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wallis :
tahiti, 1767
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Wallis : Tahiti, 1767.
Extracted
from
AN
ACCOUNT
OF THE VOYAGES UNDERTAKEN BY THE ORDER OF HIS PRESENT
MAJESTY FOR MAKING
Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere,
And
successively
performed by
COMMODORE
BYRON,
CAPTAIN CARTERET,
CAPTAIN
WALLIS,
And CAPTAIN COOK,
In the
DOLPHIN,
the SWALLOW, and the ENDEAVOUR:
DRAWN UP
From the
JOURNALS
which were kept by the several COMMANDERS,
And from the
Papers of JOSEPH BANKS, Esq;
By JOHN
HAWKESWORTH,
LL.D.
IN THREE
VOLUMES.
Vol. I
Illustrated
with
CUTS, and a great Variety of CHARTS and MAPS relative to
Countries
now
first discovered, or hitherto but imperfectly known.
LONDON;
Printed for
W.
STRAHAN; and T. CADELL in the Strand.
M DCC
LXXIII.
http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/hv01/about.html
As
bibliographer
Ronald L. Ravneberg has pointed out, the first edition of
the Voyages has inconsistencies in pagination and errors caused
by the
typesetting of volume one being started at two points and by
volumes two
and three originally being paginated as a single volume.
In this online
edition
these original erroneous pagination and errors have been
preserved as an
aid to researchers wishing to consult the printed text of the
first edition.
Introduction.
Byron
by Hawkesworth
King
George's
Islands
Page 135
Our boats
however
came up with them; but notwithstanding the dreadful surf
that broke upon
the shore, the canoes pushed through it, and the Indians
immediately hauled
them up upon the beach.
Our boats
followed
them, and the Indians, dreading an invasion of their coast,
prepared to
defend it with clubs and stones, upon which our men fired,
and killed two
or three of them: one of them received three balls which
went quite through
his body; yet he afterwards took up a large stone, and died
in the action
of throwing it against his enemy.
Page 140
The next
morning,
at six o’clock, I made sail for the island which I intended
to visit, and
when I reached it, I steered S.W. by W. close along the
north east side
of it, but could get no soundings: this side is about six or
seven leagues
long, and the whole makes much the same appearance as the
other, having
a large salt water lake in the middle of it.
As soon as
the
ship came in sight, the natives ran down to the beach in
great numbers:
they were armed in the same manner as those that we had seen
upon the other
island, and kept abreast of the ship for several leagues.
As the heat
of
this climate is very great, they seemed to suffer much by
running so far
in the sun, for they sometimes plunged into the sea, and
sometimes fell
flat upon the sand, that the surf might break over them,
after which they
renewed the race with great vigour.
Page 142
To these
two islands,
I gave the name of KING GEORGE’S ISLANDS, in honour of his
Majesty.
That which
we
last visited, lies in latitude 14° 41’S., longitude 149°
15’W.;
the variation of the compass here was 5° E.
Wallis
by Hawkeworth
Tahiti
Page 436
The
officers who
had been sent out with the boats, informed me that they had
sounded close
to the reef, and found as great a depth of water as at the
other islands:
however, as I was now on the weather side of the island, I
had reason to
expect anchorage in running to leeward.
I therefore
took
this course, but finding breakers that ran off to a great
distance from
the south-end of the island, I hauled the wind, and
continued turning to
windward all night, in order to run down on the east side of
the island.
Page 438
The boats
continued
sounding till noon, when they returned with an account that
the ground
was very clear; that it was at the depth of five fathom,
within a quarter
of a mile of the shore, but that there was a very great surf
where we had
seen the water.
The officers
told me, that the inhabitants swarmed upon the beach, and
that many of
them swam off to the boat with fruit, and bamboos filled
with water.
Page 442
The place
where
the ship struck appeared, upon farther examination, to be a
reef of sharp
coral rock, with very unequal soundings, from six fathom to
two; and it
happened unfortunately to lie between the two boats that
were placed as
a direction to the ship, the weathermost boat having 12
fathom, and the
leewardmost nine.
The wind
freshened
almost as soon as we got off, and though it soon became calm
again, the
surf ran so high, and broke with such violence upon the
rock, that if the
ship had continued fast half an hour longer, she must
inevitably have been
beaten to pieces.
Page 450
Having thus
cleared
the coast, I manned and armed the boats, and putting a
strong guard on
board, I sent all the carpenters with their axes, and
ordered them to destroy
every canoe that had been run ashore.
Before noon,
this service was effectually performed, and more than fifty
canoes, many
of which were sixty feet long, and three broad, and lashed
together, were
cut to pieces.
Nothing was
found
in them but stones and slings, except a little fruit, and a
few fowls and
hogs, which were on board two or three canoes of a much
smaller size.
Page 485
One of our
seamen,
when he was on shore, run a large splinter into his foot,
and the Surgeon
being on board, one of his comrades endeavoured to take it
out with a penknife;
but after putting the poor fellow to a good deal of pain,
was obliged to
give it over.
Our good old
Indian, who happened to be present, then called over one of
his countrymen
that was standing on the opposite side of the river, who
having looked
at the seaman’s foot, went immediately down to the beach,
and taking up
a shell, broke it to a point with his teeth; with this
instrument, in little
more than a minute, he laid open the place, and extracted
the splinter;
in the mean time the old man, who, as soon as he had called
the other over,
went a little way into the wood, returned with some gum,
which he applied
to the wound upon a piece of the cloth that was wrapped
round him, and
in two days time it was perfectly healed.
We
afterwards
learned that this gum was produced by the apple tree, and
our Surgeon procured
some of it, and used it as a vulnerary balsam with great
success.
Page 486
The boats
or canoes
of these people, are of three different sorts.
Some are
made
out of a single tree, and carry from two to six men: these
are used chiefly
for fishing, and we constantly saw many of them busy upon
the reef: some
were constructed of planks, very dexterously sewed together:
these were
of different sizes, and would carry from ten to forty men.
Two of them
were
generally lashed together, and two masts set up between
them; if they were
single, they had an out-rigger on one side, and only one
mast in the middle.
With these
vessels
they sail far beyond the sight of land, probably to other
islands, and
bring home plantains, bananas, and yams, which seem also to
be more plenty
upon other parts of this island, than that off which the
ship lay.
A third sort
seem to be intended principally for pleasure and show: they
are very large,
but have no sail, and in shape resemble the gondolas of
Venice: the middle
is covered with a large awning, and some of the people sit
upon it, some
under it.
None of
these
vessels came near the ship, except on the first and second
day after our
arrival; but we saw, three or four times a week, a
procession of eight
or ten of them passing at a distance, with streamers flying,
and a great
number of small canoes attending them, while many hundreds
of people ran
abreast of them along the shore.
They
generally
rowed to the outward point of a reef which lay about four
miles to the
westward of us, where they stayed about an hour, and then
returned.
These
processions,
however, are never made but in fine weather, and all ...
Page 487
... the
people
on board are dressed; though in the other canoes they have
only a piece
of cloth wrapped round their middle.
Those who
rowed
and steered were dressed in white; those who sat upon the
awning and under
it in white and red, and two men who were mounted on the
prow of each vessel,
were dressed in red only.
We sometimes
went out to observe them in our boats, and though we were
never nearer
than a mile, we saw them with our glasses as distinctly as
if we had been
upon the spot.
The plank
of which
these vessels are constructed, is made by splitting a tree,
with the grain,
into as many thin pieces as they can.
They first
fell
the tree with a kind of hatchet, or adze, made of a tough
greenish kind
of stone, very dexterously fitted into a handle; it is then
cut into such
lengths as are required for the plank, one end of which is
heated till
it begins to crack, and then with wedges of hard wood they
split it down:
some of these planks are two feet broad, and from 15 to 20
feet long.
The sides
are
smoothed with adzes of the same materials and construction,
but of a smaller
size.
Six or eight
men are sometimes at work upon the same plank together, and,
as their tools
presently lose their edge, every man has by him a cocoa
nut-shell filled
with water, and a flat stone, with which he sharpens his
adze almost every
minute.
These planks
are generally brought to the thickness of about an inch, and
are afterwards
fitted to the boat with the same exactness that would be
expected from
an expert joiner.
To fasten
these
planks together, holes are bored with a piece of bone that
is fixed into
a stick for that purpose, a use to which our nails were
afterwards applied
with great advantage, and through these holes a kind of
plaited cordage
is passed, so as to hold the planks strongly together: the
seams are caulked
with dried rushes, and the whole outside of the vessel is
paid with a ...
Page 488
... gummy
juice,
which some of their trees produce in great plenty, and which
is a very
good succedaneum for pitch.
The wood
which
they use for their large canoes, is that of the apple tree,
which grows
very tall and strait.
Several of
them
that we measured, were near eight feet in the girth, and
from 20 to 40
to the branches, with very little diminution in the size.
Our
carpenter
said, that in other respects it was not a good wood for the
purpose, being
very light.
The small
canoes
are nothing more than the hollowed trunk of the bread-fruit
tree, which
is still more light and spongy.
The trunk of
the bread-fruit tree is six feet in girth, and about 20 feet
to the branches.
Page 489
The tide
rises
and falls very little, and being governed by the winds, is
very uncertain;
though they generally blow from the E. to the S.S.E. and for
the most part
a pleasant breeze.
AN
ACCOUNT OF THE VOYAGES UNDERTAKEN BY THE ORDER OF HIS
PRESENT MAJESTY FOR
MAKING Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere,
And
successively
performed by
COMMODORE
BYRON,
CAPTAIN CARTERET,
CAPTAIN
WALLIS,
And CAPTAIN COOK,
In the
DOLPHIN,
the SWALLOW, and the ENDEAVOUR:
DRAWN UP
From the
JOURNALS
which were kept by the several COMMANDERS,
And from the
Papers of JOSEPH BANKS, Esq;
By JOHN
HAWKESWORTH,
LL.D.
IN THREE
VOLUMES.
Vol. I
Illustrated
with
CUTS, and a great Variety of CHARTS and MAPS relative to
Countries
now
first discovered, or hitherto but imperfectly known.
LONDON;
Printed for
W.
STRAHAN; and T. CADELL in the Strand.
M DCC
LXXIII.
http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/hv01/about.html
surfresearch.com.au
Geoff Cater (1997-2015) :
Wallis
: Tahiti, 1767.
http://www.surfresearch.com.au/1767_Wallis_Tahiti.html