In Pickersgill Harbour, close by, the seamen thought that they descried a small mammal about the size of a cat, mouse-coloured, and with short legs and a bushy tail, "more like a jackal than any animal they knew". This may have been a runaway dog, of degenerate type, belonging to the natives; or just possibly some mammal indigenous to New Zealand which soon afterwards became extinct. Yet with the exception of bats (and the dogs and rats introduced by the natives, and the seals which frequented the seacoasts), no indigenous beast has ever been discovered in New Zealand, either existing there in the past or at the time of its discovery.
During the stay of the expedition at Dusky Bay and elsewhere in the South Island the small black sandflies were a serious pest. Wherever they bit they caused a swelling and such intolerable itching that many of the people who had landed were at last covered with ulcers like smallpox. Nevertheless the whole crew soon became strong and vigorous. A local conifer, styled a "spruce" by Cook, but in reality a Phyllocladus, furnished an astringent beer in a decoction of its leaves, the bitterness of which was tempered by using an equal quantity of the tea plant.[96]
On the way north from Dusky Bay towards Queen Charlotte Sound, six or seven waterspouts were seen. According to Cook, they were caused by whirlwinds which created a kind of funnel or tube of water, which ascended in a spiral stream up to the clouds. In one of them a bird had been enclosed, which the seamen saw being whirled round and round as it was carried upwards. It appeared to Cook that, although these spouts reached the clouds, it was not from the rainwater of the clouds being drawn down to them, but by the column of whirling water ascending from the sea to the clouds above.
When in the southern Indian Ocean Cook had arranged with Captain Furneaux that if they should be separated by weather (as they were) they should rendezvous at Queen Charlotte Sound. The Adventure was separated from the Resolution, and after searching for her in vain set out on a lonely voyage of 4200 miles through an utterly unknown sea and reduced to an allowance of 1 quart of fresh water a day. They steered for Tasmania, reached the south coast of that island, and landed there on 10 March, 1773, finding the soil very rich and the country well clothed with woods, and plenty of water falling from the rocks in brilliant cascades 200 or 300 feet perpendicularly into the sea. They were the second white men to land in Tasmania. The Adventure anchored for five days in the bay since called after her. The trees of the forest they found mostly burnt or scorched near the ground, owing to the natives setting fire to the underwood, so as to make passage easy through the forest. There seemed to be little variety of trees, which were mostly of the eucalyptus kind; but there was an abundance of birds, Australian "crows" with their sharp white beaks, several kinds of duck, parakeets, and a large white bird about the size of a small eagle and very like one.[97] As for beasts, they only saw one, which was a kind of opossum (phalanger), but from the traces they saw of others (kangarus) they believed the land to contain deer. There were many signs of the natives—rough wigwams or huts,[98] in which there were bags and nets made of grass, stones and tinder for striking fire, spears sharpened at the end with a shell or stone—but the people themselves kept out of the way of the Europeans and were not once seen.
The Adventure after this repose skirted the coast and islands of Tasmania, as far as the opening of Bass's Strait and the string of islands named after Captain Furneaux. The last-named did not ascertain definitely that Tasmania was an island and not any longer a peninsula of Australia. From a point very near the Australian coast the Adventure sailed straight across to New Zealand and duly rejoined the Resolution in Queen Charlotte Sound. The crews of both ships felt "uncommon joy at their meeting" after a separation of fourteen weeks.
From New Zealand the two ships made their way to Tahiti. On arriving there the Tahitians enquired about Tupia, the invaluable interpreter on the first voyage; but his friends and relations were quite satisfied when an account of his death at Batavia was given to them. Civil wars had brought about certain changes in the government of the island, and one of the most prominent chiefs known to the Endeavour expedition was dead. This was Tutaha, and his mother came to meet Cook, bursting into tears as she seized him by both hands, and said: "Tutaha Tutayo no Tuti, matti!" (Tutaha, the friend of Cook, is dead).
Goats were landed on this island to introduce a breed of valuable domestic animals. The expedition then passed on to the adjoining island of Huahine, and here they obtained another invaluable interpreter for their further voyages—Omai, a native of the island of Ulieta, and of rather negroid or Melanesian type, but a most useful member of Cook's second and third expeditions.
In the interval between Cook's first and second visits to Tahiti a Spanish ship had called at that island and had introduced several noxious European diseases. The degeneration and depopulation of the Society Islands was about to begin, and even their food supplies were beginning to get short, owing to the demands made on them for pigs and fowls by European ships, and by the civil wars which caused much loss of live stock.
From the Society Islands the Resolution and Adventure sailed westward, discovered Hervey's Island, and rediscovered the Tonga archipelago already visited by Tasman. Here they met with such a kindly reception, the natives coming out to meet them in canoes,[99] and running along the shore displaying small white flags, that the group was afterwards christened the "Friendly Isles". [The Tonga archipelago under a native king is now a British protectorate.] The people supplied them with abundance of fowls, pigs, bananas, and coconuts.