Besides giving the chiefs dogs for breeding purposes, Cook landed couples of pigs in order to supply this island with domestic animals.
These people of New Caledonia were very like negroes in appearance, but their head hair grew much longer and the men had abundant beards. The men went nearly naked, the women wore a short petticoat. Their language seemed to be a mixture between that of the Melanesians of the New Hebrides and the Polynesians of New Zealand. As regards weapons, they had something like a boomerang, and a wooden club shaped like a pickaxe. They used slings and stones, harpoons for striking fish, spears and darts. Their houses were circular, but kept full of smoke from the ever-burning fire in order to drive away the mosquitoes. They had clumsy dug-out canoes, generally used double, secured to each other by cross spars which projected a foot over each side. On these spars would be laid a deck or platform made of planks, on which they could even have a hearth of clay with a fire burning on it. These canoes were navigated by one or two lateen sails. Bananas and sugar cane were here, and also bread-fruit and coconuts, but all such things very scarce, and the natives lived chiefly on roots, the bark of a tree, which they roasted and chewed, and on fish. They had no other drink but water.
The coasts of New Caledonia, however, were beset with reefs and shoals, so that it was practically impossible for a sailing ship like the Resolution to make any close survey without running risks of being lost altogether. Cook therefore sailed away from New Caledonia, and discovered the Isle of Pines at its southern extremity: a series of islets, really, on which grew very tall conifers.[102] One little island, scarcely more than three-quarters of a mile round, was covered with a forest of these tall pines 60 to 70 feet in height. The wood was white, close-grained, tough and light, and exuded turpentine. On this southward cruise Cook, curiously enough, missed seeing the Loyalty Islands, which lie at no great distance to the east of New Caledonia, almost midway between New Caledonia and New Zealand. But he discovered Norfolk Island, which was uninhabited. Here his people noticed the aloe-like "flax" plant of New Zealand and a great abundance of splendid pine trees—the now celebrated Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria excelsa). The woods were full of pigeons, parrots, rails, and small birds. There were also "cabbage" palms, not thicker than a man's leg, and from 10 to 20 feet high, probably of the Areca genus, "with large pinnated fronds".
New Zealand was once more reached on 11 October, 1774. There were evident traces in Queen Charlotte Sound that the Adventure had been there. The natives received them with a certain reserve, though at first very joyfully. They told a story, however, of a white man's ship which some months ago had been beaten to pieces on the rocks. The white men had landed, but after their muskets had ceased to be of any use they had been attacked, killed, and eaten by the natives, though not by the people of Queen Charlotte Sound.[103] There being nothing now to detain Cook at New Zealand, he left Queen Charlotte Sound in November, 1774, and, sailing across the Southern Pacific, reached Tierra del Fuego, at the extremity of South America, and, after visiting the Falkland (Natives of the remotest Pacific Archipelagoes. From drawings by W. Hodges, who accompanied Captain Cook's Second Expedition) Islands and discovering the large island of South Georgia, he continued his journey round the southern waters of the globe till he reached the Cape of Good Hope, from which he made his way to England, having been absent three years and eighteen days, during which voyage he had lost but four men, and only one of them from sickness. "The nature of our voyage carried us into very high latitudes, but the hardships and dangers inseparable from that situation were in some degree compensated with the singular felicity we enjoyed in extracting inexhaustible supplies of fresh water from an ocean strewed with ice."
A CHIEF AT ST. CHRISTINA IN THE MARQUEZAS ARCHIPELAGO
A MAN OF EASTER ISLAND