Map of Queen Charlotte Islands.
(Fac-simile of early engraving.)

"The inhabitants of Egmont Isle," he says, "are extremely agile, active, and vigorous. They appear to live as well in water as on land, for they are continually jumping from their pirogues into the sea. One of the arrows which they sent passed through the planks of the boat, and dangerously wounded the officer at the poop in the thigh.

"Their arrows are tipped with stone, and we saw no metal of any kind in their possession. The country in general is covered with woods and mountains and interspersed with a great number of valleys."

On the 18th of August, 1767, Carteret left this group with the intention of regaining Great Britain. He fully expected to meet with an island on his passage, where he might be more fortunate. And on the 20th, he actually did so, discovering a little low island, which he named Gower, where cocoa-nuts were procurable. Next day he encountered Simpson and Carteret Islands, and a group of new islands which he took to be the Ohang Java, discovered by Tasman; then successively Sir Charles Hardy and Winchelsea Islands, which he did not consider as belonging to the Solomon Archipelago, the Island of St. John, so-called by Schouten, and finally that of New Britain, which he gained on the 28th of August.

Carteret coasted this island, in search of a safe and convenient port, and stopped in various bays, where he obtained water, wood, cocoa, nutmegs, aloes, sugar-canes, bamboos, and palm-cabbages.

"This cabbage," he says, "is white, crisp, of a substance filled with sugar. Eaten raw, the flavour resembles that of a chestnut, and boiled it is superior to the best parsnip. We cut it into small strips, and boiled it in the broth made from our cakes, and this broth, afterwards thickened with oatmeal furnished us with a good meal."

The wood was all alive with pigeons, turtle-doves, parroquets, and other unknown birds. The English visited several deserted huts.

If an idea of the civilization of a people can be drawn from their dwellings, these islanders were on the lowest rung of the social ladder, for their huts were the most miserable Carteret had ever seen.

The commander profited by his stay in this place, by once more overhauling the Swallow, and attending to the leak, which the carpenters doctored as well as they could. The sheathing was greatly worn, and the keel quite gnawed away by worms; they coated it with pitch and warm tar mixed together.