[40-2] The northernmost island of the Cook Group, discovered by Bligh, April 11, 1798, a few days before the mutiny. In 1823 John Williams, the missionary, heard at Rarotonga a native tradition of Bligh's visit. The natives heard the first rumours of a world beyond their own from two Tahitian castaways who had seen Captain Cook, and had with them an iron hatchet obtained from the Resolution. They represented the strange beings who traversed the ocean in vast canoes, not lashed with sinnet nor furnished with outriggers, as impious people who laughed at the tabu, and even ate of the consecrated food from the Maraés. They were like the gods; if they were attacked they blew at their assailants with long blow-pipes (pupuhi) from which flames and stones were belched. Such were the Tutë (Cooks). Thereafter, having need of iron (kurima) and other wonders current in Tahiti the men of Aitutaki prayed to their gods to send the Tutë to their island with axes and nails and pupuhi, and this, according to an old priest, was their prayer. "O great Tangaroa, send your large ship to our land: let us see the Cookees. Great Tangiia, send us a dead sea, send us a propitious gale, to bring the far-famed Cookees to our land, to give us nails and iron and axes; let us see these outriggerless canoes." And with the feast presented with the prayer were promises of greater feasts so soon as their prayer was answered. The gods heard them. A few months later the Cookees came. The great ship did not anchor, but one of the natives took his courage in both hands, and went off in his canoe. He brought back strange tales of what he had seen. It was a floating island; there were two rivers flowing on it (the pumps), and two plantations in which grew taro and sugar-cane and bread-fruit, and the keel scraped the bottom of the sea, for he dived as deep as he could go without finding it.
Williams has fallen into two errors in his account ([p. 171]). In the same breath he claims for himself the discovery of Rarotonga, in 1823, and announces this to have been a visit of the Bounty after she was taken by the mutineers, i.e. in April, 1789. Rarotonga was, in fact, discovered by the ship Seringapatam in 1814, though Williams may have been the first to land. The tradition must have referred to Bligh's visit to Aitutaki before the mutiny when the decks were encumbered with bread-fruit, for we know that the first thing the mutineers did after setting their captain adrift was to throw all the bread-fruit plants overboard, and that they steered direct for Tahiti.
[42-1] Discovered by Cook in his second voyage. There are nine small islands connected by a reef, covered with trees, but destitute of water.
[43-1] Sufficient for thirty days at most. In the face of the danger of parting company, with the Pandora overloaded with stores, and the tender too feebly manned to wait at so dangerous a rendezvous as the Friendly Islands, Edwards showed very little foresight in neglecting to provision the tender for an independent voyage. His neglect nearly cost the crew their lives.
[46-1] Fakaafo or Bowditch Island, whence the present permanent inhabitants migrated.
[46-2] Nukunono, a new discovery, another of the Union Group. It was surveyed by the American Exploring Expedition in 1840, and was found to be 7-2/10 miles long, N. and S., and 5 miles E. and W.
[48-1] The actual position is 9·5′ S. Latitude and 171·38′ W. Longitude.
[49-1] Savaii in the Samoa Group. If not the 'Beauman' Islands seen by Roggewein in 1721, they were discovered by Bougainville in 1768 and visited by La Pérouse in 1787. Freycinet also visited them before Edwards.
[49-2] Mata-atua Harbour. There is no river there except after heavy rain.