Next in importance to Captain Cook in the history of this remarkable voyage will rank (Sir) Joseph Banks, described by the Royal Society as a gentleman of large fortune, and said in other correspondence of the period to have an estate bringing in £6000 a year. He was born in London in 1743, the son of a wealthy physician who had become a Member of Parliament for Peterborough. Educated at Oxford, he early conceived an intense interest in botany and zoology; and having in 1764 inherited all his father's property, he soon afterwards made at his own expense a scientific expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador, where he made a famous collection of insects and plants.
A neighbouring landowner, Lord Sandwich, had become head of the Admiralty, and Banks obtained through him leave to join Cook's expedition. He then laid out about £10,000 on all the stores and other preparations necessary for the conduct of an elaborate enquiry into the natural history of the lands and seas through which the expedition was to pass, and he engaged a Swedish naturalist, a pupil of Linnæus—Dr. Daniel Solander—to accompany him, besides four draughtsmen to make pictures, and nine servants to do all the rough work of natural-history collecting, &c.
The diary which Mr.—afterwards Sir Joseph—Banks kept on this voyage, between August, 1768, and July, 1771, is almost as interesting and remarkable as the diary kept on H.M.S. Beagle by his greater successor in the same studies, Charles Darwin. This journal of Sir Joseph Banks really served to give the substance of greatest interest to the volumes published on the First Voyage of Cook, which were edited by Dr. Hawksworth; and although Hawksworth in his introduction laid stress on the important part played in the narrative by the incorporation of Banks's journals (most generously placed at his disposal), nevertheless the mass of the reading public has been too apt to ascribe to Captain James Cook observations and descriptions which were entirely the work of Banks. Though Cook's mighty achievements as a navigator, and as one who laid the foundations of the British Empire in Australasia and British Columbia, can never be lessened by the results of any research into the history of his voyages, it is only fair to point out that the records of his first great adventure would not have achieved their world-wide popularity but for Banks's co-operation and his munificent expenditure on the expedition. Banks, in fact, was a man born out of due time. His was a nineteenth-century mind which made its appearance in the middle of the eighteenth century, just as Shakespeare was an intelligence of the twentieth century which made its appearance three hundred years before its appropriate period. In order not to interrupt the course of the narrative it might be as well to give in a footnote final information as to Sir Joseph Banks's career.[71]
The ship Endeavour sailed from Plymouth on 26 August, 1768, with a crew of officers, naturalists, seamen, and servants, of ninety-four in all, with provisions for eighteen months, and an armament of guns which would be quite sufficient to keep at bay any attack by savages. Captain Cook, from the first, was resolved to combat resolutely that foe of seamen-adventurers—scurvy—the disease which is constantly alluded to in the earlier pages of this book, and which I have described elsewhere as so seriously impeding the first attempts of colonization on the part of the French in Canada. In this resolve he was backed up by Banks, who had made special enquiries on the subject of antiscorbutics. An attempt was made to convey fresh cabbage from England to the Pacific, and casks of this vegetable lasted out for nearly a year. The leaves and the heart of the cabbage were preserved between layers of salt. But the greatest benefit in checking scurvy was derived from lemon juice, of which Banks himself took nearly 6 ounces a day. The juice of oranges and lemons mixed with a little brandy had been evaporated till it was very thick, and this essence was enclosed in small casks before the Endeavour left England. The expedition also took with it treacle, turpentine, and "wort" (the unfermented infusion of malt), with which they were to brew some kind of beer.
The Endeavour's course towards the Pacific was via Brazil (where she was mistaken by the Portuguese for a privateer or pirate and received very badly) and the extremity of South America. Off the coast of Patagonia Banks noticed "shoals of red lobsters", as Dampier had done in the southern Pacific. These "sea crayfish", or Langoustes as they really were (allied to the excellent Langouste of the Mediterranean[72]), frequently astonished the pioneers of the Pacific and south Indian Oceans by their immense numbers which passed in shoals swimming on the surface, very often proving a godsend to the crew by providing them with fresh and savoury food. Unlike the lobster, which is only red when it is boiled, these Langoustes (probably of the genera Iasus or Panulirus) were naturally of a bright crimson or scarlet colour.
Cook, Banks, and some of the seamen landed on Staten Island at the extremity of the curly tail of South America. The Dutch had thought in the previous century that Staten Island was a northern promontory of a vast Antarctic continent, of which New Zealand might be another projection (which was why Tasman had first called New Zealand "Staten Island"). Banks was very anxious to examine its flora, and found far more flowering plants at this season of Antarctic summer than he thought possible of existence in such a cold bleak country; yet, in the very searching for natural-history specimens, he and the rest of the party were caught in a snowstorm and nearly frozen to death. Two negro servants who had drunk too much grog and had lain down to rest were killed by the cold.
After rounding Cape Horn, in January, 1769, the Endeavour had sailed as far to the south as the sixtieth degree of south latitude. On her course north-westwards into the Pacific the ship was brought to a standstill occasionally whilst Mr. Banks went out in a boat to shoot sea birds, principally albatrosses. These were thought by Cook to be larger than those of the Atlantic Ocean. One of them measured 10 feet 2 inches from the tip of one wing to that of the other. Their bodies, after being carefully skinned, were soaked in salt water, parboiled also in sea water, and finally stood in a very little fresh water (the phrase "very little" shows how necessary it was in those days to be avaricious of the store of fresh water). After this they were served up to table with a savoury sauce, and the dish was universally commended. It was in any case a grateful variation from the constant round of salt beef and salt pork. Another inhabitant of these south Pacific seas which aroused great interest was a large octopus or cuttlefish, apparently just killed by albatrosses, and floating in a mangled condition upon the water. Banks noticed that it was very different from the cuttlefishes found in European seas, for its immense arms were furnished, instead of suckers, with a double row of very sharp talons which resembled the claws of a cat, and like them were retractable into a sheath, from which they could be thrust out at pleasure. "Of this cuttlefish we made one of the best soups we had ever tasted."
On 24 March, 1769, they noticed a log of wood passing by the ship, and the sea, which was rough, became suddenly as smooth as a millpond, so that they were probably passing by the vicinity of some undiscovered island.
On 4 April, 1769, land was sighted and was discovered to be an island of an oval form, with a lagoon in the middle, which occupied much the larger part of it. The border of land circumscribing the lagoon was in many places low and narrow, consisting chiefly of a reef or beach of rocks; in other words, it was one of the coralline atolls described on p. 21, and as usual possessed coconut palms. It was inhabited by tall, copper-coloured natives, with long, black hair, whose heads seemed to be remarkably large, probably because of some cap or headdress. Eleven of them walked along the beach abreast of the ship, with poles or pikes in their hands which reached twice as high as themselves. As they so walked they were without clothing; but after the ship had drawn off from the island it was seen that they covered themselves with some light-coloured material. To Cook and his mariners, who for a long time had seen nothing but water and sky, except the cold hills of Tierra del Fuego, these coconut groves of Lagoon Island in tropical latitudes seemed a terrestrial paradise.