Spontoons — War and other songs — Human trophies — Heppahs — Chiefs — Religion — Burial — Language .... Page 221
CHAPTER XI
NEW ZEALAND TO AUSTRALIA (ENDEAVOUR RIVER)
Choice of routes — Reasons in favour of and against the existence of a southern continent — Suggestions for a proposed expedition in search of it — Leave New Zealand — Malt wort — Portuguese man-of-war and its sting — Hot weather — Land seen — Waterspouts — Variation of the com- pass— Natives — Their indifference to the ship — Opposition to landing — Excursion into the country — Vegetation and animals seen — Botanising — Timidity of the natives — Enormous sting-rays — Treachery of the natives — Leave Botany Bay — Ants — Stinging caterpillars — Gum trees — Oysters — Crabs — Figs impregnated by Cynips — East Indian plants — Ants’ nests — Butterflies — Amphibious fish — Ship strikes on a coral rock — Critical position— Fothering the ship — Steadiness of the crew — The ship taken into the Endeavour River — Scurvy . . Page 254
CHAPTER XII
AUSTRALIA (ENDEAVOUR RIVER) TO TORRES STRAITS
Pumice-stone — Ship laid ashore — Kangooroos seen — White ants — Preserving plants — Chama gigas — Fruits thrown up on the beach — Excursion up the country — Making friends with the Indians — A kangooroo killed — Turtle — Indians attempt to steal turtle and fire the grass — Didelphis — Among the shoals and islands — Lizard Island — Signs of natives crossing from the mainland — Ship passes through Cook’s passage — Outside the grand reef — Ship almost driven on to the reef by the tides — Passes inside the reef again — Corals — Straits between Australia and New Guinea Page 281
CONTENTS
xix
CHAPTER XIII
SOME ACCOUNT OF THAT PART OF NEW HOLLAND NOW CALLED NEW SOUTH WALES
General appearance of the coast — Dampier’s narrative — Barrenness of the country — Scarcity of water — Vegetables and fruits — Timber — Palms — Gum trees — Quadrupeds — Birds — Insects — Ants and their habitations — Fish — Turtle — Shell-fish — Scarcity of people — Absence of Cultivation- Description of natives — Ornaments — Absence of vermin — Implements for catching fish — Food — Cooking — Habitations — Furniture — Vessels for carrying water — Bags — Tools — Absence of sharp instruments — Native method of procuring fire — Weapons — Throwing - sticks — Shield — Cowardice of the people — Canoes — Climate — Language . Page 296
CHAPTER XIV
AUSTRALIA TO SAVU ISLAND
“Sea-sawdust” — New Guinea — Landing — Vegetation — Natives throw fire- darts — Home-sickness of the crew — Coast along Timor — Rotte — -Aurora — Savu Island — Signs of Europeans — A boat sent ashore to trade— Anchor — Reception by natives — Their Radja — Mynheer Lange — House of Assembly — Native dinner — Obstacles to trading — Mynheer Lange’s covetousness — Trading — Dutch policy concerning spices . Page 324
CHAPTER XV
DESCRIPTION OF SAVU
Mr. Lange’s account— Political divisions of the island — Its general appear- ance — Productions — Buffaloes — Horses — Shee p — -Fish — V egetables — Fan-palm — Liquor — Sugar-making — Fire-holes for cooking — Sustaining qualities of sugar — Description of the natives — Dress — Ornaments — Chewing betel, areca, lime, and tobacco — Construction of their houses — Looms and spinning-machines — Surgery — Religion — Christian converts — Radjas — Slaves — Large stones of honour — Feasts — Military — Weapons —Relations with the Dutch — Mynheer Lange — Language — Neighbour- ing islands — Wreck of a French ship — Dutch policy with regard to language Page 340
XX
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XVI
SAVU ISLAND TO BATAVIA
Leave Savu — Arrive off Java — European and American news — Formalities required by Dutch authorities — Mille Islands — Batavia road — Land at Batavia — Prices and food at the hotel — Tupia’s impressions of Batavia — Introduction to the Governor — Malarious climate — Bougainville’s visit to Batavia — Orders given to heave down the ship — Illness of Tupia, Dr. Banks, Dr. Solander, etc. — Death of Mr. Monkhouse, Tayeto, and Tupia — Remove to a country-house — Malay women as nurses — Critical state of Dr. Solander — Ship repaired — Captain Cook taken ill — Heavy rains — Frogs and mosquitos — Return to the ship . Page 362
CHAPTER XYII
DESCRIPTION OP BATAVIA
Situation — Number of houses — Streets — Canals — Houses — Public buildings — Fortifications — Castle — Forts within the city — Soldiers — Harbour — Islands and uses to which they are put — Dutch fleet — Country round Batavia — Thunderstorms — Marshes — Unhealthiness of the climate — Fruitfulness of the soil — Cattle, sheep, etc. — Wild animals- — Fish — Birds — Rice — Mountain rice — Vegetables — Fruits : detailed description, supply and consumption — Palm-wine — Odoriferous flowers — Spices — Population and nationalities — Trade — Cheating — Portuguese — Slaves — Punishment of slaves — Javans — Habits and customs — Native attention to the hair and teeth — Running amoc — Native superstitions — Crocodiles as twin brothers to men — Chinese : their habits, mode of living, and burial — Government — Officials — Justice — Taxation — Money . Page 377
CHAPTER XVIII
BATAVIA TO CAPE OP GOOD HOPE
Leave Batavia — Cracatoa — Mosquitos on board ship — Prince’s Island — Visit the town — Account of Prince’s Island — Produce — Religion — Nuts of Cycas circinalis — Town — Houses — Bargaining — Language — Affinity of Malay, Madagascar, and South Sea Islands languages — Leave Prince’s Island — Sickness on board — Deaths of Mr. Sporing, Mr. Parkinson, Mr. Green, and many others — Coast of Natal — Dangerous position of the ship — Cape of Good Hope — Dr. Solander’s illness — French ships — Bougainville’s voyage Page 417
CONTENTS
xxi
CHAPTER XIX
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE TO ENGLAND
Account of the Cape of Good Hope — Its settlement by the Dutch — Cape Town — Dutch customs — Government — Climate — General healthiness — Animals — Wines — Cost of living — Botanical garden — Menagerie — Settlements in the interior — Barrenness of the country — Hottentots : their appearance, language, dancing, customs, etc. — Money — Leave Table Bay — Robben Island — St. Helena — Volcanic rocks — Cultivation — Provisions — Introduced plants — Natural productions — Ebony — Speculations as to how plants and animals originally reached so remote an island— Leave St. Helena — Ascension Island — Ascension to England — Land at Deal ......... Page 432
APPENDIX : Electricity Page 453
INDEX ........... Page 459
PORTRAITS
Sir Joseph Banks
Dr. D. Solander
Frontispiece . To face page xxxviii
CHARTS
The World, showing the track of the Endeavour . . At end of book
Society Islands ,,
New Zealand ,,
Melanesia ,,
East Indian Archipelago ,,
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
SIR JOSEPH BANKS1
The name of Sir Joseph Banks is pre-eminent amongst the many distinguished scientific men who adorned the long reign of George the Third, and his career practically coincides with the reign of that monarch, closing in the same year. The hold he has always had on popular estimation is per- haps less due to his high position in the royal favour, or his long tenancy of the presidential chair of the Boyal Society, than to the prominent part he took in the voyage of H.M.S. Endeavour under Lieutenant Cook, and his con- tributions to Hawkesworth’s account of it. Cook’s story is that of a sailor, and his account of his discoveries is rendered more attractive by the introduction of passages from the more graphic pages of Banks’s Diary : it is these passages which attracted so much attention in the narrative drawn up by Dr. Hawkesworth. Cook’s own Journal, recently published by Admiral Wharton, shows this very clearly, and the naturalist’s own record of their discoveries and adven- tures is now for the first time given to the public.
Joseph Banks was born in Argyle Street, London, on 2nd February 1743 (o.s.). He was the son of William Banks (sometime Sheriff of Lincolnshire and M.P. for Peterborough), of Kevesby Abbey, Lincolnshire, a gentleman of some fortune, due to his father’s successful practice of medicine in that
1 No adequate Life of Sir Joseph Banks having as yet appeared, the com- piler of the following notes is indebted mainly for his information to Weld’s History of the Royal Society, Sir John Barrow’s Sketches of the Royal Society and the Royal Society Club, to Mr. B. Daydon Jackson’s article on Banks in the Dictionary of National Biography, and to scattered incidental notices.
XXIV
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
county. At the age of nine he was sent to Harrow, and four years later was transferred to Eton, where he displayed an extreme aversion from study, especially of Greek and Latin, and an inordinate love of all kinds of energetic sports. It was while he was here that he was first attracted to the study of botany, and having no better instructor he paid some women — “ cullers of simples,” as Sir Joseph him- self afterwards called them — who were employed in gather- ing plants, for which he paid them sixpence for each article they collected and brought to him. During his holidays he found on his mother’s dressing-table an old torn copy of Gerard’s Herbal , having the names and figures of some of the plants with which he had formed an imperfect acquaint- ance ; and he carried it back with him to school. While at Eton he made considerable collections of plants and insects. He also made many excursions in company with the father of the great Lord Brougham, who describes him as a fine-looking, strong, and healthy boy, whom no fatigue could subdue, and no peril daunt.
He left Eton when seventeen to be inoculated for the small-pox, and on his recovery he went up to Oxford, entering as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church. Prior to this, however, after his father’s death in 1761, he had resided with his mother at Chelsea, where he had availed himself of the then famous botanical garden of the Apothecaries’ Company. He found himself unable to get any teaching in botany at Oxford, but obtaining leave, he proceeded to Cam- bridge and returned with Israel Lyons,1 the astronomer and botanist, under whom a class was formed. In December 1763 he left Oxford with an honorary degree, and coming of age in the year following, found himself possessed of an ample fortune, which enabled him to devote himself entirely to the study of natural science. At this time also he formed a friendship with Lord Sandwich, a neighbouring landowner, both being devoted to hunting and other field sports. The two are credited with having formed a project
1 Afterwards calculator for the Nautical Almanac, and, owing to the in- fluence of Banks, astronomer to Captain Phipps’ Polar Voyage in 1773.
SIR JOSEPH BANKS
XXV
to drain the Serpentine, in order to obtain some light on the fishes it contained.
In May 1766 he was elected F.R.S., at the early age of twenty-three, and in the summer of that year accompanied his friend Lieutenant Phipps (afterwards Lord Mulgrave) to Newfoundland, where he investigated the Flora of that then botanically unknown island, returning next year by way of Lisbon. His journal of the trip is preserved in manuscript in the British Museum. After his return home, he became acquainted with Dr. Solander, of whom a brief notice is appended, and with whom he was closely connected until the death of the latter.
Shortly after the accession of George III., several ships had been sent to the Southern Seas in the interest of geographical science. Commodore Byron sailed in 1764, Captains Wallis and Carteret in 1766, and these had no sooner returned than the Government resolved to fit out an expedition to the island of Tahiti, or, as it was then called, Otahite, under Lieutenant James Cook, in order to observe the transit of Venus in 1769. Mr. Banks decided to avail himself of this opportunity of exploring the unknown Pacific Ocean, and applied to his friend Lord Sandwich, then at the head of the Admiralty, for leave to join the expedi- tion. At his own expense, stated by Ellis to be £10,000, he furnished all the stores needed to make complete collec- tions in every branch of natural science, and engaged Dr. Solander, four draughtsmen or artists, and a staff of servants (or nine in all) to accompany him.
The adventures of Banks and his companions on this voyage in the Endeavour are told in the diary which is the main object of this volume. It will be enough here to point out his untiring activity, whether in observing or collecting animals and plants, investigating and recording native customs and languages, bartering for necessaries with the inhabitants, preventing the pillaging to which the expedition was frequently subjected, or in the hazardous chase of the stolen quadrant in the interior of Otahite.
In July 177 1 the travellers returned with an immense
XXVI
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amount of material, the botanical part of which was for the most part already described, and needed but little to pre- pare it for the press. The descriptive tickets, which had been drawn up by Solander, were arranged in systematic order in what are still known as “ Solander cases,” and transcribed fairly by an amanuensis for publication. About 700 plates were engraved on copper in folio at Banks’s ex- pense, and a few prints or proofs were taken, but they were never published. Five folio books of neat manuscript, and the coppers, rest in the hands of the trustees of the British Museum. The question arises, why were they never utilised ? The descriptions were ready long before Solander’s death, although the plants collected in Australia do not seem to have been added to the fair copies, and the plates were mainly outlines. This has always been regarded as an insoluble problem, but the following extracts from a letter written by Banks very shortly before Solander died, may be accepted as evidence of his intention to publish. The letter from which the extract is taken is undated, and takes the shape of a draft without any name, but it is a reply to a letter addressed to Banks by Hasted, who was then collect- ing materials for the second edition of his history of the county of Kent.
Botany has been my favourite science since my childhood ; and the reason I have not published the account of my travels is that the first from want of time necessarily brought on by the many preparations for my second voyage was entrusted to Dr. Hawkesworth, and since that I have been engaged in a botanical work, which I hope soon to publish, as I have near 700 folio plates prepared ; it is to give an account of all such new plants discovered in my voyage round the world, some- what above 800.
Hasted’s letter, to which this is an answer, was dated 25th February 1782, little more than two months before Solander’s death (alluded to on a subsequent page), an event which has generally been accepted as determining the fate of the intended publication.
But we must now go back a few years. In 1772 pre- parations were made for a second expedition under Cook in
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the Resolution, with the object of ascertaining the existence, or the contrary, of an Antarctic continent, and Lord Sandwich invited Banks to accompany it as naturalist, to which he readily consented. Towards this new venture he made elabo- rate preparations, on a scale for which even his ample fortune did not suffice, for he had to raise money to complete his out- fit.1 Various surmises or explanations have been advanced to account for Banks’s abandonment of his intention to pro- ceed on this voyage ; amongst others it has been said that Cook raised difficulties concerning the accommodation ; and it is stated that Banks’s equipment would have necessitated the addition of a poop-deck on the vessel destined for the voyage, which would have materially interfered with its sailing powers. But the reason given by Sir John Barrow, who was for many years Secretary of the Admiralty, is no doubt the correct one. He states ( Sketches of the Royal Society, p. 26) that “ such a system was adopted by the Navy Board to thwart every step of his proceedings, especially on the part of its chief, the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Hugh Palliser, whereby his patience was worn out, and his indig- nation so far excited as to cause him, though reluctantly, to abandon this enterprise altogether.” It may be incident- ally mentioned that the great chemist Priestley, whom Banks had invited to join the expedition (on advantageous terms, including a provision for his family), was also objected to, in his case on account of religious principles, by the Board of Longitude. Although thus bitterly disappointed, Banks never- theless used his utmost endeavour to promote the objects of the voyage ; and that there was no personal bitterness between Banks and Cook seems certain from the following extract from a hasty note by Solander to Banks after Cook’s return : —
Two o’clock, Monday, 14th August 1775.
This moment Captain Cook is arrived. I have not yet had an opportunity of conversing with him, as he is still in the Board-room
1 The last few cases of specimen bottles prepared for this voyage were not utilised until they were transferred by Robert Brown to the editor of this “Journal,” when the latter was preparing to accompany Captain James Ross on his voyage to the Antarctic Ocean in 1839.
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giving an account of himself and company. He looks as well as ever.
Captain Cook desires his best compliments to you ; he expressed himself in the most friendly manner towards you that could be ; he said, “ Nothing could have added to the satisfaction he has had in making this tour, but having had your company.” He has some birds in spr. v. [spirits of wine] for you, etc. etc.
Thus baulked of their design, Banks and Solander set out on a scientific expedition to Iceland in a vessel specially chartered for them at a cost of £100 a month. They sailed on the 12th July 1772, and on the way Banks carried out an intention he had formed to visit Staffa, to which he was the first to draw the attention of scientific men, sending a complete description, with drawings and measurements, to Thomas Pennant, who inserted it in his Tour to the Highlands of Scotland. They spent a month in Iceland, exploring Mount Hecla, the geysers, and other remarkable features of the island. Banks made copious observations, which Dr. Troil, one of the party, and afterwards Arch- bishop of Upsala, included in his interesting account of the island, without, however, according to Barrow, doing full justice to the exertions of Banks and his companions, whom he dismisses with a too vague and general eulogium. Banks also afterwards placed his MS. journal at the disposal of Sir William Hooker, whom he had advised to visit the island for scientific purposes, and who made copious use of it, with due acknowledgment, in his Tour in Iceland.
Banks always continued to take a keen interest in the Icelanders, and his humanity “ was of signal service to these poor creatures ; for when, some years afterwards, they were in a state of famine, the benevolence and powerful interest of this kind-hearted man brought about the adoption of measures which absolutely saved the inhabitants from star- vation. We were at war with Denmark, and had captured the Danish ships, and no provisions could be received into Iceland. Clausen, a merchant, was sent to England to implore the granting of licences for ships to enter the island, and through the active intervention of Sir Joseph, who, as
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a Privy Councillor, was an honorary member of the Board of Trade, the indulgence was granted ” (Barrow, loc. cit. p. 29).
That Banks contemplated a voyage to the North Pole appears from a statement by Barrow that he announced such an intention at a meeting of the Batavian Society at Rotterdam in 1773, when he desired to be put in possession of such discoveries and observations as had been made by the Dutch, promising to acquaint them with any discoveries he might make in the course of such a voyage.
On his return from Iceland, Banks settled in Soho Square, where he accumulated a magnificent library (as well as at Revesby Abbey) and large collections, the whole being arranged in the most methodical manner. These business-like habits formed a marked feature in everything he undertook throughout his life, as to which interesting testimony is afforded by Barrow, who, during a visit shortly before Banks’s death, was shown his papers and correspond- ence carefully assorted and labelled. In this he received considerable assistance from his successive librarians, Solander and Dryander.
On the resignation of Sir John Pringle in November 1778, Banks was chosen to succeed him as President of the Royal Society, an honour for which he had incontest- able claims, in his many sacrifices to science in all climates during the voyages to Newfoundland, round the world with Cook, and to Iceland, in his ardent love of natural science, his many accomplishments, his wealth and social position, his habitual intercourse with the king and with the heads of public departments whose influence was greatest for the furtherance of scientific research, and, above all, perhaps, in the disinterestedness with which he placed his collections and library at the disposal of all applicants of merit, and in the expenditure of his wealth.
Notwithstanding all these claims on the votes of the Pellows of the Society, Banks was not destined to retain tranquil possession of the Presidency, and two or three circumstances, arising out of the zeal with which he dis- charged his duties, made him several enemies. One of
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these causes was his action with regard to the election of Fellows. Owing to the absence of any scrutiny of the claims of the candidates proposed for the Fellowship, Banks announced his intention of performing this office himself, and of making known his views concerning each proposal to the Council and Fellows. This measure, which created considerable dissatisfaction amongst a certain section of the Fellows, was nevertheless necessary, owing to the recent election of numerous candidates of no scientific merit what- ever. “ D’Alembert, in allusion to the extreme prodigality with which the honours of the Fellowship were distributed, was in use to ask jocularly any person going to England, if he desired to be made a Member, as he could easily obtain it for him, should he think it any honour. . . . Upon this subject Lord Brougham says : ‘ Two principles were laid down by him [Banks] ; first, that any person who had successfully cultivated science, especially by original inves- tigations, should be admitted, whatever might be his rank or fortune ; secondly, that men of wealth, or station, disposed to promote, adorn, and patronise science, should, but with due caution and deliberation, be allowed to enter’” (Weld’s History of the Royal Society).
A crisis was, however, brought about by the following circumstance. The Council, under the influence, it is said, of the President, passed a resolution recommending that the Foreign Secretary should reside in London ; and this measure was followed by the resignation of Dr. Hutton, then Foreign Secretary, and Professor at Woolwich, who, it was complained, had neglected his duties as secretary of the Society. Dr. Horsley, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, attacked the President in very bitter terms, lamenting that the chair which had been filled by Newton should be thus lowered in dignity, and predicting all kinds of disasters as the direct consequence of electing a naturalist as President. He induced several influential members to follow him, but when the fact became clear, as it soon did, that he desired the reversion of the chair for himself, his influence declined ; he withdrew from the Society with a few intimates, and
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Banks remained in undisputed possession of the chair till his death in 1820.
The excellent qualities of the President whom this victory kept in the chair were clearly exhibited by the temper with which he regarded the opposition. The sketch of his character (says Barrow) given by Lord Brougham is true to the life : “ He showed no jealousy of any rival, no prejudice in anybody’s favour rather than another’s. He was equally accessible to all for counsel and help. His house, his library, his whole valuable collec- tions, were at all times open to men of science, while his credit both with our own and foreign Governments, and, if need were, the resource of his purse, were ever ready to help in the prosecution of their inquiries.”
One of the earliest official acts of the new President was a proof of the estimation in which he held his late fellow-voyager Cook. On the death of the latter in 1779, Banks proposed to the Council that a medal should be struck as a mark of the high sense entertained by the Society of the importance of his extensive discoveries in different parts of the globe, the cost being defrayed by subscription among the Fellows. The medal, designed by L. Pingo, bears a portrait of the great navigator in profile on the obverse, with a representation of Britannia pointing to the south pole of a globe on the reverse.
Amongst other noteworthy services rendered by Banks in his capacity as President of the Eoyal Society, the following may be mentioned. In 1784 the Council obtained the permission of George III. to commence a geodetical survey under General Roy : this served as the basis of the Ordnance Survey. In the following year he made successful application to the king to guarantee the cost (amounting to £4000) of Sir William Herschel’s 40 -foot telescope. He served on a committee of the Society appointed, at the instance of the Secretary of State, to ascertain the length of the pendulum vibrating seconds of time at various localities in Great Britain. In 1817 the Council at his suggestion recommended Government to fit out an Arctic expedition :
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as a result, two were sent, the one under Captain John Eoss in search of the North-West Passage ; the other, which included Franklin, to sail northwards by the east coast of Greenland.
He was on several occasions invited to stand for Parlia- ment, but always declined, preferring to devote his entire time to his duties as President of the Eoyal Society, and to the innumerable functions it entailed.
It is sometimes said that Banks viewed with strong disapproval the formation of other societies for the pursuit of natural science. This was certainly so in the case of the Astronomical Society, which he considered would seriously decrease the importance of that over which he himself presided. But this was only because he conceived the objects of the former association to be so intimately con- nected with those of the Eoyal Society that there would not be sufficient scope for both. On the other hand, he was one of the founders of the Linnean Society in 1788, and took an even more prominent part in the formation of the Eoyal Institution in 1799.
In March 1779 he married Dorothea, daughter of William Western Hugessen, Esq., of Provender, Kent. In 1782 Solander died, and from that time onward Banks became more and more absorbed in the duties of the Eoyal Society, and acted as chief counsellor in all scientific matters to the king. In this capacity he had virtual control of the Eoyal Gardens at Kew, then under the cultural care of the elder Aiton, where were raised the plants produced by seeds brought home by himself, and so many of the novelties described in l’Heritier’s JSertum Anglicurn, Aiton’s Hortus Kewensis, and other botanical works. It was due to his indefatigable exertions and representations that the Eoyal Gardens at Kew were raised to the position of the first in the world, and that collectors were sent to the West Indies, the Cape Colonies, and Australia, to send home living plants and seeds, and herbaria, for the Eoyal Gardens. He kept Francis Bauer (who, and his brother Ferdinand, were the most accomplished botanical artists of the century) at Kew con-
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stantly occupied in making drawings of Australian and other plants, keeping him in liberal pay, and leaving him a legacy in his will.
He was the first to bring indiarubber into notice, and early advocated the cultivation of tea in India. He estab- lished botanic gardens in Jamaica, St. Vincent, and Ceylon, besides giving invaluable support to Colonel Kyd in the foundation of the garden at Sibpur, near Calcutta.
He was a keen agriculturist, and amongst his very few published writings one is on Blight Mildew and Bust, another on the introduction of the Potato, and a third on the Apple Aphis. The Horticultural Society was founded in 1804, and Banks is named as one of the persons to whom the Charter was granted in 1809. The esteem in which he was held by this Society is shown by their electing him an honorary member, and by their instituting, after his death, a Banksian medal.
Services of an international character were rendered by him when, in the course of war, the collections of foreign naturalists had been captured by British vessels ; on no less than eleven occasions were they restored to their former owners through the direct intervention of Banks with the Lords of the Admiralty and Treasury. The disinterestedness of such a course will be at once understood when it is remembered that these collections, some of them of inestim- able value (now at the Jardin des Plantes at Paris), would otherwise have contributed to the aggrandisement of his own magnificent museum. “ He even sent as far as the Cape of Good Hope to procure some chests belonging to Humboldt ; and it is well known that his active exertions liberated many scientific men from foreign prisons. He used great exertions to mitigate the captivity of the unfor- tunate Flinders, and it was principally by his intercession that our Government issued orders in favour of La Perouse ” (Weld’s History of the Royal Society).
Great as his services to science are known to have been, these will never be fully realised till his correspondence in the British Museum and elsewhere shall have been thor-
c
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oughly searched. That they were not confined to natural history is evident. He was an assiduous promoter of the Association for the Exploration of Tropical Africa, and it was under his auspices that Mungo Park, Clapperton, and others were sent out. He was one of a committee to investigate the subject of lightning conductors. His letters to Josiah Wedgwood show his keen appreciation not only of the work of the great potter, but of his other ingenious contrivances ; among the mass of papers left by him on his death was an illustrated dissertation on the history and art of the manufacture of porcelain by the Chinese. He took a deep interest in the coinage, and was in close com- munication with Matthew Boulton on questions of minting. On applying for information on this latter point to Dr. Boberts-Austen, that gentleman informed the editor that, though not officially an officer of the Mint, Banks had probably served on some departmental or Parliamentary commissions charged with mint questions ; and further, that he had presented the mint with a really fine library, embracing all the books it possessed relating to numismatics and coinage questions generally, together with a valuable collection of coins. In reference to this, the editor has also found, on looking over some Banksian MS. in the British Museum, that these included a draft code of regulations for the conduct of the officers of the Mint.
His interest in manufactures was also constant ; could his letters be brought together, a flood of light would thereby be thrown upon the progress of arts and sciences in Europe during his long tenure of the presidency of the Boyal Society.
As an instance of his zeal for science may be mentioned the interest he took in Sir Charles Blagden’s experiments to determine the power of human beings to exist in rooms heated to an excessive temperature. Sir Joseph Banks was one of the first who plunged into a chamber heated to the temperature of 260° Fahr., and was taken out nearly ex- hausted. It may be mentioned that Sir Francis Chan trey once remained two minutes in a furnace at a temperature of 320°.
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For a man of his distinction the dignities which were conferred upon him by royal favour seem disproportionate. He was created a Baronet in 1781, a Knight of the Bath in 1795, and two years subsequently was sworn of the Privy Council. In 1802 he was chosen one of the eight foreign members of the French Acaddmie des Sciences, in Paris.
To the last his house, library, and museum were open to all scientific men, of whatever nationality, and the ser- vices of his successive librarians, Solander, Dryander, and Brown, cannot be over-estimated. His Thursday breakfasts and Sunday soirees in Soho Square made his house the centre of influential gatherings of an informal kind ; curiosities of every description were brought by visitors and exhibited, and each new subject, book, drawing, animal, plant, or mineral, each invention of art or science, was sure to find its way to Sir Joseph’s house. It was at one of these parties that he strongly recommended the acquisition of the Linnean Library and collections to James Edward Smith, a young Norwich physician, and an ardent botanist. This was the turning-point of Smith’s life, and led to the founda- tion of the Linnean Society, which held its meetings for many years, during the lifetime of Bobert Brown, in Banks’s house in Soho Square, where the Linnean collections were placed previous to the Society’s removal to apartments provided by Government in Burlington House.
Sir Joseph Banks became latterly a great martyr to the gout, “ which grew to such an intensity as to deprive him entirely of the power of walking, and for fourteen or fifteen years previous to his death, he lost the use of his lower limbs so completely as to oblige him to be carried, or wheeled, as the case might require, by his servants in a chair : in this way he was conveyed to the more dignified chair of the Koyal Society, and also to the [Eoyal Society] Club — the former of which he very rarely omitted to attend, and not often the latter ; he sat apparently so much at his ease, both at the Society and in the Club, and conducted the business of the meetings with so much spirit and dignity,
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that a stranger would not have supposed that he was often suffering at the time, nor even have observed an infirmity, which never disturbed his uniform cheerfulness.
“ As the gout increased his difficulty of locomotion, Sir Joseph found it convenient to have some spot to retire to in the neighbourhood of London, and fixed upon a small villa near Hounslow Heath, called Spring Grove, consisting of some woods add a good garden laid out with ornamental shrubs and flower-beds, and neatly kept under the inspection of Lady and Miss Banks ” (his sister) [Barrow, loc. cit. pp. 40-42], Since his death the building has been pulled down and replaced by a mansion now in the possession of A. Pears, Esq.
The last occasion on which Banks took the chair at the Koyal Society was on 16th March 1820. In May, declining health led him to announce his resignation of the Presidency, which he had held for over forty-one years ; but the universal desire which was expressed, both by the Council of the Society and by the king himself, that he would retain the office, induced him to withdraw his resignation. He died, however, very shortly afterwards at Spring Grove, on the 19th June 1820, leaving a widow but no lineal issue.
He was buried at Heston, Middlesex, in which parish Spring Grove is situated. The church has since been rebuilt, and now covers the spot where he was buried. A tablet with a simple inscription marks as nearly as possible the place where his body lies. By his will he expressly desires that his body be interred in the most private manner in the church or churchyard of the parish in which he should happen to die, and entreats his dear relatives to spare themselves the affliction of attending the ceremony, and earnestly requests that they will not erect any monu- ment to his memory.
In July of the same year the Council of the Eoyal Society resolved to erect a full-length marble statue of Sir Joseph Banks, to be executed by Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis) Chantrey. A sum of £2000 was subscribed, of which £525 was paid to the sculptor, the surplus being devoted to an
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engraving of the statue, copies of which were distributed to various institutions and individuals. The monument now stands in the Natural History Department of the British Museum.
Amongst public notices of Sir Joseph Banks after his death, the best known are Cuvier’s Eloge delivered before the French Academy, and Sir Everard Home’s Hunterian Oration.
The lease of his house in Soho Square, and an annuity of £200, were left to Robert Brown, to whom were also bequeathed his library and natural history collections, with reversion to the British Museum. On condition of being appointed keeper of the botanical department, Brown made over the whole in 1828, reserving to himself the fullest use of the collections during his life, and accepting the duty of pre- paring a Life of Banks, as told in the preface to this “Journal.”
Considering the eminence of Banks’s position in the scientific world, it is surprising to find how little he wrote. The following are the most important of his publications—
“ A short Account of the cause of the Disease in Corn, called by farmers the Blight, the Mildew, and the Rust.” — Nicholson, Journ. x. (1805), pp. 225-234; Tilloch, Phil. Mag. xxi. (1805), pp. 320-327 ; Ann. Bot. ii. (1806), pp. 51-61. Also as a separate publication, 1805, 8 vo, 15 pp. 1 tab.; and reprinted in Curtis, Practical Observations on the British Gmsses, 1824, pp. 151-166, t. 1.
“ An attempt to ascertain the time when the Potato ( Solanum tuberosum) was first introduced into the United Kingdom ; with some Account of the Hill Wheat of India” (1805). — Hortic. Soc. Trans, i. 1812, pp. 8-12.
“ Some Hints respecting the proper Mode of inuring tender Plants to our Climate,” l.c. pp. 21-25.
“ On the Forcing-houses of the Romans, with a List of Fruits culti- vated by them now in our Gardens,” l.c. pp. 147-156.
“ On ripening the second Crop of Figs that grow on the new Shoots,” l.c. pp. 252-254.
“Notes relative to the first appearance of the Aphis lanigera, or the Apple Tree Insect, in this Country ” (1812), l.c. ii. pp. 162-170.
“ Observations on the nature and formation of the Stone incrusting the Skeletons which have been found in the Island of Guadeloupe, with some account of the origin of those Skeletons” (1818). — Trans. Linn. Soc. xii. (1818), pp. 53-61.
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He also published various papers in Archceologia.
To the labours of J. Dryander (who succeeded Solander as Banks’s secretary and librarian, and who was on his death succeded by Robert Brown in 1810) is due’ the publication of the catalogue of Banks’s library. It is entitled “ Cata- logus Bibliothecae historico-naturalis Josephi Banks . . . auctore Jono Dryander,” 5 vols. 8vo, 1798-1800. In it are enumerated the works of upwards of 6000 authors, with analyses of their writings, arranged according to the subjects treated. This work has never been superseded.
The name of Banks is commemorated botanically in the Australian genus Banksia, so named in his honour by the younger Linnaeus.
DR. SOLANDER
This sketch cannot be concluded without some notice of the career of Banks’s first librarian, and companion during Cook’s voyage, Daniel Carl Solander. He was the son of a country clergyman, and born in Norrland, Sweden, on the 28th February 1736. He studied at the University of Upsala, took the degree of M.D., and became a pupil of Linnaeus, who recommended him to go to England. He left Upsala in 1759, being warmly commended by his botanical professor to the eminent naturalist John Ellis, F.R.S., but was detained in the south of Sweden by sickness for nearly a year, only reaching our shores in July 1760. In the following October he was strongly recommended by Peter Collinson, F.R.S., to the notice of the trustees of the British Museum, but no permanent employment was the result of this appeal. In the autumn of 1762 Linnseus pro- cured for him the offer of the botanical professorship at St. Petersburg, but after consultation with his English friends, Solander decided to decline the appointment, for “ many reasons,” which are not given. The chief one seems to have been that at this time he was engaged in classifying and cataloguing in the British Museum, with prospect of advance- ment. A few months later he was appointed assistant in
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that institution, and in 1764 elected a Fellow of the Boyal Society. It was in 1767 that he first made the acquaintance of Banks, who, when he had in the following year resolved to accompany Cook to the Pacific, induced Solander to go with him. His situation in the Museum was kept open for him, a deputy being put in to act during his absence with Banks.
An extract from a letter from Ellis to Linnaeus gives a clear idea of the arrangements made for the journey : —
I must now inform you that Joseph Banks, Esq., a gentleman of ,£6000 per annum estate, has prevailed on your pupil, Dr. Solander, to accompany him in the ship that carries the English astronomers to the new-discovered country in the South Sea 1 . . . where they are to collect all the natural curiosities of the place, and, after the astronomers have finished their observations on the transit of Venus, they are to proceed under the direction of Mr. Banks, by order of the Lords of the Admiralty, on further discoveries. ... No people ever went to sea better fitted out for the purpose of natural history, nor more elegantly. They have got a fine library of natural history : they have all sorts of machines for catching and preserving insects ; all kinds of nets, trawls, drags, and hooks for coral fishing ; they have even a curious contrivance of a telescope by which, put into the water, you can see the bottom at a great depth, where it is clear. They have many cases of bottles with ground stoppers, of several sizes, to preserve animals in spirits. They have the several sorts of salts to surround the seeds ; and wax, both bees’- wax and that of the Myrica ; besides, there are many people whose sole business it is to attend them for this very purpose. They have two painters and draughtsmen, several volunteers who have a tolerable notion of natural history ; in short, Solander assured me this expedition would cost Mr. Banks £10,000. . . . About three days ago I took my leave of Solander, when he assured me he would write to you and to all his family, and acquaint them with the particulars of this expedition. I must observe to you that his places are secured to him, and he has promises from persons in power of much better preferment on his return. Everybody here parted from him with reluctance, for no man was ever more beloved, and in so great esteem with the public from his affable and polite behaviour.
On his return from the South Seas, Dr. Solander was installed under Banks’s roof in Soho Square as his secretary and librarian ; and at the British Museum he was advanced to the post of under-librarian. A short time after his return 1 The Society Islands.
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the project of a second voyage was mooted, as already mentioned on p. xxvii. How this idea was received by Linnaeus, the following extracts from his correspondence with Ellis will show : —
I have just read, in some foreign newspapers, that our friend Solander intends to revisit those new countries, discovered by Mr. Banks and himself, in the ensuing spring. This report has affected me so much as almost entirely to deprive me of sleep. How vain are the hopes of man ! Whilst the whole botanical world, like myself, has been looking for the most transcendent benefits to our science, from the unrivalled exertions of your countrymen, all their matchless and truly astonishing collection, such as has never been seen before, nor may ever be seen again, is to be put aside untouched, to be thrust into some corner, to become perhaps the prey of insects and of destruction.
I have every day been figuring to myself the occupations of my pupil Solander, now putting his collection in order, having first arranged and numbered his plants, in parcels, according to the places where they were gathered, and then written upon each specimen its native country and appropriate number. I then fancied him throw- ing the whole into classes, putting aside and naming such as were already known ; ranging others under known genera, with specific differences, and distinguishing by new names and definitions such as formed new genera, with their species. Thus, thought I, the world will be delighted and benefited by all these discoveries ; and the foundations of true science will be strengthened, so as to endure through all generations !
I am under great apprehension that, if this collection should remain untouched till Solander’s return, it might share the same lot as Forskal’s Arabian specimens at Copenhagen. . . . Solander promised long ago, while detained off the coast of Brazil, in the early part of his voyage, that he would visit me after his return, of which I have been in expectation. If he had brought some of his specimens with him, I could at once have told him what were new ; and we might have turned over some books together, and he might have been informed or satisfied upon many subjects, which after my death will not be so easily explained.
I have no answer from him to the letter I enclosed to you, which I cannot but wonder at. You, yourself, know how much I have esteemed him, and how strongly I recommended him to you.
By all that is great and good, I entreat you, who know so well the value of science, to do all that in you lies for the publication of these new acquisitions, that the learned world may not be deprived of them. . . .
Again the plants of Solander and Banks recur to my imagination.
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When I turn over FeuilRe’s figures, I meet with more extraordinary things among them than anywhere else. I cannot hut presume therefore, as Peru and Chili are so rich, that in the South Sea Islands, as great abundance of rarities have remained in concealment, from the beginning of the world, to reward the labours of our illustrious voyagers. I see these things now but afar off. . . .
When I ponder upon the insects they have brought, I am over- whelmed at the reported number of new species. Are there many new genera ? . . .
When I think of their Mollusca, I conceive the new ones must be very numerous. These animals cannot be investigated after death, as they contract in dying. Without doubt, as there were draughtsmen on board, they would not fail to afford ample materials for drawing.
Do but consider, my friend, if these treasures are kept back, what may happen to them. They may be devoured by vermin of all kinds. The house where they are lodged may be burnt. Those destined to describe them may die. Even you, the promoter of every scientific undertaking in your country, may be taken from us. All sublunary things are uncertain, nor ought anything to be trusted to treacherous futurity. I therefore once more beg, nay I earnestly beseech you, to urge the publication of these new discoveries. I con- fess it to be my most ardent wish to see this done before I die. To whom can I urge my anxious wishes but to you, who are so devoted to me and to science ?
Remember me to the immortal Banks and Solander.
The writer clearly recognised the dangers of that dilatori- ness which evidently formed a marked feature in the character of Solander ; he had repeatedly complained of his pupil’s neglect in writing, not only to him, but to his mother. This was the subject of reproach even before the great expedition, but it seems to have been intensified after- wards, for after Solander’s death, letters from his mother addressed to him were found actually unopened !
The closing scene came with startling suddenness. Sir Joseph Banks was out of town, and to that fact we owe the following details from the pen of Dr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Blagden, an intimate acquaintance.
Soho Square,
Wednesday, 8th May 1782, 2.30 p.m.
Soon after breakfast this morning Dr. Solander began to find him- self much indisposed, and in a short time the symptoms of a palsy of the left side began to appear. I was conversing with him at the time, and as soon as the stroke became certain, dispatched a messenger
xlii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
for Mr. Hunter, whilst Professor Linnaeus 1 went to call Dr. Heberden and Dr. Pitcairne. All these gentlemen have been with him, and the necessary remedies prescribed. I dare not say what the event will be, but am not without hopes, notwithstanding the extreme danger with which you know all paralytic strokes are attended. It was found impossible to move him ; Lady Banks has therefore been so kind as to order an apartment for him in her house, and I shall quit him as little as possible, particularly not to-night. You may judge of the affliction of every one here. I am so much affected myself that I know not what to say to you, hut that I am most affectionately yours,
C. Blagden.
It is a striking testimony of the regard in which Solander was held, that the foremost physicians of the day should be summoned to his side at the moment of attack, and that the son and successor of his botanical preceptor should be one of the messengers in search of medical aid. All efforts were unavailing to prolong his life, for he died at Soho Square on the 16 th of the same month.
He is stated to have been a short, fair man, somewhat stout, with small eyes, and a good-humoured expression of countenance. The genus Solandra is his botanical memorial, named after him by his fellow-countryman, Swartz. A full- length portrait of him, by an unknown artist, in the posses- sion of the Linnean Society (to which body it was given by R. A. Salisbury), is here reproduced.
1 Carl von Linne, son of the eminent naturalist.
NATURALISTS AND VOYAGERS MENTIONED IN THE JOURNAL
Anson, George, Lord (1697-1762), entered the navy in 1712, and was in 1740 sent to the Pacific in command of a squadron. Reaching his destination by way of South America, he captured the “ Spanish galleon,” and brought it to England, returning by the Cape of Good Hope in 1744. His “Voyage round the World ” was published in 1748. In 1746 he was appointed to the command of the Channel Fleet, and was raised to the peerage in 1747. In 1751 he became First Lord of the Admiralty, having virtually performed all the duties of that office for two or three years previously.
Baster, Job (1711-75), a Dutch naturalist, who published many works on natural history, including a treatise on the classification of plants and animals (1768), and “ Opuscula subseciva” (1759-65), consisting of miscellaneous observations on animals and plants, re- ferring more especially to seeds and embryos.
Biron, C., author of “ Curiosites de la Nature et de l’Art, apportees de deux Voyages des Indes, en Occident, 1698-99 ; en Orient, 1701-2 ; avec une Relation abregee des deux Voyages” (1703).
Bougainville, Louis Antoine de (1729-1811), was successively lawyer, soldier, secretary to the French Embassy in London, and officer under Montcalm in Canada. In 1765 he persuaded the in- habitants of St. Malo to fit out an expedition to colonise the Falkland Islands, hut upon these being claimed by the Spaniards, Bougainville was sent out in 1766, in command of the frigate Boudeuse, with a consort, to transfer them to the latter country. After accomplishing this mission he proceeded through the Straits of Magellan and fell in with Otahite (to which he gave the name of Gythere, but which had been previously seen by Quiros and Wallis), the Navigators, and the New Hebrides (Quiros’ Terra del Espiritu Santo). Endeavouring to steer due west at about the 15th degree of south latitude, he was, when still out of sight of land, brought up by reefs (outside the Great
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JOURNAL OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS
Barrier Reef). Turning northwards he sailed, by the Louisiade Archi- pelago and New Guinea, to the Moluccas, returning to France in 1769 via, Batavia and Mauritius.
Bougainville was accompanied on this voyage by a naturalist, Philibert Commerson, whose servant, Jean Bary, passed for a man until her sex was recognised by the Tahitians. Otourrou, a Tahitian whom Bougainville took with him to France, died of small-pox at Mada- gascar while being conveyed back to his native country. The genus Bougainvillea was so named by Commerson in honour of the navigator, who was the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. Bougain- ville afterwards commanded various vessels in the American War.
Brisson, Mathurin Jacques (1723-1806), French naturalist and physicist, author of “ Le regne animal” (1756), and “ Ornithologie ” (1760), and various works on physics.
Brosse or Brosses, Charles de (1709-77), first President of the Parliament of Burgundy, author of “ Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes” (1756).
Browne, Patrick (1720?- 1790), a physician who studied natural history, more particularly botany, and after a voyage to the West Indies published the “Civil and Natural History of Jamaica” (1756). He also compiled more or less local catalogues of birds, fishes, and plants.
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de (1707-88), French naturalist and writer. Upon being appointed Director of the King’s Garden at Paris, in 1739, he conceived the idea of compiling a natural history of creation, and devoted the following fifty years of his life to carrying out this project, with the help of other naturalists. His “Histoire naturelle” (published at various periods from 1749 to 1788) treats of the theory of the earth, nature of animals, man, viviparous quadrupeds, birds, and minerals. The task was continued after his death by Lacepedc.
Byron, Vice-Admiral John (1723-86), was the second son of the fourth Lord Byron, and grandfather of the poet. He accompanied Anson on his voyage to the Pacific as a midshipman on board the Wager, which was wrecked on the coast of Chile in 1741 : some years later he published the details of his adventures (1768). In 1764 he was appointed to the Dolphin, with orders to explore the South Seas. He left England in company with the Tamar, and, passing through the Straits of Magellan, stood across the Pacific, but following a course already known, made no discoveries of any importance. With a great deal of scurvy on board he reached the Ladrones, and returned home in 1766. [Otahite was rediscovered on the Dolphin’s second
NATURALISTS AND VOYAGERS MENTIONED xlv
voyage by Wallis, q.v.] Byron was afterwards (1769-72) Governor of Newfoundland, and had command of the West Indian Fleet in 1778-79.
Canton, John (1718-72), F.R.S., electrician, was the first English- man who successfully repeated Franklin’s experiments. He invented an electroscope and an electrometer. The Copley Medal of the Royal Society was awarded him in 1751.
Cook, Captain James (1728-79), the son of an agricultural labourer, was born at Marton in Y orkshire. He served several years in the merchant service, but volunteered for the navy in 1755, enter- ing on the Eagle under Captain Hugh Palliser. It was owing to the influence of the latter that Cook, who had previously surveyed the St. Lawrence river, was afterwards appointed “ Marine Surveyor to the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.” He published his results as directions for navigating these coasts (1766-68).
The Admiralty having at the instance of the Royal Society resolved to despatch an expedition to observe the transit of Venus in the Pacific, Cook was appointed Lieutenant and placed in command of the En- deavour (1768) : this voyage is described in the following pages.
On his return in 1771, Cook was immediately promoted to the rank of Commander and sent again to the Pacific with the Resolution and Adventure, the primary object of the expedition being to verify the existence or non-existence of an antarctic continent. He left Plymouth in 1772, and proceeded to the Cape of Good Hope, whence sailing in a south-easterly direction, he was the first to cross the Antarctic circle. After revisiting New Zealand, Otahite, and New Zealand again (when the Resolution and Adventure parted company), he sailed to the south, and reached his highest latitude (71°T0) in January 1774. After touching at Easter Island he explored the New Hebrides and discovered New Caledonia, whence he returned home by New Zealand, Cape Horn, and South Georgia, reaching Plymouth in July 1775.
Apart from the geographical discoveries, and finally setting at rest the question of a habitable southern continent, this voyage was, even more than the first, remarkable for the fact that Cook kept his crew absolutely free from scurvy, and lost only a single man during the whole of the three years. Cook’s demonstration of the possibility of maintaining the health of crews during long periods is one of his greatest titles to fame. He gave an account of his methods for the prevention of scurvy to the Royal Society in 1776, and the Copley Medal was in the same year awarded to him, in recognition of his services to the maritime world and to humanity in this connection.
Having been promoted to the rank of Captain, he offered to take command of an expedition to the North Pacific in search of a North- west Passage. He left England on this, his third voyage, in July
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JOURNAL OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS
1776, in the Resolution, his consort, the Discovery, joining him at the Cape of Good Hope. The two ships visited Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand, and spent 1777 among the islands of the South Pacific. Going north, he discovered the Sandwich Islands (1778), and sur- veyed the west coast of North America as far as Icy Cape (thus passing through the Behring Straits). Thence, finding further advance im- possible, he returned to the Sandwich Islands, anchoring in Karakakoa Bay. The natives at first proved friendly, but quarrels afterwards arose, and Cook, going on shore to recover a stolen boat, was killed (14th February 1779), no attempt at a rescue being made.
Cowley, Captain, buccaneer, fell in with “ Pepys ” Island, which was afterwards recognised to be one of the Falklands, about the year 1683. He sailed round the world in 1683-86, keeping a Journal from which the account of his voyage in Callander’s “ Terra Australis Cognita ” is taken.
Dalrymple, Alexander (1737-1808), went out as a writer in the East India Company’s service in 1752, and undertook several voyages for the Company, particularly to the Sulu Islands and to China. In 1767 he published an “Account of Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean before 1764,” and later a “Historical Collection of South Sea Voyages” (1770-71), besides pamphlets on Indian affairs. He was appointed the first Hydrographer to the Admiralty in 1795, but was dismissed in 1808, and died the same year.
Dampier, William (1652-1715), buccaneer, captain in the navy, and hydrographer, made several voyages to the South Seas. In one of these he left Virginia in 1683 and went by way of South America to the East Indies, where he spent some time in trading. He re- turned to England in 1691 and published his “Voyage Round the World ” (1697). On a later voyage he sailed under directions from the Admiralty along the northern coast of New Holland and visited New Guinea (1699-1701). His narrative of this expedition, entitled “Voyage to New Holland in the year 1699” (published 1703-9), is remarkable for the information it contains on the natural history, etc., of Australia. He was again in the South Seas in 1703-7 and in 1708, upon which last occasion he rescued Alexander Selkirk, whom he had himself left there on the former voyage, from the island of Juan Fernandez.
“ Dolphin,” the first vessel in the English navy sheathed with copper : 1st voyage, see Byron ; 2nd voyage (to Otaliite), see Wallis.
Edwards, George, F.R.S. (1694-1773), naturalist, Librarian to the Royal College of Physicians. He was the author of a “ History of Birds” (1743-64), one volume of which is remarkable for being dedi- cated to God.
NATURALISTS AND VOYAGERS MENTIONED xlvii
Fernandez, Juan (died 1576), Spanish navigator, appears to have been constantly employed as pilot off the coasts of South America. He discovered the islands bearing his name about 1572, and in 1576 reported another large island or continent, which has not been identified.
Fothergill, John, M.D., F.R.S. (1712-80), was a Quaker, and the first graduate of Edinburgh to be admitted as a licentiate of the College of Physicians (1744). He was greatly interested in botany, and possessed a magnificent botanical garden at Upton, near Stratford, where he kept many draughtsmen. He also made large collections of shells and insects. His “ Hortus Uptonensis ” was published amongst his “Works” after his death in 1783-84.
Frazier, Amedee Francois (1682-1773), engineer and traveller, born at Chambery, was descended from the Scotch Frasers. He was sent out by the French king in 1711 to examine the Spanish colonies in South America, and on his return in 1714 published his “Relation d’un Voyage de la Mer du Sud aux cotes du Chili et du Perou” (1716). He was afterwards Director of Fortifications of Brittany, and was the author of several works on architecture.
Hasselquist, Fredrik (1722-52), Swedish naturalist and pupil of Linnseus. He spent three years (1749-52) travelling in Palestine and Egypt, and made large collections of fishes, reptiles, insects, plants, and minerals, studying also Arab manuscripts, coins, and mummies. He died at Smyrna, and his collections passed into the hands of Linnaeus, who published Hasselquist’s journal and observations under the title of “Iter Palestinum ” (1757).
Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, see Brosse.
Hulme, Nathaniel, F.R.S. (1732-1807), was Physician to the Charter-house.
Le Maire, Jacob (died 1616), Dutch navigator, left Holland in company with William Cornelissen Schouten (died 1625) in 1615, in the Concorde , with the view of determining the position of the southern point of South America, in defiance of the regulations of the Dutch East India Company, which attempted to close the routes to India, either by the Cape of Good Hope or the Straits of Magellan. Le Maire and Schouten discovered Staten Island and Cape Horn, which they doubled, and thence proceeded to Batavia, passing along the north-east coast of New Guinea. On their arrival at Batavia, their ship was seized and they were sent to Holland, but Le Maire died before reaching Europe. Schouten published an account of the voyage in 1618.
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L’Hermite, Jacques (died 1624), Dutch Admiral, was sent out in 1623 by the States-General in command of eleven vessels (the Nassau fleet, so named after Prince Maurice of Nassau) to attack Peru. The expedition did not meet with much success, and L’Hermite himself died at Callao. He appears to have previously served under the Dutch East India Company.
Marcgrav, George (1610-44), German physician and traveller, accompanied Piso (q.v.) and the Prince of Nassau to Brazil in 1636, where he travelled for six years. The results of his discoveries are embodied with those of Piso in the “ Historia naturalis Brasilia ” (1648). He afterwards went to the coast of Guinea and there died.
Maskelyne, Nevil, F.R.S. (1732-1811), was sent by the Royal Society to St. Helena to observe the transit of Venus in 1761, but the phenomenon was obscured by clouds. He was after- wards Astronomer-Royal (1765) ; and to him we owe the “Nautical Almanac,” the publication of which he superintended for forty-five years. In 1769 he observed the transit of Venus from Greenwich. Later, in 1784, Maskelyne strongly supported Dr. Charles Hutton against Sir Joseph Banks, then President, during the dissensions in the Royal Society (see p. xxx.)
M‘Bride, David (1726-78), medical writer, advocated the use of fresh wort or infusion of malt as a preventive of scurvy at sea, a specific adopted by Banks on this voyage. It was, however, soon after superseded by Lind’s lemon juice.
Narbrough, Admiral Sir John (1640-88), was sent out to the South Seas in 1669. Passing through the Straits of Magellan, he sailed as far as Valdivia aud then returned home. He was present at the battle of Solebay (1672), and after some years of service, died at Saint Domingo, whither he had gone, at the instance of the Govern- ment, to search for treasure.
Nassau Fleet. See L’Hermite.
Oldenland, Henry Bernhard, Dutch naturalist, author of “ Catalog! duo plantarum Africanarum ” in the “Thesaurus Zeylanicus” (1737).
Osbeck:, Pehr (1723-1805), Swedish naturalist and traveller. He studied natural history, and on the recommendation of Linnaeus was appointed chaplain to a vessel of the Swedish East India Company, in which he visited China, and, on the return voyage, Ascension. Osbeck published his observations under the title of “Journal of a voyage to the East Indies, 1750-52, with observations on the natural history, language, manners, and domestic economy of foreign peoples ” (1757).
NATURALISTS AND VOYAGERS MENTIONED xlix
Pallas, Peter Simon (1741-1811), traveller and naturalist, was born at Berlin, and in 1767, at the invitation of the Empress Catherine, accepted the professorship of Natural History at St. Petersburg. He went to Siberia in 1768 to observe the transit of Venus, and spent the following six years travelling there, penetrating to the frontiers of China. He remained in Russia till 1810, when he returned to Berlin. He was an indefatigable naturalist, and published many works on natural history, of which the greater part deal with the flora, fauna, and ethnology of the Russian possessions.
Pennant, Thomas, LL.D. (1726-98), Scotch naturalist and antiquary. He was the author of “British Zoology” (1766); “ Synopsis of Quadrupeds” (1771), afterwards enlarged and published as the “History of Quadrupeds” (1781); “Genera of Birds” (1773), etc. He was a constant correspondent of Gilbert White of Selborne.
Piso, William (17th century), Dutch naturalist and doctor, accompanied Prince Maurice of Nassau as his physician on his voyage to Brazil in 1636, taking with him two young German savants, Marcgrav (q.v.) and Kranitz. The observations which he and Marcgrav made were published in 1648 under the title of “Historia naturalis Brasilia;.” He was the first to introduce into Europe and to describe ipecacuanha and its medicinal properties.
Quiros, Pedro Fernandez de (died 1614), Spanish navigator, accompanied Mendana in 1595 to the Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands. On the death of Mendana, Quiros brought the remains of the fleet to Manilla, and then returned by South America to Madrid. Obtain- ing permission to search for the supposed Southern Continent, he set out again from Lima in 1605, and discovered “ Dezana,” afterwards called Osnaburg Island. In the following year he discovered Otahite, which he named “ Sagittaria.” Proceeding westwards he then dis- covered “Terra del Espiritu Santo,” one of the New Hebrides. From this point he turned back to Mexico, and died at Panama in 161 4.
Rembrantz von Nierop, Dirk (1610-82), Dutch astronomer and mathematician, published, besides several works on mathematics and astronomy, a short account of Tasman’s voyage.
Roggeween, Jacob (1659-1729), Dutch navigator, was at one time counsellor of the Court of Justice at Batavia. In his voyage round the world he started from Holland in 1721, reached the Falkland Islands, and sailed south as far as 62j° S. lat., then went to Chile, Juan Fernandez, Easter Island (of which he was the discoverer), New Britain and Batavia. An account of his voyage was published in 1728.
Rumphius or Rumpf, George Eberhard (1627-1702), German doctor and botanist. He went out to the Dutch possessions in the
d
1
JOURNAL OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS
East Indies about 1654, and entered the Company’s service. He was made Consul at Amboyna, where he resided until his death, making large collections there and in the adjacent islands. Not- withstanding that he became totally blind in 1669, he was the author of several works on natural history, which, however, were not published until after his death, notably the “Herbarium Amboinense” (1741- 55), “ Herbarii Amboinensis Auctuarium” (1755), supplementing the former work, “ D’Amboinische Rariteitkammer ” (1704), and “Thesaurus imaginum piscium, testaceorum, et cochlearum” (1711).
Sharp, Captain Bartholomew (17th century), made several buccaneer- ing voyages to the South Seas, chiefly off the coast of South America and Darien. He kept a journal, and published an account of his voyages in 1684.
Shelvocke, George (18th century), buccaneer, although he had been long in the navy, went out in command of the Speedwell (privateer) in 1719-22 to the South Seas. He was wrecked on Juan Fernandez, but built a craft out of the remains of the wreck, and reached Peru ; he thence sailed to Formosa. After three years of constant fighting and adventures, he reached England and published his “ Voyage round the World by way of the Great South Sea” (1726).
Sloane, Sir Hans, Bart. (1660-1753), botanist and physician. He went to Jamaica in 1687, collecting 800 plants there, and afterwards published an account of his travels (1707-25), and a “Catalogue of the Plants of Jamaica” (1696). He became Secretary to the Royal Society in 1693, and edited its Transactions for twenty years. He was appointed Physician-General to the army, and was the first medical practitioner to be created a baronet (1716). He was elected President of the College of Physicians in 1719, and of the Royal Society in 1727, retaining the latter dignity until 1740. He was an indefatigable collector, and his library and collections, which he by will directed should be offered to the nation for £20,000, were in 1759 opened to the public as the British Museum.
Tasman, Abel Jansen (cir. 1602-59), Dutch navigator. In 1639 he was sent by Van Diemen to the Philippines and Japan ; and in 1642 the same Governor directed him to investigate the south of New Holland. He fell in with Van Diemen’s Land, without discover- ing it to be an island, and thence sailed across to New Zealand, which he called Staten Land. Anchoring in Massacre Bay, he lost three men, killed by the natives (whence the name), and then coasted along the west coast of North Island. After leaving this he reached the Friendly Islands, returning to Batavia by the north coast of New Guinea. In 1644 he undertook a third voyage to the north coast of New Holland and discovered the Gulf of Carpentaria. He died at Batavia in 1659.
NATURALISTS AND VOYAGERS MENTIONED
li
Torres, Luis Vaez de, commanded the Almiranta, the second ship on Quiros’ expedition. After accompanying Quiros to “ Sagittaria ” (Otahite), the ships were separated at Terra del Espiritu Santo, and Torres, sailing westwards, passed through the straits between Australia and New Guinea in 1606. In connection with the fire thrown by the natives of this latter country when Banks landed there (see p. 326), it is interesting to find that Torres records that “among the weapons used by them were hollow bamboo sticks, which they filled with lime, and by throwing it endeavoured to blind their enemies,” also that he “ met with Mahometans who had swords and firearms ” (Burney, History of Discoveries in the South Seas). Cook and Banks were unaware of the previous discovery, by Torres, of these straits.
Valentijn, Francois (1656-1727), Dutch traveller, was for many years pastor of the Protestant Church at Amboyna. He was the author of “ Oudt en Nieuw Oost-Indie” (1724-26), and of various theological works, including a Malay version of the Bible.
Wallis, Captain Samuel (died 1795), was sent out in command of the Dolphin on Byron’s return in 1766. In company with the Swallow , he left England in August 1766, but was separated from his consort in a gale after emerging from the Straits of Magellan. He rediscovered Otahite (already seen by Quiros in 1606) in June 1767, one year before Bougainville. He named it King George III. Island. After a month’s stay he left the island for Batavia, and finally reached England in May 1768. Hawkesworth published an account of this voyage in 1773. It was Wallis who recommended Otahite as a station for observing the transit of Venus in 1769. Wallis retired from active service in 1772, and was in 1780 appointed an extra commissioner of the navy. (For the first voyage of the Dolphin, see Byron.)
OFFICERS OF THE “ENDEAVOUR
James Cook, Lieutenant in Command.
Zachary Hicks, Lieutenant, died 25th May 1771.
John Goke, Lieutenant.
Robert Molineux, Master, died 17th April 1771.
Richard Pickersgill, Master’s Mate (Master, 16tli April 1771).
Chester Clerice, Master’s Mate.
Francis Wilkinson, A.B. (Master’s Mate, 20th August 1768).
John Bootie, Midshipman, died 4th February 1771.
Jonathan Monkhouse, Midshipman, died 6th February 1771.
Patrick Saunders, Midshipman.
Isaac Smith, A.B. (Midshipman, 24th May 1770 ; Master’s Mate, 27th May 1771).
Jos. Magra, A.B. (Midshipman, 27th May 1771).
Isaac Manley, Master’s Servant (Midshipman, 5th February 1771). William B. Monkhouse, Surgeon, died 5th November 1770.
William Perry, Surgeon’s Mate (Surgeon, 6tli November 1770).
Richard Orton, Clerk.
Charles Green, Astronomer, died 27th January 1771.
MR. BANKS’S STAFF
Daniel Carl Solander, Naturalist.
John Reynolds, Artist, died 18th December 1770. Sydney Parkinson, Artist, died 26tli January 1771. Alexander Buchan, Artist, died 17th April 1769. Herman Sporing, died 24th January 1771.
James Roberts, Servant.
Peter Briscoe, Servant.
Thomas Richmond, Negro Servant George Dollin, Negro Servant
j- Frozen to death, 16th February 1769.
The total on board (including a seaman pressed at Madeira) was 95 ; of these, 38 were lost by death during the voyage.
CHAPTER I
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO Aug. 25— Nov. 13, 1768
Departure — Birds and marine animals — Species of Dagysa — Madeira — Dr. Heberden — Madeira mahogany — Wine - making — Vines — Carts — V ege- table productions — Convent — Chapel wainscoted with bones — General account of Madeira — Peak of Teneritfe — Marine animals — Cross the Equator — Climate of tropics — Luminous animals in the water— Trade winds — Brazilian fishermen — Sargasso weed — Rio harbour.
25 th August 1768. Plymouth. — After having waited in
this place ten clays, the ship and everything belonging to me being all that time in perfect readiness to sail at a moment’s warning, we at last got a fair wind ; and this day at three o’clock in the evening weighed anchor and set sail, all in excellent health and spirits, perfectly prepared (in mind at least) to undergo with cheerfulness any fatigues or dangers that may occur in our intended voyage.
26 th. Saw this evening a shoal of those fish which are particularly called Porpoises by the seamen, probably the Delphinus Phoccena of Linnaeus, as their noses are very blunt.
28 th. In some sea water which was on board to season a cask, observed a very minute sea -insect, which Dr. Solander described by the name of Podura marina. Took several specimens of Medusa pelagica, whose different motions in swimming amused us very much ; among the appendages to this animal we found also a new species of Oniscus. We took also another animal, quite different from any we had ever seen ; it was of an angular figure, about three inches
2
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
long and one thick, with a hollow passing quite through it ; on one end was a brown spot, which might be the stomach of the animal. Four of these, the whole number that we took, adhered together when taken by their sides ; so that at first we imagined them to be one animal : but upon being put into a glass of water, they very soon separated, and swam briskly about.
2>lst. Observed about the ship several of the birds called by the seamen Mother Carey’s Chickens, Procellaria pelagica, Linn., which were thought by them to be a sure presage of a storm, as indeed it proved.
2nd September. The casting-net brought up two kinds of animals, different from any before taken. They came up in clusters, both sorts indifferently in each cluster, although there were much fewer of a horned kind than of the other : they seemed to be two species of one genus, but are not at all reducible to any hitherto described.
3rd. We were employed all day in describing the animals taken yesterday : we found them to be of a new genus, and of the same as that taken on the 28 th of August ; we called the genus Dagysa, from the likeness of one species to a gem.
4 th. Employed in fishing with the casting -net. We were fortunate in taking several specimens of Dagysa saccata adhering together, sometimes to the length of a yard or more, and shining in the water with very beautiful colours ; but another insect we took to-day was possessed of more beautiful colouring than anything in nature I have ever seen, hardly excepting gems. It is of a new genus, called Carcinium, of which we took another species, having no beauty to boast of ; but the first, which we called opcilinum , shone in the water with all the splendour and variety of colours that we observe in a real opal. It lived in a glass of salt water, in which it was put for examination, several hours, darting about with great agility, and at every motion showing an almost infinite variety of changeable colours. Towards the evening of this day a new phenomenon appeared : the sea was almost covered with a small species of crab ( Cancer depur ator, Linn.),
SEPT. 1768
DAGYSA
3
floating upon the surface of the water, and moving with toler- able agility, as if the surface and not the bottom of the ocean were their proper station.
5 tli. I forgot to mention yesterday that two birds were caught in the rigging, which had probably come from Spain, as we were not then distant more than five or six leagues from that country. This morning another was caught and brought to me, but so weak that it died in my hand almost immediately. All three were of the same species, and not described by Linnams ; we called them Motacillci veliftcans, as they must be sailors who would venture themselves aboard a ship which is going round the world. To balance to some extent our good fortune, now become too prevalent, a misfortune happened this morning, almost the worst which our enemies could have wished. The morning was calm, and Richmond employed in searching for what should appear on the surface of the water ; a shoal of Dagysce was observed, and he, eager to take some of them, threw the casting-net, fastened only to his wrist ; the string slipped from him, and the net at once sunk into the deep, never more to torment its inhabitants. This left us for some time entirely without a resource ; plenty of animals came past the ship, but all the nets were in the hold, stowed under so many other things that it was impossible even to hope that they may be got out to-day at least. However, an old hoop- net was fastened to a fishing-rod, and with it one new species of Dagysa was caught : it was named lobata.
6 th. Towards the middle of the day the sea was almost covered with Dagysce of different kinds, among which two entirely new ones were taken (rostrata and strumosa), but neither were observed hanging in clusters, as most of the other species had been ; whether from the badness of the new machine, or the scarcity of the animals, I cannot say.
It is now time to give some account of the genus of Dagysa, of which we have already taken six species, all agreeing very well in many particulars, but chiefly in this very singular one, that they have a hole at each end, com- municating by a tube often as large as the body of the
4
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
animal, by the help of which they swim with some degree of activity when separated from each other. Several sorts are most generally seen joined together, gevimce more par- ticularly, which adhere in irregularly-shaped clusters of some hundreds ; in the midst of These were’ generally found a few specimens of cornuta, from which circumstance we may judge that they are very nearly allied. It seems singular that no naturalist should have taken notice of these animals, as they abound so much where the ship now is, not twenty leagues from the coast of Spain. From hence, however, great hopes may be formed that the inhabitants of the deep have been but little examined, and as Dr. Solander and my- self will have probably greater opportunity in the course of this voyage than any one before us, it is a very encouraging circumstance that so large a field of natural history has remained almost untrod until now, and that we may be able from this circumstance alone (almost unthought of when we embarked in the undertaking) to add considerable lights to the science which we so eagerly pursue.
This evening a large quantity of Carcinium opalinum, which may be called the opal insect, came under the ship’s stern, making the very sea appear of uncommon beauty, their colours appearing with vast brightness even at the depth of two or three fathoms, though they are not more than three lines long and one broad.
7 th. On examining the Bagysce which were taken yester- day several small animals were found lodged in the hollow parts of their bodies, and some in the very substance of their flesh, which seems to be their food, as many of the Bagysce were full of scars, which had undoubtedly been the lodgment of these animals some time before. Upon a minute inspection they proved to be animals not to be classed under Linnaeus’s genera, though nearly related to Oniscus, from which circumstance the name of Onidium was given to the new genus, and to them was added an animal taken on the 28 th of August, and mentioned by the name of Oniscus macrophthalmus.
In one particular these insects differ from any hitherto
SEPT. 1768
MADEIRA
5
described, and in that they all three agree, viz. in having- two eyes joined together under one common membrane without the least distinction or division between them, which circumstance alone seems a sufficient reason for constituting a new genus.
1C )th. To-day for the first time we dined in Africa, and took leave of Europe for heaven alone knows how long, perhaps for ever ; that thought demands a sigh as a tribute due to the memory of friends left behind, and they have it, but two cannot be spared, ’twould give more pain to the sigher than pleasure to those sighed for. ’Tis enough that they are remembered : they would not wish to be too much thought of by one so long to be separated from them, and left alone to the mercy of winds and waves.
12 th. At ten to-night came to an anchor in Funchiale Bay, Madeira.
l'ith— l%th. The product boat 1 (as it is called by English sailors) from the officers of health, whose leave must be , obtained before any ship’s crew can land, came on board about eleven, and we immediately went on shore in the town of Funchiale, the capital of the island, situate in latitude 32° 40' 1ST. It is so called from the fennel which grows in plenty upon the rocks in its neighbourhood, and is called funcho in Portuguese. Here we immediately went to the house of the English consul, Mr. Cheap, one of the first merchants in the place, where we were received with un- common marks of civility, he insisting upon our taking possession of his house, and living entirely with him during our stay, which we did, and were by him furnished with every accommodation that we could wish for. Leave was procured by him for us to search the island for whatever natural productions we might find worth noticing ; people were also employed to procure for us fish and shells ; horses and guides were obtained for Dr. Solander and myself to carry us to any part of the island which we might choose to visit. But our very short stay, which was only five days, made it impossible to go to any distance ; so we
1 i.e. the pratique boat.
6
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
contented ourselves with collecting as much as we could in the neighbourhood of the town, never going above three miles from it during our whole stay.
The season of the year was undoubtedly the worst for both plants and insects, being that of the vintage, when nothing is green in the country, except just on the verge of small brooks, by which their vines are watered ; we made shift, however, to collect specimens of several plants, etc.
The five days which we remained upon the island were spent so exactly in the same manner that it is by no means necessary to divide them. I shall therefore only say that in general we got up in the morning, went out on our researches, returned to dine, and went out again in the evening. On one day, however, we had a visit from the Governor, of which we had notice beforehand, and were obliged to stay at home ; so that this unsought honour lost us very nearly the whole day, a very material part of the short time we were allowed to stay upon the island. We, however, contrived to revenge ourselves upon his Excellency by means of an electrical machine which we had on board ; for, upon his expressing a desire to see it, we sent for it ashore, and shocked him fully as much as he chose.
While here we were much indebted to Dr. Heberden, the chief physician of the island, and brother to the physician of that name at London. He had for many years been an inhabitant of the Canaries, and of this island, and had made several observations, chiefly philosophical ; some, how- ever, were botanical, describing the trees of the island. Of these he immediately gave us a copy, together with such specimens as he had in his possession, and indeed spared no pains to get for us living specimens of such as could he procured in flower.
We tried here to learn what species of wood it is which has been imported into England, and is now known to cabinet- makers by the name of Madeira mahogany, but without much success, as we could not learn that any wood had been exported from the island by that name. The wood,
SEPT. 1768
MADEIRA
7
however, of the tree called here Vigniatico, Laurus indicus,1 Linn., bids fair to be the thing, it being of a fine grain and brown like mahogany, from which it is difficult to distinguish it, as is well shown at Dr. Heberden’s house, where, in a book-case, vigniatico and mahogany were placed close by each other, and were only to be known asunder by the first being of not quite so dark a colour as the other.
As much of the island as we saw showed evident signs of a volcano having some time or other possibly produced the whole, for we saw no one piece of stone which did not clearly show signs of having been burnt, some very much, specially the sand, which was absolutely cinders. Indeed, we did not see much of the country, but we were told that the whole resembled the specimen we saw of it.
When first approached from seaward the land has a very beautiful appearance, the sides of the hills being entirely covered with vineyards almost as high as the eye can distinguish. This gives a constant appearance of verdure, although at this time nothing but the vines remain green, the grass and herbs being entirely burnt up, except near the rills by which the vines are watered and under the shade of the vines themselves. But even there very few species of plants were in perfection, the greater part being burnt up.
The people here in general seem to be as idle, or rather uninformed, a set, as I ever yet saw ; all their instruments, even those with which their wine, the only article of trade in the island, is made, are perfectly simple and unimproved. In making wine the grapes are put into a square wooden vessel, of dimensions depending upon the size of the vine- yard to which it belongs, into which the servants get (having taken off their stockings and jackets), and with their feet and elbows squeeze out as much of the juice as they can ; the stalks, etc., are then collected, tied together with a rope, and put under a square piece of wood which is pressed down by a lever, to the other end of which is fastened a stone that may be raised up at pleasure by a
1 Persea indica, Spreng.
8
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
screw. By this means and this only they make their wine, and by this probably Noah made his when he had newly planted the first vineyard after the general destruction of mankind and their arts, although it is not impossible that he might have used a better, if he remembered the methods he had seen before the Hood.
It was with great difficulty that some (and not as yet all) of them were persuaded not long ago to graft their vines, and by this means bring all the fruit of a vineyard to be of one sort. Formerly the wine had been spoiled by various inferior kinds of vines, which were nevertheless suffered to grow, and taken as much care of as the best, because they added to the quantity of the wine. Yet they were perfectly acquainted with the use of grafting, and constantly practised it on their chestnut trees, by which means they were brought to bear much sooner than they would have done had they been allowed to remain unimproved.
Wheeled carriages I saw none of any sort or kind ; indeed their roads are so intolerably bad, that if they had any they could scarcely make use of them. They have, however, some horses and mules wonderfully clever in travelling upon these roads, notwithstanding which they bring every drop of wine to town upon men’s heads in vessels made of goat-skins. The only imitation of a carriage which they have is a board slightly hollowed in the middle, to one end of which a pole is tied by a strap of white leather, the whole machine coming about as near the perfec- tion of an European cart as an Indian canoe does to a boat ; with this they move the pipes of wine about the town. I suppose they would never have made use even of this had not the English introduced vessels to contain the wine, which were rather too large to be carried by hand, as they used to do everything else.
A speech of their late Governor is recorded here, which shows in what light they are looked upon even by the Portuguese (themselves, I believe, far behind all the rest of Europe, except possibly the Spaniards). “ It was very fortunate,” said he, “ that the island was not Eden, in which
SEPT. 1768
MADEIRA
9
Adam and Eve dwelt before the fall, for had it been so, the inhabitants here would never have been induced to put on clothes ; so much are they resolved in every particular to follow exactly the paths of their forefathers.”
Indeed, were the people here only tolerably industrious, there is scarcely any luxury which might not be produced that either Europe or the Indies afford, owing to the great difference of climate observable in ascending the hills. This we experienced on a visit to Dr. Heberden, who lives about two miles from the town ; we left the thermometer when we set out at 74°, and found it there at 66°. The hills produce almost spontaneously vast quantities of walnuts, chestnuts, and apples, but in the town you find some few plants natives of both the Indies, whose flourishing state puts it out of all doubt, that were they taken any care of, they might have any quantity of them. Of such they have the banana (Musa sapientum, Linn.) in great abundance, the guava ( Psidium pyriferum, Linn.) not uncommon, and the pine-apple ( Bromelia Ananas , Linn.) — of this I saw some very healthy plants in the provi- sion-garden, the mango (Mangifera indica, Linn.) — one plant also of this in the same garden bearing fruit every year, and the cinnamon ( Laurus Cinnamomum, Linn.) — very healthy plants of which I saw on the top of Dr. Heberden’s house at Funchiale, which had stood there through the winter without any kind of care having been taken of them. These, without mentioning any more, seem very sufficient to show that the tenderest plants might be cultivated here without any trouble ; yet the indolence of the inhabitants is so great, that even that is too much for them. Indeed, the policy here is to hinder them as much as possible from growing anything themselves except what they find their account in taking in exchange for corn, though the people might with much less trouble and expense grow the corn themselves. What corn does grow here (it is not much) is of a most excellent quality, large-grained and very fine. Their meat also is very good, mutton, pork, and beef more especially, which was agreed by all of us to be very little inferior to our own, though we Englishmen value ourselves
IO
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
not a little on our peculiar excellence in that production. The fat of this was white, like the fat of mutton, but the meat brown and coarse-grained as ours, though much smaller.
The town of Funchiale is situated at the bottom of the bay, very ill-built, though larger than the size of the island seems to deserve. The houses of the better people are in general large, but those of the poorer sort very small, and the streets very narrow and uncommonly ill-paved. The churches here have abundance of ornaments, chiefly bad pictures, and figures of their favourite saints in laced clothes. The Convent of the Franciscans, indeed, which we went to see, had very little ornament ; but the neatness with which those fathers kept everything was well worthy of commenda- tion, especially their infirmary, the contrivance of which deserves to be particularly noticed. It was a long room ; on one side were windows and an altar for the convenience of administering the sacrament to the sick, on the other were the wards, each just capable of containing a bed, and lined with white Dutch tiles. To every one of these was a door communicating with a gallery which ran parallel to the great room, so that any of the sick might be supplied with whatever they wanted without disturbing their neighbours.
In this convent was a curiosity of a very singular nature : a small chapel whose whole lining, wainscot and ceiling, was entirely composed of human bones, two large thigh bones being laid crossways, with a skull in each of the openings. Among these was a very singular anatomical curiosity : a skull in which one side of the lower jaw was perfectly and very firmly fastened to the upper by an ossification, so that the man, whoever he was, must have lived some time without being able to open his mouth ; indeed it was plain that a hole had been made on the other side by beating out his teeth, and in some measure damaging his jawbone, by which alone he must have received his nourishment.
I must not leave these good fathers without mentioning a thing which does great credit to their civility, and at the same time shows that they are not bigots in their religion.
SEPT. 1768
MADEIRA
1 1
We visited them on Thursday evening, just before their supper-time ; they made many apologies, that they could not ask us to sup, not being prepared ; “ but,” said they, “ if you will come to-morrow, notwithstanding that it is a fast with us, we will have a turkey roasted for you.”
There are here besides friaries, three or four houses of nuns. To one of these (Saint Clara) we went, and indeed the ladies did us the honour to express great pleasure in seeing us there. They had heard that we were great philosophers, and expected much from us : one of the first questions that they asked was when it would thunder ; they then desired to know if we could put them in a way of find- ing water in their convent, of which it seems they were in want. Notwithstanding that our answers to their questions were not quite so much to the purpose as they expected, they did not at all cease their civilities ; for while we stayed, which was about half an hour, I am sure that there was not a fraction of a second in which their tongues did not go at an uncommonly nimble rate.
It remains now that I should say something of the island in general, and then take my leave of Madeira till some other opportunity offers of visiting it again, for the climate is so fine that any man might wish it was in his power to live there under the benefits of English laws and liberty.
The hills here are very high, much higher than any one would imagine; Pico Ptuievo, the highest, is 5068 feet,1 which is much higher than any land that has been measured in Great Britain. The whole island, as I hinted before, has probably been the production of a volcano, notwithstanding which its fertility is amazing : all the sides of the hills are covered with vines to a certain height, above which are woods of chestnut and pine of immense extent, and above them forests of wild timber of kinds not known in Europe, which amply supply the inhabitants with whatever they may want. Among these, some there were whose flowers we were not able to procure, and consequently could
1 6059 feet by more recent measurement.
12
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
not settle their genera, particularly those called by the Portuguese mirmulano and pao branco} both which, and especially the first, from the beauty of their leaves, promise to be a great ornament to our European gardens.
The inhabitants here are supposed to number about 80,000, and from the town of Funchiale (its custom- house I mean) the King of Portugal receives £20,000 a year, after having paid the Governor and all expenses of every kind, which may serve to show in some degree of what consequence this little island is to the Crown of Portugal. Were it in the hands of any other people in the world its value might easily be doubled from the excellence of its climate, capable of bearing any kind of crop, a cir- cumstance of which the Portuguese do not take the least advantage.
The coin current here is entirely Spanish, for the balance of trade with Lisbon being in disfavour of this island, all the Portuguese money naturally goes there, to prevent which Spanish money is allowed to pass ; it is of three denomina- tions, pistereens, bitts, and half bitts, the first worth about a shilling, the second 6d., the third 3d. They have also copper Portuguese money, but it is so scarce that I did not in my stay there see a single piece.2
18 tli. This evening got under weigh.
20 th. Took with the casting-net a most beautiful species of Medusa of a colour equalling, if not exceeding, the finest ultramarine ; it was described and called Medusa azurea.
23rd. A fish was taken which was described and called Scomber serpens ; the seamen said they had never seen it before, except the first lieutenant, who remembered to have taken one before just about these islands. Sir Hans Sloane 3 in his passage out to Jamaica also took one of these fish, and gives a figure of it (vol. i. t. i. f. 2).
24 th. This morning the Pike [of Teneriffe] appeared very plainly, and immensely high above the clouds, as may well
1 Probably Apollonias canariensis, Nees ; and Oreodaphne fcetens, Nees.
2 Here Banks has a list of 18 Madeiran fish and 299 plants.
3 For notes on the naturalists and travellers mentioned throughout the Journal, see pp. xliii.-li.
SEPT. 1768
TENERIFFE
13
be imagined by its height, which Dr. Heberden of Madeira, who has been himself upon it, gave as 15,396 feet.1 The Doctor also says that though there is no eruption of visible fire from it, yet that heat issues from the chinks near the top so strongly, that a person who puts his hand into these is scalded. From him we received, among many other favours, some salt which he supposes to be true natron or nitrum of the ancients, and some exceedingly pure native sulphur, both which he collected himself on the top of the mountain, where large quantities, especially of the salt, are found 011 the surface of the earth.
25 th. Wind continued to blow much as it has done, so we were sure we were well in the trade. Now for the first time we saw flying-fish, whose beauty, especially when seen from the cabin window, is beyond imagination, their sides shining like burnished silver. Seen from the deck they do not appear to such advantage, as their backs, which are dark- coloured, are then presented to view.
21th. About one this morning a flying-fish, the first that had been taken, was brought into the cabin ; it flew aboard, chased, I suppose, by some other fish, or may be because he did not see the ship ; at breakfast another was brought, which had flown into Mr. Green the astronomer’s cabin.
28 th. Three birds were to-day about the ship : a swallow, to all appearance the same as our European one, and two Motacillce ; about nightfall one of the latter was taken. About eleven a shoal of porpoises came about the ship, and the fizgig was soon thrown into one of them, but would not hold.
29 th. Employed in drawing and describing the bird taken yesterday ; called it Motacilla avida. While the drawing was in hand, it became very familiar, so much so that we had a brace made for it in hopes of keeping it alive ; as flies were in amazing abundance on board the ship, we had no fear but that the bird would have a plentiful supply of provision.
About noon a young shark was seen from the cabin 1 12,300 feet by more recent measurement.
14
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
windows following the ship. It immediately took a bait and was hauled on board. It proved to be the Sgualus carchcirias, Linn., and assisted us in clearing up much confusion, which almost all authors had made about that species. With it came on board four sucking-fish, Echeneis remora, Linn., which were preserved in spirits. Although it was twelve o’clock before the shark was taken, we made shift to have a part of him stewed for dinner, and very good meat he was, at least in the opinion of Dr. Solander and myself, though some of the seamen did not seem to be fond of him, probably from some prejudice founded on the species sometimes feeding on human flesh.
3 (LA. This evening another Motacilla avicla was brought to us ; it differed scarcely at all from the first taken, except that it was somewhat larger ; its head, however, gave us some material, by supplying us with nearly twenty specimens of ticks, which differed but little from Acarus ricinus, Linn. ; it was, however, described, and called Acarus motacillce.
1st October. Bonitos were in great plenty about the ship. We were called up early to see one that had been struck and found it to be the Scomber pelamis, Linn., a drawing being made of it. I confess, however, that I was a good deal disappointed, expecting to find the animal much more beautiful than it proved, though its colours were extremely lively, especially the blue lines on the back (which equalled at least any ultramarine), yet the name, and the accounts I had heard from all who had seen them, made me expect an animal of much greater variety of colour. This consisted merely of blue lines on the back, crossing each other, a changeable gold and purple on the sides, and white with black lines on the bottom of the sides and belly. After having examined and drawn the animal, we proceeded to dissect it, and in the course of the operation were much pleased by the infinite strength we observed in every part of him, especially the stomach, the coats of which were uncommonly strong, especially about the sphincter, or extremity by which the digested meat is discharged ; this I suppose is intended to crush and render useful the scales
OCT. 1768
MARINE ANIMALS
15
and bones of fishes which this animal must continually swallow without separating them from the flesh. From the outside of its scales we took a small animal which seemed to be a louse (if I may so call it), as it certainly stuck to him, and preyed upon the juices which it extracted by suction, probably much to his disquiet : it proved to be Monoculus piscinus, Linn. Easter has given a figure of it in his “ Opera Subseciva,” but has by some unlucky accident mistaken the head for the tail. Inside the fish were also found two animals which preyed upon him ; one Fasciola pelami, Mss., in his very flesh, though near the membrane which covers the intestines ; the other Sipunculus piscium, Mss., in the stomach.
2nd. This morning two swallows were about the ship, though we must now be sixty leagues at least from any land ; at night one of them was taken, and proved to be Hirundo domestica, Linn.
4 th. I went out in a boat and took Dagysa strumoscc, Medusa porpitcc, which we had before called azurea, Mimics volutator 1 and a Cimex, which runs upon the water here in the
same manner as C. lacustris does in our ponds in England. Towards evening two small fish were taken under the stern ; they were following a shirt which was towing, and showed not the least signs of fear, so that they were taken with a landing-net without the smallest difficulty. They proved to be Batistes monoceros, Linn.
7 th. Went out in the boat, and took what is called by the seamen a Portuguese man-of-war, Holothuria physalis ,2 Linn., also Medusa velella, Linn., Onidium spinosum, Mss., Dioclon erinaceus, Mss., Dagysa vitrea, Mss., Helix ianthina, Linn., violacca, Mss., and Procellaria occccnica, Mss. The Holothuria proved to be one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen ; it consisted of a small bladder, in shape much like the air-bladder of a fish, from the bottom of which descended a number of strings of bright blue and red, some three or four feet in length ; if touched,
1 This cannot be identified.
2 The Portuguese man-of-war is now known as Physalia, and is classed among the Ccelenterata.
i6
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
these stung the person who touched them in the same manner as nettles, only much more severely. On the top of this bladder was a membrane which he turned either one way or the other to receive the wind ; this was veined with pink, in an uncommonly beautiful manner ; in short, the whole was one of the most beautiful sights I have seen among the mollusca, though many of them are beautiful.
The boating shells, Helix ianthina 1 and violacea, from their particularity, also deserve mention. They are to he found floating on the top of the water by means of a small cluster of bubbles hlled with air, composed of a tenacious slimy substance, not easily parting with its contents ; these keep them suspended on the surface of the water, and serve as a nidus for their eggs : it is probable that they never go down to the bottom, or willingly come near any shore, as the shell is of so brittle a. construction that few sea-water snails are so thin.
Every shell contains within it about a teaspoonful of liquid, which it freely discharges on being touched ; this is of a most beautiful red purple colour, and easily dyes linen clothes ; it may be well worth inquiry whether or not this is the purpura 2 of the ancients, as the shell is certainly found in the Mediterranean. We have not yet taken a sufficient quantity of the shells to try the experiment, perhaps we shall soon.
Procellaria oceanica differs very little from P. pelagica, Linn., but from his place of abode so far south, and some small difference in plumage, it is more than likely that he is different in species.
9 th. Found two new species of Lepas ( vittata and miclas ) on the stern of the ship ; they were both sticking to the bottom, in company with L. anatifera, of which there was great abundance.
10 th. Took plenty of Helix ianthina and some few of violacea. Shot the black-toed gull of Pennant ; it had not
1 These two species are not Helices, but belong to the genus Ianthina.
2 The purple of the ancients has since been proved to have been derived from a species of Mure x or of Purpura.
OCT. 1768
MARINE ANIMALS
17
yet been described according to LinnEeus’s system, so called it Larus crepidatus. Its food here seems to be chiefly Helices, on account of its dung being of a lively red colour, much like that which was procured from the shells.
1 2 th. A shark, Squalus carcharias, Linn., taken this morn- ing, and with it two pilot fish. I went out in the boat and took several blubbers. The pilot fish, Gasterosteus ductor, Linn., is certainly as beautiful a fish as can be imagined ; it is of a light blue, with cross streaks of darker colour. It is wonderful to see them about a shark, swimming round it without expressing the least signs of fear ; what their motive for doing so is, I cannot guess, as I cannot find that they get any provision by it, or any other emolument, except possibly that the company of the shark keeps them free from the attacks of dolphins or other large fish of prey, who would otherwise devour them.
The blubbers taken to-day were Beroe labiata and mar- supicdis, Mss., the first of which made a pretty appearance in the water by reason of its swimmers, which line its side like fringes, and are of a fine changeable colour ; and Callirrhoe bivia, Mss., the most lifeless lump of jelly I have seen ; it scarcely seems to be possessed of life, but for one or two motions we saw it make.
13^. A shark taken, but not one pilot fish attended it, which is rather uncommon, as they are seldom without a shoal of from ten to twenty. At noon I went in the boat, and took the Sallee man, Pliyllodoce velella, Linn., which is a sailor, but inferior in size to the Portuguese man-of- war, yet not without its beauty, chiefly from the charming blue of the lower side. Its sail is transparent, but not movable, so it trusts itself to the mercy of the winds, without being able to turn to windward, as the Portuguese man-of-war perhaps can. We saw several of these latter to-day, and observed many small fish under their tentacula, which seemed to shelter there, as if with its stings it could defend them from large enemies.
15 th. I had the good fortune to see a bird of the shear- water kind, which I shot ; it proved not to have been
c
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
described. It was about as large as the common kind, but differed from it in being whiter, especially about the face. We named it Procellaria crepidcita, as its feet were like those of the gulls shot last week, black on the outside, but white near the legs. A large shoal of fish were all this day under the ship’s stern, playing about, but refusing to take bait. We contrived to take one of them with a fizgig : it was in make and appearance like a carp, weighing nearly two pounds. Its sides were ornamented with narrow lines, and its fins almost entirely covered with scales : called it Chcetodon cyprinaceus.
1 6 th. I had the opportunity of seeing a phenomenon I had never before met with, a lunar rainbow which appeared about ten o’clock, very faint, and almost or quite without colour, so that it could be traced by little more than an appearance resembling shade on a cloud.
18^/i. This evening, trying, as I have often (foolishly no doubt) done, to exercise myself by playing tricks with two ropes in the cabin, I got a fall which hurt me a good deal, and alarmed me the more as the blow was on my head, and two hours after it I was taken with sickness at my stomach, which made me fear some ill consequence.
19 th. To-day, thank God, I was much better, and eased of all apprehensions.
2 lsh To-day the cat killed our bird, Motacilla avida, which had lived with us ever since the 29th September entirely on the flies which it caught for itself : it was hearty and in high health, so that it might have lived a great while longer had fate been more kind.
25th. This morning about eight o’clock we crossed the equinoctial line in about 33° W. from Greenwich, at the rate of four knots, which our seamen said was uncommonly good, the thermometer standing at 79°. (The thermometers used in this voyage are two of Mr. Bird’s making, after Fahrenheit’s scale, and seldom differ by more than a degree from each other, and that only when they are as high as 80°, in which case the mean reading of the two instruments is set down.) This evening the ceremony of ducking the
OCT. 1768
CROSSING THE EQUATOR
19
ship’s company was performed, as is always customary on crossing the line, when those who have crossed it before claim a right of ducking all that have not. The whole of the ceremony I shall describe.
About dinner-time a list was brought into the cabin containing the names of everybody and thing aboard the ship (in which the dogs and cats were not forgotten) ; to this was fixed a signed petition from the ship’s company desiring leave to examine everybody in that list, that it might be known whether or not they had crossed the line before. This was immediately granted, everybody being called upon the quarter-deck and examined by one of the lieutenants who had crossed the line : he marked every name either to be ducked or let off as their qualifications directed. Captain Cook and Dr. Solander were on the black list, as were I myself, my servants, and dogs, for all of whom I was obliged to compound by giving the duckers a certain quantity of brandy, for which they willingly excused us the ceremony.
Many of the men, however, chose to be ducked rather than give up four days’ allowance of wine, which was the price fixed upon, and as for the boys they are always ducked, of course, so that about twenty-one underwent the ceremony.
A block was made fast to the end of the main-yard, and a long line reved through it, to which three pieces of wood were fastened, one of which was put between the legs of the man who was to be ducked, and to this he was tied very fast, another was for him to hold in his hands, and the third was over his head, lest the rope should be hoisted too near the block, and by that means the man be hurt. When he was fastened upon this machine the boatswain gave the command by his whistle, and the man was hoisted up as high as the cross-piece over his head would allow, when another signal was made, and immediately the rope was let go, and his own weight carried him down ; he was then immediately hoisted up again, and three times served in this manner, which was every man’s allowance. Thus ended the diversion of the day, for the ducking lasted until almost night, and sufficiently diverting it certainly was to
20
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
see the different faces that were made on this occasion, some grinning and exulting in their hardiness, whilst others were almost suffocated, and came up ready enough to have com- pounded after the first or second duck, had such a proceeding been allowable.
Almost immediately after crossing the tropic the air had sensibly become much damper than usual, though not materially hotter : the thermometer in general stood from 80° to 82°. The nearer we approached to the calms, the damper everything grew ; this was very perceptible even to the human body, but more remarkable was its effect upon all kinds of furniture. Everything made of iron rusted so fast that the knives in people’s pockets became almost use- less, and the razors in cases did not escape ; all kinds of leather became mouldy, portfolios and trunks covered with black leather were almost white. Soon afterwards this mould adhered to almost everything ; all the books in my library became mouldy, so that they had to be wiped to preserve them.
About this time we came into the calms, which we met with earlier than usual: the thermometer was then at 83°, and we suffered from the heat and damp together. Bathing, however, kept me in perfect health, although many of the ship’s company were ill of bilious complaints, which, how- ever, were but of short duration. This continued till we got the S.E. trade, when the air became cooler, but the dampness continued yet : to that I chiefly attribute the ill- success of the electrical experiments, of which I have written an account in separate papers, that the different experiments may appear at one view.1
The air, during the whole time since we crossed the tropic, and indeed for some time before, has been nearly of the same temperature throughout the twenty-four hours, the thermometer seldom rising more than a degree during the time the sun is above the horizon ; the cabin windows have been open without once being shut ever since we left Madeira.
2 9 th. This evening the sea appeared uncommonly beautiful, 1 An account of these will be found at the end of the volume.
NOV. 1768
MARINE ANIMALS
21
flashes of light coming from it, perfectly resembling small flashes of lightning, and these so frequent that sometimes eight or ten were visible at the same moment ; the seamen were divided in their accounts, some assuring us that it pro- ceeded from fish, who made the light by agitating the salt water, as they called it, in their darting at their prey ; while others said that they had often seen them to be nothing- more than blubbers (Medusae). This made us very eager to procure some of them, which at last we did by the help of the landing-net ; they proved to be a species of Medusa, which ^ when brought on board appeared like metal violently heated, emitting a white light. On the surface of this animal was fixed a small Lcpas of exactly the same colour and almost transparent, not unlike thin starch in which a small quantity of blue is dissolved. In taking these animals three or four species of crabs were also obtained, of which one very small kind gave fully as much light as a glow-worm in England, though the creature was not so large by nine-tenths. Indeed, the sea this night seemed to abound with light in an unusual manner, as if every inhabitant of it furnished its share ; as might have been the case, although none retained that pro- perty after being brought out of the water except the two above mentioned.
30 th. Employed in examining the things caught last night, which being taken by the light of our lamps (for the wind which blows in at the windows always open will not suffer us to burn candles) we could hardly then distinguish into genera, much less into species. We had the good fortune to find that they were all quite new, and named them Medusa pellucens, Lepas pellucens, Clio, Cancer fulgens, and Cancer amplcctens, but we had the misfortune to lose two more species of crabs through the glass in which they were contained falling overboard. Two other species of crabs were taken, one of which was very singular.
31st. Find that the crabs taken yesterday were both new ; called them vitreus and crassicornis.
5 th November. That the trade blows toward the northward upon the coast of Brazil has been observed long ago, although
22
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
I question whether our navigators are yet sufficiently apprised of it. Piso, in his Natural History of the Brazils, says that the winds along shore are constantly to the northward from October to March, and to the southward from March to October. Dampier also, who certainly had as much ex- perience as most men, says the same thing, advising ships outward bound to keep to the westward, where they are almost certain to find the trade more easterly than in mid- channel, where it is sometimes due south, or within half a point of it, as we ourselves experienced
6 th. Towards evening the colour of the water was observed to change, upon which we sounded and found ground at thirty-two fathoms. The lead was cast three times between six and ten without finding a foot’s difference in the depth or quality of the bottom, which was encrusted with coral. We supposed this to be the tail of a great shoal laid down in all our charts by the name of Ahrolhos, on which Lord Anson struck soundings on his outward bound passage.
7 th. About noon long ranges of a yellowish colour appear upon the sea, many of them very large, one (the largest) might be a mile in length and three or four hundred yards in width. The seamen in general affirmed roundly that they were the spawn of fishes, and that they had often seen the same appearance before. Upon taking up some of the water thus coloured, we found it to be caused by innumerable small atoms, each pointed at the end, and of a yellowish colour, none of them above a quarter of a line in length. In the microscope they appeared to be fasciculi of small fibres interwoven one within the other, not unlike the nidi of some Phryganece, which we call caddises ; what they were, or for what purpose designed, we could not even guess, nor so much as distinguish whether their substance was animal or vegetable.
8th. At daybreak to-day we made the land, which proved to be the Continent of South America, in latitude 21° ^6'. About ten we saw a fishing-boat, whose occupants told us that the country formed part of the captainship of Espirito Santo.
NOV. 1768
BRAZILIAN FISHERMEN
23
Dr. Solander and I went on board this boat, in which were eleven men (nine of whom were blacks), who all fished with lines. We bought the chief part of their cargo, consisting of dolphins, two kinds of large pelagic scombers, sea bream, and the fish called in the West Indies Welshman, for which they made us pay nineteen shillings and sixpence. We had taken Spanish silver with us, which we imagined was the currency of the country ; we were therefore not a little surprised that they asked us for English shillings, and preferred two, which we by accident had, to the pistereens, though after some words they took them also. The business of the people seemed to consist in going a good distance from land and catching large fish, which they salted in bulk, in the middle of their boat, which was arranged for that purpose. They had about two cpiintals of fish, laid in salt, which they offered for sale for sixteen shillings, and would doubtless have taken half the money had we been inclined to buy them ; but fresh provisions were all we wanted, and the fresh fish which we bought served for the whole ship’s company.
Their provisions for the sea consisted of a cask of water and a bag of the flour of cassada, which they call Farinha de Pao, or wooden flour, a very proper name for it, as indeed it tastes more like powdered chips than anything else.
Their method of drinking from their cask was truly primitive and pleased me much : the cask was large, as broad as the boat, and exactly fitted a place made for it in the ballast ; they consequently could not get at the bottom of it to put in a tap by which the water might be drawn put. To remedy this difficulty they made use of a cane about three feet long, hollow, and open at each end, this the man who wanted to drink desired his neighbour to fill for him, which he did by putting it into the cask, and laying the palm of his hand over the uppermost end, prevented the water from running out of the lower, to which the drinker applied his mouth, and the other man taking away his hand, let the liquor run into the drinker’s mouth till he was satisfied.
24
ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. I
Soon after we came on board, a Sphinx was taken, which proved to be quite new, and a small bird, Tanagra Jaccirini, Linn.; it seemed, however, from Linnaeus’s descrip- tion, as well as Edwards’ and Brisson’s, that neither of them had seen the bird, which was in reality a Loxia nitens.
The fish brought on board proved to be Scomber amia, S. falcatus, Coryphcena, Hippums ?, Spams pagrus and Scicena rubens ; the second and last not being before described, we called them by these names.
1 Oth. Species of seaweed now came floating by the ship. It proved to be Sargasso. Fmm natans, which is generally supposed to increase upon the surface of the sea in the same manner as duckweed ( Lemna ) does on fresh-water, without having any root ; this, however, plainly showed that it had been rooted in the coral rock on the bottom, as two specimens particularly had large lumps of the coral still adhering to them. Among the weed were some few animals, but scarcely worth mentioning : one JBalistes, but quite a fry, so young that it was impossible to refer it to its species ; also a worm, which proved to be Nereis pelagica.
12th. This morning we were abreast of the land, which proved, as we thought last night, to be the island just within Cape Frio, called in some maps the Isle of Frio. About noon we saw the hill called the Sugar Loaf, which is just by the harbour’s mouth, but it was a long way off yet, so we had no hopes of reaching it this night.
The shore from Cape Frio to this place has been one uninterrupted beach of the whitest colour I ever saw, which they tell me is a white sand.
In the course of this evening we approached very near the land, and found it very cold, to our feelings at least : the thermometer at ten o’clock stood at 68^°, which gave us hopes that the country would be cooler than we should expect from the accounts of travellers, especially M. Biron, who says that no business is done here from ten to two on account of the intense heat.
13 th. This morning the harbour of Rio Janeiro was right ahead, about two leagues off, but it being quite calm
NOV. 1768
OFF RIO DE JANEIRO
25
we made our approach very slowly. The sea was incon- ceivably full of small vermes, which we took without the least difficulty : they were almost all new, except Beroe labiata, Medusa radiata, fimbriata, crystallina, and a Dagysa. Soon after a fishing -boat came aboard and sold us three scombers, which proved to be new, and were called S. salmoneus. His bait was Clupea chinensis, of which we also procured specimens.
CHAPTER II
RIO DE JANEIRO Nov. 13— Dec. 7, 1768
Obstacles to landing— Viceroy memorialised — Boat’s crew imprisoned — Vegetation, etc. — Ship fired at — Leave Rio harbour — Description of Rio — Churches — Government — Hindrances to travellers — Population — Military — Assassinations — Vegetables — Fruits — Manufactures — Mines — Jewels — Coins — Fortifications — Climate.
13 th November } As soon as we were well in the river,
the captain sent his first lieutenant, Mr. Hicks, with a midshipman, to get a pilot : the boat returned, however, without the officers, but with a Portuguese subaltern. The coxswain informed us that the lieutenant was detained until the captain should go off. A ten-oared boat, containing about a dozen soldiers, then came off and rowed round the ship, no one in it appearing to take the slightest notice of us. A quarter of an hour later another boat came off, on board which was a Disembargador and a colonel of a Portu- guese regiment. The latter asked many questions, and at first seemed to discourage our stay, but ended by being extremely civil, and assuring us that the Governor would give us every assistance in his power. The lieutenant, he said, was not detained, but had not been allowed on shore on account of the prctdica, but that he would be sent on board immediately.
l^th. Captain Cook went on shore this morning. He returned with a Portuguese officer with him in the boat,
1 This account, from the 13th to the 24th November inclusive, of the treatment of Captain Cook at Rio, has been much condensed from the original “Journal.”
NOV. 1768
OBSTACLES TO LANDING
27
also an Englishman, Mr. Eorster, a lieutenant in the Portu- guese service. We were informed that we could not have a house nor sleep on shore, and that no person except the captain and such common sailors as were required on duty would be permitted to land ; we, the passengers, were par- ticularly objected to. In spite of this we attempted to go on shore in the evening, under excuse of a visit to the Viceroy, but were stopped by the guard-boat. The captain went ashore to remonstrate with the Viceroy, but the latter said that he was acting under the King of Portugal’s orders.
15 th and 16 th. The captain vainly remonstrated with the Viceroy against our being forbidden to land, and par- ticularly against the sentinel placed in his boat, which was done, he was told, as an honour.
1*1 th. The captain and I drew up written memorials complaining of his Excellency’s behaviour, which to us, as a King’s ship, was almost a breach of duty.
l%th. Answers to our memorials were received: the captain is told that he had no reason to complain, as he had only received the usual treatment customary in all the ports of Brazil ; as for me, I am informed that as I have not brought proper credentials from the court at Lisbon, it is impossible that I can be permitted to land.
19 th. We sent answers to his Excellency’s memorials. The lieutenant who took them had orders not to suffer a guard to be put into his boat ; the guard-boat let him pass, but the Viceroy, on hearing of it, ordered sentinels to be put on the boat. The lieutenant refused to go on board unless they were taken out, whereupon he was sent on board in a guard-boat and his crew arrested. He reported that the men in our pinnace had not made the least resist- ance, but that they had notwithstanding been treated very roughly, being struck by the soldiers several times. The guard brought back the letters unopened.
This evening, by some mismanagement, our long-boat broke adrift, carrying with her my small boat. The yawl was sent after her, and managed to take her in tow, but in
28
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
spite of all the efforts of the crew, the boats soon drifted out of sight. The yawl came back at two in the morning with the news that the other two boats were lost. We were, however, glad to find the men safe, for they had been in considerable danger.
20 tli. The yawl was sent ashore to seek assistance in recovering our long-boat : it returned with our pinnace and its crew, and a boat of the Viceroy, which had orders to assist us in searching for our boats.
The crew of the pinnace declared that they had been confined in a loathsome dungeon, where their company was chiefly blacks who were chained. The coxswain purchased a better apartment for seven petacks (about as many English shillings). At dark the pinnace returned with both the boats and all their contents.
2 1st. Letters arrived from the Viceroy ; in mine he told me very politely that it was not in his power to permit me to go ashore. In the captains he raises some doubts about our ship being a King’s ship.1
23rcl. An answer to the captain’s last memorial accuses him of smuggling.
24 th. Dr. Solander went into the town as surgeon of the ship to visit a friar who had desired that the surgeon might be sent to him : he received civilities from the people.
2 6th. I myself went ashore this morning before day- break, and stayed until dark night. While I was ashore I met several of the inhabitants, who were very civil to me, taking me to their houses, where I bought of them stock for the ship tolerably cheap : a middlingly fat porker for eleven shillings, a Muscovy duck for something under two shil- lings, etc.
The country, where I saw it, abounded with vast variety of plants and animals, mostly such as had not been described by our naturalists, as so few have had an opportunity of coming here ; indeed, no one even tolerably curious that I
1 “The build and general appearance of the Endeavour not being that of a man-of-war, the Portuguese authorities entertained suspicions regarding her true character, which is not altogether surprising, considering the times.” — Wharton’s Cook, p. 22, footnote.
NOV. 1768
VEGETATION NEAR RIO
29
know of has been here since Marcgrav and Piso about 1640 ; so it is easy to guess the state in which the natural history of such a country must be.
To give a catalogue of what I found would be a trouble very little to the purpose, as every particular is mentioned in the general catalogues of this place. I cannot, however, help mentioning some which struck me the most, and con- sequently gave me particular pleasure. These were chiefly the parasitic plants, especially Renealmice (for I was not fortunate enough to see one Epidendrum) and the different species of Eromelia, many not before described. Karratas I saw here growing on the decayed trunk of a tree sixty feet high at least, which it had so entirely covered that the whole seemed to be a tree of Karratas. The growth of the Rhizophora 1 also pleased me much, although I had before a very good idea of it from Kumphius, who has a very good figure of the tree in his Herb. Amboin. [v. iii. tab. 71, 72], Add to these that the whole country was covered with the beautiful blossoms of Malpigliice, Bannister ice,, Passiflorce, not forgetting Poinciana and Mimosa sensitiva, and a beautiful species of Clusia, of which I saw great plenty ; in short, the wildest spots here were varied with a greater quantity of flowers, as well as more beautiful ones, than our best- devised gardens ; a sight infinitely pleasing for a short time, though no doubt the eye would soon tire with a con- tinuance of it.
The birds of many species, especially the smaller ones, sat in great abundance on the boughs, many of them covered with most elegant plumage. I shot Loxia brasiliensis, and saw several specimens of it. Insects also were here in great quantity, many species very fine, but much more nimble than our European ones, especially the butterflies, almost all which flew near the tops of the trees, and were very difficult to come at, except when the sea breeze blew fresh, which kept them low down among the trees where they might be taken. Humming-birds I also saw of one species, but could not shoot them.
1 Mangrove tree.
30
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
The banks of the sea, and more remarkably all the edges of small brooks, were covered with innumerable quantities of small crabs ( Cancer vocans, Linn.), one hand of which is very large. Among these were many whose two hands were remarkably small and of equal size ; these my black servant told me were the females of the other, and indeed all I examined, which were many, proved to be females, but whether they were really of the same species as C. vocans, I cannot determine on so short an acquaintance.
I saw but little cultivation, and small pains seemed to be taken with that. Most of it was grass land, on which were many lean cattle ; and lean they might well be, for almost all the species of grass which I observed here were creepers, and consequently so close to the ground that though there might be upon them a sufficient bite for horses or sheep, yet how horned cattle could live at all appeared extraordinary to me.
1 also saw their gardens, or small patches in which they cultivate many sorts of European garden stuffs, such as cabbages, peas, beans, kidney beans, turnips, white radishes, pumpkins, etc., but all much inferior to ours, except perhaps the last. They also grow water-melons and pine-apples, the only fruits which I have seen them cultivate ; the first are very good, but the pines were much inferior to those I have tasted in Europe ; I have hardly had one which could be reckoned of average quality, many were worse than some I have seen sent away from table in England, where nobody would eat them. Though in general very sweet, they have not the least flavour. In these gardens grow also yams, and mandihoca or cassada, which supplies the place of bread, for as our European bread corn will not grow here, all the flour they have is brought from Portugal at great expense, too great even for the middle-class people to purchase, much less the poorer.
2 7 th. On the boats returning from watering, we were told that men had been sent out yesterday in search of some of our people who were ashore without leave ; we concluded that this referred either to Dr. Solander or myself, which
DEC. X768
LEAVE RIO DE JANEIRO
3i
made it necessary for us to go no more ashore while we stayed.
1st December. We learnt that Mr. Forster had been taken into custody, charged with smuggling. The real cause, we believe, was that he had shown some countenance to his countrymen, as we heard at the same time that five or six Englishmen residing in the town, and a poor Portuguese, who used to assist our people in bringing things to the boats, had also been put into prison without any reason being given.
2nd. This morning, thank God, we have got all we want from these illiterate, impolite gentry, so we got up our anchor and sailed to the point of Ilhoa dos Cobras, where we were to lie and wait for a fair wind, which should come every night from the land. A Spanish brig from Buenos Ayres with letters for Spain arrived about a week ago ; her officers were received ashore with all possible civility, and allowed to take a house without the least hesitation. The captain, Don Antonio de Monte negro y Velasco, with great politeness offered to take our letters to Europe. Of this very fortunate circumstance we availed ourselves, and sent our letters on board this morning.
5 th. We attempted to tow down with our boats, and came nearly abreast of Santa Cruz, their chief fortification, when to our great surprise the fort fired two shots at us, one of which went just over our mast ; we immediately brought to, and sent ashore to inquire the reason ; we were told that no order had come down to allow us to pass, and that without such no ship was ever suffered to go below that fort. We were now obliged to send to town to know the reason of such extraordinary behaviour ; the answer came back about eleven that it was a mistake, for the brigadier had forgotten to send the letter, which had been written some days ago. It was, however, sent by the boat, and we had leave to proceed. We now began to weigh our anchor, which had been dropped in foul ground, when we were fired upon, but it was so fast in a rock that it could not be got up while the land breeze blew, which to-day continued
32
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
almost till four in the evening. As soon as the sea breeze came we filled our sails, and carrying the ship over the anchor, tripped it, but were obliged to sail hack almost as far as we had towed the ship in the morning.
This day and yesterday the air was crowded in an uncommon manner with butterflies, chiefly of one sort, of which we took as many as we pleased on board the ship ; their quantity was so large that at some times I may say many thousands were in view at once in almost any direc- tion you could look, the greater part of them far above our mast-heads.
6 th. No land breeze to-day, so we are confined in our disagreeable situation without a possibility of moving ; many curses were this day expended on his Excellency.
7 th. Weighed and stood out to sea. As soon as we came to Santa Cruz the pilot desired to be discharged, and with him our enemy the guard-boat went off, so we were left our own masters, and immediately resolved to go ashore * on one of the islands in the mouth of the harbour. There was a great swell, but we made shift to land on one called Eaza, on which we gathered many species of plants and some insects. Alstromeria Salsilla was here in tolerable plenty, and Amaryllis mexicana. We stayed until about four o’clock, and then came aboard the ship heartily tired, for the desire of doing as much as we could in a short time had made us all exert ourselves, though exposed to the hottest rays of the sun just at noon- day.
Now we are got fairly to sea, and have entirely got rid of these troublesome people, I cannot help spending some time in describing them, though I was not myself once in their town ; yet my intelligence coming from Dr. Solander, and Mr. Monkhouse, our surgeon, a very sensible man, who was ashore every day to buy our provisions, I think cannot err much from truth.
The town of Eio Janeiro, the capital of the Portuguese dominions in America, is situate on the banks of the river of that name, and both are so called, I apprehend, from the Eoman Saint Januarius, according to the Spanish and
DEC. 1768
RIO DE JANEIRO
33
Portuguese custom of naming their discoveries from the saint on whose feast they are made.
It is regular and well built after the fashion of Portugal, every house having before its window a lattice of wood, behind which is a little balcony. In size it is much larger than I could have expected, probably little inferior to any of our country towns in England, Bristol or Liverpool not excepted. The streets are all straight, intersecting each other at right angles, and have this peculiar convenience that the greater number lie in one direction, and are commanded by the guns of their citadel, called St. Sebastian, which is situate on the top of a hill overlooking the town.
It is supplied with water from the neighbouring hills by an aqueduct upon two stories of arches, said in some places to be very high ; the water is conveyed into a fountain in the great square immediately opposite the governor’s palace. This is guarded by a sentry, who has sufficient work to keep regularity and order among so many as are always in wait- ing here. Water is laid on in some other part of the town, but how it is brought there I could not hear ; the water there is said to be better than the fountain, which is exceedingly indifferent, so much so as not to be liked by us, though we had been two months at sea, in which time our water was almost continually bad.
The churches are very fine, with more ornaments even than those in Europe, and all the ceremonies of their religion are carried on with more show ; their processions in particular are very extraordinary. Every day one or other of the parishes has a solemn procession with all the insignia of its church, altar, and host, etc., through the parish, begging for whatever can be got, and praying in all forms at every corner of a street. While we were there one of the largest churches in the town was being rebuilt, and for that reason the parish had leave to walk through the whole city, which was done once a week, and much money collected for the carrying on of the edifice. At this ceremony all boys under a certain age were obliged to
D
34
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
attend, nor were gentlemen’s sons ever excused ; each of these was dressed in a black cassock with a short red cloak reaching half-way down the shoulders, and carried in his hand a lantern hung on the end of a pole about six or seven feet long. The light caused by this (for there were always at least 200 lanterns) is greater than can be imagined ; I myself, who saw it out of the cabin windows, called my messmates, imagining that the town was on fire.
Besides this travelling religion, any one walking through the streets has opportunity enough to show his attachment to any saint in the calendar, for every corner and almost every house has before it a little cupboard in which some saint or other keeps his residence ; and lest he should not see his votaries in the night, he is furnished with a small lamp which hangs before his little glass window. To these it is very customary to pray and sing hymns with all the vociferation imaginable, as may be imagined when I say that I and every one in the ship heard it very distinctly every night, though we lay at least half a mile from the town.
The government of this place seems to me to be much more despotic even than that of Portugal, although many precautions have been taken to render it otherwise. The chief magistrates are the Viceroy, the Governor of the town, and a Council, whose number I could not learn, but only that the viceroy had in this the casting vote. Without the consent of this council nothing material should be done, yet every day shows that the viceroy and governor at least, if not all the rest, do the most unjust things without consult- ing any one ; putting a man into prison without giving him a hearing, and keeping him there till he is glad at any rate to get out, without asking why he was put in, or at best, sending him to Lisbon to be tried there without letting his family here know where he is gone, as is very common. This we experienced while here, for every one who had interpreted for our people, or who had only assisted in buy- ing provisions for them, was put into jail, merely, I suppose, to show us their power. I should, however, except from
DEC. 1768
POPULATION
35
this one John Burrith, an officer in their customs, a man who has been here thirteen years, and has become so com- pletely Portuguese that he is known by no other name than Don John ; he was of service to our people, though what he did was so clogged with a suspicious fear of offend- ing the Portuguese as rendered it disgustful. It is necessary for any one who should come here to know his character, which is mercenary, though contented with a little, as the present given to him demonstrated ; it consisted of one dozen of beer, ten gallons of brandy, ten pieces of ship’s beef, and as many of pork. This was what he himself asked for, and sent on board the keg for the spirit, and with this he was more than satisfied.
They have a very extraordinary method of keeping people from travelling ; to hinder them, I suppose, from going into any district where gold or diamonds may be found, as there are more of such districts than they can possibly guard. There are certain bounds beyond which 110 man must go ; these vary every month at the discretion of the viceroy, sometimes they are few, sometimes many leagues from the city. Every man must in consequence of this come to town to know where the bounds are, for if he is taken by the guards, who constantly patrol on their limits, he is infallibly put in prison, even if he is within them, unless he can tell where they are.
The inhabitants are very numerous ; they consist of Portuguese, negroes, and Indians, aborigines of the country. The township of Eio, whose extent I could not learn, but was only told that it was but a small part of the capitanea, or province, is said to contain about 37,000 whites, and about 17 negroes to each white, which makes their number 629,000, and the number of inhabitants in all 666,000. As for the Indians, they do not live in this neighbourhood, though many of them are always here doing the king’s work, which they are obliged to do by turns, for small pay, and for which purpose they came from their habitations at a distance. I saw many of them, as our guard-boat was constantly rowed by them ; they are of a light copper colour,
36
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
with long, lank, black hair. As to their policy, or manner of living when at home, I could not learn anything.
The military here consist of twelve regiments of regulars, six Portuguese and six Creoles, and as many of provincial militia, who may be assembled upon occasion. To the regulars the inhabitants show great deference, for as Mr. Forster told me, if any of the people did not pull off their hats when they meet an officer, he would immediately knock them down, which custom renders the people remark- ably civil to strangers who have at all a gentlemanlike appearance. All the officers of these regiments are expected to attend three times a day at “ Sala ” or the viceroy’s levee, where they formally ask for commands, and are constantly answered “ there is nothing new.” This policy is intended, as I have been told, to prevent them from going into the country, which it most effectually does.
Assassinations are, I fancy, more frequent here than in Lisbon, as the churches still take upon themselves to give protection to criminals. One accident of the kind happened in the sight of S. Evans, our coxswain, a man whom I can depend upon. He saw two people talking together, to all appearance in a friendly manner, when one suddenly drew a knife, stabbed the other twice, and ran away pursued by some negroes who likewise saw the act. What the further event of this was I could not learn.
Of the country I know rather more than of the town, as I was ashore one whole day. In that time I saw much cleared ground, hut chiefly of an indifferent quality, though doubtless there is much that is very good, as the sugar and tobacco which is sent to Europe from hence plainly testify ; but all that I saw was employed in breeding cattle, of which they have great plenty, though their pastures are the worst I ever saw on account of the shortness of the grass. Con- sequently the beef sold in the market, though tolerably cheap, is so lean that an Englishman can hardly eat it. I likewise saw great plantations of Jcdropha Manihot, which is called in the West Indies Cassada, and here Farinha da Pao or wooden meal, a very proper name, for the cakes they make
DEC. 1768
BRAZILIAN FRUITS
37
with it taste as if they were made of sawdust. Yet it is the only bread which is eaten here, for European bread is sold at nearly the rate of a shilling a pound, and is exceed- ingly bad on account of the flour, which is generally heated in its passage from Europe.
The country produces many more articles, but as I did not see them or hear them mentioned, I shall not set them down, though doubtless it is capable of producing anything that our West Indian islands do ; notwithstanding this they have neither coffee nor chocolate, but import both from Lisbon.
Their fruits, however, I must not pass over in silence. Those that were in season during our stay were pine-apples, melons, water-melons, oranges, limes, lemons, sweet lemons, citrons, plantains, bananas, mangos, mamme-apples, acajou- apples and nuts, Jambosa} another sort which bears a small black fruit, cocoanuts, palm nuts of two kinds, palm berries. Of these I must separately give my opinion, as no doubt it will seem strange to some that I should assert that I have eaten many of them, and especially pine-apples, better in England than any I have met with here. I begin, then, with the pines, as the fruit from which I expected the most, they being, I believe, natives of this country, though I can- not say I have seen or even heard of their being at this time wild anywhere in this neighbourhood. They are cultivated much as we do cabbages in Europe, or rather with less care, the plants being set between beds of any kind of garden stuff, and suffered to take their chance : the price of them in the market is seldom above, and generally under a vintain, which is three halfpence.
All that Dr. Solander and myself tasted we agreed were much inferior to those we had eaten in England, though in general they were more juicy and sweet, yet they had no flavour, but were like sugar melted in water. Their melons are still worse, to judge from the single specimen we had, which was perfectly mealy and insipid ; their water-melons, however, are very good, for they have some little flavour or at least a degree of acid, which ours have not. Oranges are
1 Eugenia jambos, Linn.
38
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
large and very juicy ; we thought them good, doubtless better than any we had tasted at home, but probably Italy and Portugal produce as good, had we been there in the time of their being in perfection. Lemons and limes are like ours ; sweet lemons are sweetish and without flavour. Citrons have a faint sickly taste, otherwise we liked them. Mangoes were not in perfection, but promised to be a very fine fruit ; they are about the size of a peach, full of a yellow melting pulp, not unlike that of a summer peach, with a very grateful flavour; but the one we had was spoilt by a taste of turpentine, which I am told does not occur in the ripe fruit. Bananas are in shape and size like a small thick sausage, covered with a thick yellow rind, which is peeled off, and the fruit within is of a consistence which might be expected of a mixture of butter and flour, but a little slimy ; its taste is sweet with a little perfume. Acajou or casshew is shaped like an apple, but larger ; the taste is very disagreeable, sourish and bitter : the nut grows at the top of it. Plan- tains differ [from bananas] in being longer and thinner and less luscious in taste. Both these fruits were disagreeable to most of our people, but after some use I became tolerably fond of them. Mamme-apples are bigger than an English codlin, and are covered with a deep yellow skin : the pulp is very insipid, or rather disagreeable, and full of small round seeds covered with a thick mucilage, which continually clogs the mouth. Jambosa is the same as I saw at Madeira, a fruit calculated more to please the smell than the taste; the other kind is small and black, and resembles much our English bilberries in taste. Cocoanuts are so well known in England that I need only say I have tasted as good there as any I met with here. Palm nuts are of two sorts, one long and shaped like dates, the other round ; both are roasted before their kernels are eatable, and even then they are not so good as cocoanuts. Palm berries appear much like black grapes ; they are the fruit of Badris minor, but have scarcely any pulp covering a very large stone, and what there is has nothing but a light acid to recommend it. There are also the fruits of several species of prickly
DEC. 1768
GOLD AND GEMS
39
pear, which are very insipid, and one peach also proved very bad.
Though this country should produce many and very valuable drugs, we could not tind any in the apothecary’s shops except Pareira Brava and Balsam Capivi, both of which we bought at excessively cheap prices, and very good of the sort. I fancy the drug trade is chiefly carried on to the northward, as is that of dyeing woods ; at least we could hear nothing of them here.
For manufactures, I know of none carried on here except that of cotton hammocks, which are used by the people to be carried about in, as we do sedan-chairs. These hammocks are made chiefly by the Indians. But the chief riches of the country come from the mines, which are situated far up the country ; indeed, no one could tell me how far, for even the situation of them is concealed as carefully as possible, and troops are continually employed in guarding the roads that lead to them ; so that it is next to impossible for any one to get a sight of them, except those who are employed there. No one at least would attempt it from mere curiosity, for everybody who is found on the road without being able to give a good account of himself is hanged immediately. From these mines a great quantity of gold undoubtedly comes, but it is purchased at a vast cost of lives; 40,000 negroes are annually im- ported on the king’s account for this purpose, and notwith- standing this the year before last they died so fast that 20,000 more were obliged to be drafted from the town of Bio.
Precious stones are also found here in very large quantities, so large that they do not allow more than a certain quantity to be collected in a year. A troop of people is sent into the country where they are found, and ordered to return when they have collected a certain quantity, which they sometimes do in a month, more or less ; they then return, and after that it is death for any one to be found in the country on any pretence whatever until the following year. Diamonds, topazes of several different
40
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
qualities, and amethysts, are the stones most usually found. Of the first I did not see any, but was told that the viceroy had by him large quantities, and would sell them on the King of Portugal’s account, but in that case they would not be at all cheaper than those in Europe. I bought a few topazes and amethysts as specimens ; the former were divided into three sorts of very different value, called here ping a d’aguct qualidade premeiro and segondo, and chrystallos ormerillos. They were sold, large and small, good and bad together, by octaves, or the eighth part of an ounce : the first sort 4s. 9d., the second 2s. 4d., the third 3d. ; but it was smuggling in the highest degree to have anything to do with them.
Formerly there were jewellers here who cut stones, but about fourteen months ago orders came from the King of Portugal that no more stones should be wrought here except on his account. The jewellers were immediately ordered to bring all their tools to the viceroy, and from that time to this have not been suffered to do anything for their support ; there are, however, a number of slaves who cut stones for the King of Portugal.
The coin current here is either that of Portugal, especially thirty-six shilling pieces, or coin made here, which is much debased, particularly the silver. These are called petacks, of which there are two sorts, one of less value than the other, easily distinguishable by the number of reis marked on them, but they are little used. They also have copper coins like those in Portugal of five and ten rey pieces. Two of the latter are worth three halfpence ; forty petacks are worth thirty-six shillings.
The harbour of Rio de Janeiro is certainly a very good one : the entrance is not wide, but the sea breeze which blows every morning makes it easy for any ship to go in before the wind, and when you get abreast of the town it increases in breadth prodigiously, so that almost any number of ships might lie in five or six fathoms of water with an oozy bottom. It is defended by many works, especially the entrance, where it is narrow, and where is their strongest
DEC. 1768
FORTIFICATIONS
4i
fortification, Santa Cruz, and another opposite it. There is also a platform mounting about twenty-two guns, just under the Sugar-loaf on the seaside, but it seems entirely calculated to hinder the landing of an enemy in a sandy bay, from whence there is a passage to the back part of the town, which is entirely undefended, except that the whole town is open to the guns of the citadel, St. Sebastian, as I said before. Between Santa Cruz and the town are several small batteries of five or ten guns, and one fairly large one called Berga Leon. Immediately before the town is the Ilhoa dos Cobras, an island fortified all round, which seems incapable of doing much mischief owing to its immense size ; at least it would take more men to defend it, even tolerably, in case of an attack, than could possibly be spared from a town totally without lines or any defence round it. Santa Cruz, their chief fortification, on which they most rely, seems quite incapable of making any great resistance if smartly attacked by, shipping. It is a stone fort, mounting many guns indeed, but they lie tier above tier, and are consequently very open to the attack of a ship which may come within two cable lengths or less ; besides, they have no supply of water but what they obtain from a cistern, in which they catch the rain, or, in times of drought, which they supply from the adjacent country. This cistern they have been obliged to build above ground, lest the water should become tainted by the heat of the climate, which a free access of air prevents ; consequently should a fortunate shot break the cistern, the defenders would be reduced to the utmost necessity.
I was told by a person who certainly knew, and I believe meant to inform me rightly, that a little to the southward, just without the south head of the harbour, was a bay in which boats might land with all facility without obstruction, as there is no kind of work there, and that from this bay it is not above three hours’ march to the town, which is approached from the back, where it is as defence- less as the landing-place ; but this seems incredible. Yet I am inclined to believe it of these people, whose chief policy consists in hindering people as much as possible from
42
RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAP. II
looking about them. It may therefore be, as my informer said, that the existence of such a bay has been but lately discovered ; indeed, were it not for that policy, I could believe anything of their stupidity and ignorance. As an example of this, the governor of the town, Brigadier-General Don Pedro de Mendozay Furtado, asked the captain of our ship whether the transit of Venus, which we were going to observe, were not the passing of the North Star to the South Pole, as he said he had always understood it to be.
The river, and indeed the whole coast, abounds with greater variety of fish than I have ever seen ; seldom a day passed in which we had not one or more new species brought to us. Indeed the bay is the most convenient place for fishing I have ever seen, for it abounds with islands between which there is shallow water and proper beaches for drawing the seine. The sea also without the bay is full of dolphins, and large mackerel of several sorts, who very readily bite at the hooks which the inhabitants tow after their boats for that purpose. In short, the country is capable, with very little industry, of producing infinite plenty, both of necessaries and luxuries : were it in the hands of Englishmen we should soon see its consequence, as things are tolerably plentiful even under the direction of the Portuguese, whom I take to be, without exception, the laziest as well as the most ignorant race in the whole world.
The climate here is, I fancy, very good. During our whole stay the thermometer was never above 83°, but we had a good deal of rain, and once it blew very hard. I am inclined to think that this country has rather more rain than those in the same northern latitude are observed to have, not only from what happened during our short stay, but from Marcgrav, who gives us meteorological observations on this climate for three years. It appears that it rained here in those years almost every other day throughout the year, but more especially in May and June, when it rained almost without ceasing.1
1 Here follows, in the manuscript, a list of 316 plants collected by Banks near Rio de Janeiro.
CHAPTER III
RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO Dec. 8, 1768— Jan. 30, 17C9
Birds — Christmas — Insects floating at sea- — “ Baye sans fond” — Cancer gregarius — Fucus giganteus — Penguins — -Terra del Fuego — Staten Island — Vegetation — Winter’s bark, celery — Fuegians — Excursion inland — Great cold and snow-storm — Sufferings of the party — Death of two men from cold — Return to ship — Shells — Native huts — General appearance of the country — Animals — Plants — Scurvy grass, celery — Inhabitants and customs- — Language — Food — Arms — Probable nomadic habits — Dogs — Climate.
8 th December. Soon after daybreak a shark appeared, which took the bait very readily. While we were playing him under the cabin window he cast something out of his mouth which either was, or appeared very like, his stomach ; this it threw out and drew in again many times. I have often heard from seamen that they can do it, but never before saw anything like it.
1 1th. This morning we took a shark, which cast up its stomach when hooked, or at least appeared to do so. It proved to be a female, and on being opened six young ones were taken out of her, five of which were alive, and swam briskly in a tub of water. The sixth was dead, and seemed to have been so for some time.
1 3 th. At night a squall, with thunder and lightning, which made us hoist the lightning chain.
22nd. Shot one species of Mother Carey’s chickens and two shearwaters ; both proved new, Procellaria gigantea and sandalecta. The Carey was one but ill-described by Linnaeus, Procellaria fregatci. While we were shooting, the people were employed in bending the new set of sails for Cape Horn.
44
RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO
CHAP. Ill
23 rd. Killed another new Procellaria ( mquorea ) and many of the sorts we had seen yesterday. Caught Holothuria angustata, and a species of floating Helix, much smaller than those under the line, and a very small Phyllodoce velella, some- times not so large as a silver penny, yet I believe it was the common species. In the evening I went out again, and killed an albatross, Diomedea exulans, measuring nine feet one inch between the tips of his wings, and struck one turtle ( Test ndo caretta).
25 th. Christmas Day : all good Christians, that is to say, all good hands, got abominably drunk, so that all through the night there was scarce a sober man in the ship. Weather, thank God, very moderate, or the Lord knows what would have become of us.
2 7 th. The water has been discoloured all day, the depth being fifty fathoms. All this day I have noticed a singular smell from windward, though the people in the ship did not take notice of it ; it was like rotten seaweed, and at times very strong.
During the whole of the gale which was blowing to-day we had many Procellarice about the ship — at some times immense numbers. They seemed perfectly unconcerned at the weather, or the height of the sea, but continued, often flapping, near the surface of the water as if fishing.
29 th. We observed now some feathers and pieces of reed floating by the ship, which made us get up the hoave-net to see what they were. Soon after some drowned Carabi and Phalcence came past, which we took, as well as many other specimens, by means of the hoave. A large Sphinx was also taken (lat. 41° 4 S').
30 th. Water very white, almost of a clay colour : sounded forty-seven fathoms. Plenty of insects passed by this morning, many especially of the Carabi, alive, some Grylli, and one Phalcena. I stayed in the main chains from eight till twelve, dipping for them with the hoave, and took vast numbers. In the evening many Phalcence and two Papiliones came flying about the ship : of the first we took about twenty, but the last would not come near enough, and at last flew away ; they
JAN. 1769
OCEANIC LIFE
45
appeared large. Both yesterday and to-day we also took several ichneumons flying about the rigging. All the sea- men say that we cannot be less than twenty leagues from the land, hut I doubt Grylli, especially, coming so far alive, as they must float all the way upon the water. The sailors ground their opinion chiefly on the soundings, the bottom being continuously of sand of different colours, which, had we been nearer the land, would have been intermixed with shells. Their experience of this coast must, however, he slight.
Lat. 42° 31/. A sea-lion was entered in the log-book as being seen to-day, but I did not see it. I saw, however, a whale, covered with barnacles as the seamen told me. It appeared of a reddish colour, except the tail, which was black like those to the northward.
31 st. No insects seen to-day; the water changed to a little better colour. On looking over the insects taken yesterday I find thirty-one land species, all so like in size and shape to those of England that they are scarcely dis- tinguishable from the latter ; probably some will turn out identically the same. We ran among them 160 miles by the log, without reckoning any part of last night, though they were seen till dark. We must be now nearly opposite to “ Baye sans fond,” 1 near which place Mr. Dalrymple supposes that there is a passage quite through the continent of America. It would appear by what we have seen that there is at least a very large river, probably at this time much flooded, although it is doubtful whether even that could have so great an effect (supposing us to be twenty leagues from the land) as to render the water almost of a clay colour, and to bring insects such as Grylli and an Aranea, which never fly twenty yards. I lament much not having tasted the water at the time, which never occurred to me, but probably the difference of saltness would have been hardly perceptible to the taste, and my hydrostatic balance being broken I had no other method of trying it.
2nd January 1769. Met with some small shoals of red
1 Probably the Gulf of San Mathias.
46
RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO
CHAP. Ill
lobsters, which have been seen by almost every one passing through these seas ; they were, however, so far from colouring the sea red, as Dampier and Cowley say they do, that I may affirm that we never saw more than a few hundreds of them at a time. We called them Cancer gregarius.
3rd. This evening many large bunches of seaweed floated by the ship, and we caught some of it with hooks. It was of immense size, every leaf four feet long, and the stalk about twelve. The footstalk of each leaf was swelled into a long air-vessel. Mr. Gore tells me that he has seen this weed grow quite to the top of the water in twelve fathoms ; if so, the swelled footstalks are probably the trumpet-grass or weed of the Cape of Good Hope. We described it, how- ever, as it appeared, and called it Fucus giganteus d
5 th. In some of the water taken up we observed a small and very nimble insect of a conical figure, which moved with a kind of whorl of legs or tentacula round the base of the cone. We could not find any Nereides, or indeed any other insect than this, in the water, but were not able to prove that he was the cause of the lightness of the water, which was much observed hereabouts, so we deferred our observations on the animal until the morning.
7 th. We now for the first time saw some of the birds called penguins by the southern navigators : they seem much of the size and not unlike Alca pica, but are easily known by streaks upon their faces and their remarkably shrill cry, different from that of any sea-bird I am acquainted with. We saw also several seals, but much smaller than those I have seen in Newfoundland, and black ; they gener- ally appeared in lively action, leaping out of the water like porpoises, so much so that some of our people were deceived by them, mistaking them for fish.
During a gale which had lasted yesterday and to-day we observed vast numbers of birds about us. Procellarice of all kinds we have before mentioned ; gray ones and another kind, all black, Procellaria cequinoctialis ? Linn. We could not discern whether or not their beaks were yellow.
1 Macrocystis pyrifera, Ag.
JAN. 1769
OFF TERRA DEL FUEGO
47
There were also plenty of albatrosses. Indeed, I have ob- served a much greater quantity of birds upon the wing in gales than in moderate weather, owing perhaps to the tossing of the waves, which must render swimming very uneasy. They must be more often seen flying than when they sit upon the water.
The ship has been observed to go much better since her shaking in the last gale of wind ; the seamen say that it is a general observation that ships go better for being, as they say, loosened in their joints, so much so that in a chase it is often customary to knock down stanchions, etc., to make the ship as loose as possible.
10th. Seals plentiful to-day, also a kind of bird, different from any we have before seen. It was black, and a little larger than a pigeon, plump like it, and easily known by its flapping its wings quickly as it flies, contrary to the custom of sea-birds in general. This evening a shoal of porpoises of a new species swam by the ship ; they are spotted with large dabs of white, with white under the belly : in other respects, as swimming, etc., they are like common porpoises, only they leap rather more nimbly, sometimes lifting their whole bodies out of the water.
11 th. This morning at daybreak we saw the land of Terra del Fuego. By eight o’clock we were well in with it. Its appearance was not nearly so barren as the writer of Lord Anson’s voyage has represented it. We stood along shore, about two leagues off, and could see trees distinctly through our glasses. We observed several smokes, made probably by the natives as a signal to us.
The hills seemed to be high, and on them were many patches of snow, but the sea-coast appeared fertile, the trees especially being of a bright verdure, except in places exposed to the south-west wind, which were distinguishable by their brown appearance. The shore itself was sometimes beach and sometimes rock.
1 2th. We took Beroe incrctssata, Medusa limpidissima, plicata and obliquata, Alcyonium anguillare (probably the thing that Shelvocke mentions in his Voyage Bound the
48
RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO
CHAP. Ill
World, p. 60), and A. frustrum, Ulvct intcstinalis, and Corallina officinalis.
14 th. Staten Land is much more craggy than Terra del Fuego, though the view of it in Lord Anson’s voyage is exaggerated. The Captain stood into a bay just within Cape St. Vincent [Staten Island] ; and while the ship stood off and on, Dr. Solander and I went ashore. I found about a hundred plants, though we were not ashore above four hours. Of these I may say every one was new, and entirely different from what either of us had before seen.
The country about this bay is, in general, flat. Here is, however, good wood, water, and great quantities of fowl. In the cod of the bay is a flat covered with grass, where much hay might be made. The bay itself is bad, affording but little shelter for shipping, and in many parts of it the bottom is rocky and foul. This, however, may be always known in these countries by the beds of Fucus giganteus, which con- stantly grow upon the rock, and are not seen upon sand or ooze. These weeds grow to an immense length. We sounded upon them, and found fourteen fathoms of water. As they seem to make a very acute angle with the bottom in their situation in the water, it is difficult to guess how long they may be, but probably they are not less than half as long again as the depth of the water, which makes their length 126 feet; a wonderful length for a stalk not thicker than a man’s thumb.
Among other things the bay affords, there is plenty of Winter’s bark,1 2 easily known by its broad leaf, like a laurel, of a light green colour, bluish underneath. The bark is easily stripped off with a bone or stick, as oaks are barked in England. Its virtues are so well known that of them I shall say little, except that it may be used as a spice even in culinary matters, and is found to be very wholesome. Here is also plenty of wild celery ( Apium antiscorbuticitm) 2 and scurvy grass ( Gardamine antiscor-
1 Drimys Winteri, Forst.
2 Apium prostratum, Thou. A variety of the European celery, and as wholesome.
JAN. 1769
TERRA DEL FUEGO
49
butica ),1 both which are as pleasant to the taste as any herbs of the kind found in Europe, and, I believe, possess as much virtue in curing the scurvy.
The trees here are chiefly of one sort, a kind of birch, Betula antardica2 with very small leaves. It has a light white wood, and cleaves very straight. The trees are some- times between two and three feet in diameter, and run thirty or forty feet in the hole ; possibly they might, in cases of necessity, supply top-masts. There are also great quantities of cranberries, both white and red ( Arbutus rigicla ).3 Inhabit- ants I saw none, but found their huts in two places, once in a thick wood, and again close by the beach. They are most unartificially made, conical, but open on one side, where were marks of fire, which last probably served them instead of a door.
1 5th. By dinner we came to an anchor in the Bay of Good Success [Terra del Fuego] : several Indians 4 were in sight near the shore.
After dinner, went ashore on the starboard side of the bay, near some rocks, which made the water smooth and the landing good. Before we had walked a hundred yards, many Indians made their appearance on the other side of the bay, at the end of a sandy beach which forms the bottom of the bay, but on seeing our numbers to be ten or twelve they retreated. Dr. Solander and I then walked forward a hundred yards before the rest, and two of the Indians advanced also, and sat down about fifty yards from their companions. As soon as we came up they rose, and each of them threw a stick he had in his hand away from him and us: a token, no doubt, of peace. They then walked briskly towards the others, and waved to us to follow, which we did, and were received with many uncouth signs of friendship. We distributed among them a number of beads and ribbons, which we had brought ashore for that purpose,
1 Closely allied to the common English weed, Cardamine hirsuta, Linn.
2 The Betula of Banks is a species of beech, Fagus betuloides, Mirb.
3 Pernettya mucronata, Gaudich.
4 Banks constantly uses the term Indians to denote the natives of a country, throughout the “Journal.”
E
5o
RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO
CHAP. Ill
and at which they seemed mightily pleased, so much so that when we embarked again on our boat three of them came with us and went aboard the ship. One seemed to be a priest or conjuror, at least we thought so by the noises he made, possibly exorcising every part of the ship he came into, for when anything new caught his attention, he shouted as loud as he could for some minutes, without directing his speech either to us or to any one of his countrymen. They ate bread and beef which we gave them, though not heartily, hut carried the largest part away with them. They would not drink either wine or spirits, but returned the glass, though not before they had put it to their mouths and tasted a drop. We conducted them over the greater part of the ship, and they looked at everything without any remarks of extraordinary admiration, unless the noise which our conjuror did not fail to repeat at every new object he saw might be reckoned as such.
After having been aboard about two hours, they expressed a desire to go ashore, and a boat was ordered to carry them. I went with them, and landed them among their countrymen, but I cannot say that I observed either the one party curious to ask questions, or the other to relate what they had seen, or what usage they had met with ; so after having stayed ashore about half an hour, I returned to the ship, and the Indians immediately marched off from the shore.
1 6 th. This morning very early Dr. Solander and I, with our servants and two seamen to assist in carrying baggage, and accompanied by Messrs. Monkhouse and Green, set out from the ship to try to penetrate as far as we could into the country, and, if possible, gain the tops of the hills, which alone were not overgrown with trees. We entered the woods at a small sandy beach a little to the westward of the watering-place, and continued pressing through pathless thickets, always going uphill, until three o’clock, before we gained even a near view of the places we intended to go to. The weather had all this time been vastly fine, much like a sunshiny day in May, so that neither heat nor cold was troublesome to us, nor were there any insects to molest us,
JAN. 1769
EXCURSION INLAND
Si
which made me think the travelling much better than what I had before met with in Newfoundland.
Soon after we saw the plains we arrived at them, hut found to our great disappointment that what we took for swathe was no better than low bushes of birch reaching to about a man’s middle. These were so stubborn that they could not be bent out of the way, but at every step the leg must be lifted over them ; on being placed again on the ground it was almost sure to sink above the ankle in bog. No travelling could possibly be worse than this, which seemed to last about a mile, beyond which we expected to meet with bare rock, for such we had seen from the tops of the lower hills as we came. This I in particular was infinitely eager to arrive at, expecting there to find the alpine plants of a country so curious. Our people, though rather fatigued, were yet in good spirits, so we pushed on, intending to rest ourselves as soon as we should arrive on the level ground.
We proceeded two-thirds of the way without the least difficulty, and I confess that I thought, for my own part, that all difficulties were surmounted, when Mr. Buchan fell into a fit. A fire was immediately lit for him, and with him all those who were most tired remained behind, while Dr. Solander, Mr. Green, Mr. Monkhouse and myself advanced for the alp, which we reached almost immediately, and found, according to expectation, plants which answered to those we had found before, as in Europe alpine ones do to those which are found on the plains.
The air was very cold, and we had frequent snow-blasts. I had now given over all thought of reaching the ship that night, and thought of nothing but getting into the thick of the wood, and making a fire, which, as our road lay all down- hill, seemed very easy to accomplish. So Messrs. Green and Monkhouse returned to the other people, and appointed a hill for our general rendezvous, from whence we should proceed and build our wigwam. The cold now increased apace ; it might be nearly eight .o’clock, though the daylight was still exceedingly good, so we proceeded