The people seemed to be lusty and well-made, rather browner than those we had left: Under their arm-pits they had black marks about as broad as the hand, the edges of which formed not a straight but an indented line: They had also circles of the same colour, but not so broad, round their arms and legs, but were not marked on any other part of the body.
Their dress was very different from any that we had seen before, as well as the cloth of which it was made. The cloth was of the same materials as that which is worn in the other islands, and most of that which was seen by our people was dyed of a bright but deep yellow, and covered on the outside with a composition like varnish, which was either red, or of a dark lead-colour; over this ground it was again painted in stripes of many different patterns, with wonderful regularity, in the manner of Our striped silks in England; the cloth that was painted red was striped with black, and that which was painted lead-colour with white. Their habit was a short jacket of this cloth, which reached about as low as their knees; it was of one piece, and had no other making than a hole in the middle of it, stitched round with long stitches, in which it differed from all that we had seen before: Through this hole the head was put, and what hung down was confined to their bodies by a piece of yellow cloth or sash, which, passing round the neck behind, was crossed upon the breast, and then collected round the waist like a belt, which passed over another belt of red cloth, so that they made a very gay and warlike appearance; some had caps of the feathers of the tropic bird, which have been before described, and some had a piece of white or lead-coloured cloth wound about the head like a small turban, which our people thought more becoming.
Their arms were long lances, made of the etoa, the wood of which is very hard; they were well polished and sharpened at one end: some were near twenty feet long, though not more than three fingers thick; they had also a weapon which was both club and pike, made of the same wood, about seven feet long; this also was well polished, and sharpened at one end into a broad point. As a guard against these weapons, when they attack each other, they have matts folded up many times, which they place under their clothes from the neck to the waist: The weapons themselves indeed are capable of much less mischief than those of the same kind which we saw at the other islands, for the lances were there pointed with the sharp bone of the stingray that is called the sting, and the pikes were of much greater weight. The other things that we saw here were all superior in their kind to any we had seen before; the cloth was of a better colour in the dye, and painted with greater neatness and taste; the clubs were better cut and polished, and the canoe, though a small one, was very rich in ornament, and the carving was executed in a better manner: Among other decorations peculiar to this canoe, was a line of small white feathers, which bung from the head and stern on the outside, and which, when we saw them, were thoroughly wetted by the spray.
Tupia told us, that there were several islands lying at different distances, and in different directions from this, between the south and the north-west; and that at the distance of three days sail to the north-east, there was an island called Manua, Bird-island: He seemed, however, most desirous that we should sail to the westward, and described several islands in that direction which he said he had visited: He told us that he had been ten or twelve days in going thither, and thirty in coming back, and that the pahie in which he had made the voyage, sailed much faster than the ship: Reckoning his pahie therefore to go at the rate of forty leagues a-day, which from my own observation I have great reason to think these boats will do, it would make four hundred leagues in ten days, which I compute to be the distance of Boscawen and Keppel's Islands, discovered by Captain Wallis, westward of Ulietea, and therefore think it very probable that they were the islands he had visited.[47] The farthest island that he knew any thing of to the southward, he said, lay at the distance of about two days sail from Oteroah, and was called Moutou; but he said that his father had told him there were islands to the southward of that: Upon the whole, I was determined to stand southward in search of a continent, but to spend no time in searching for islands, if we did not happen to fall in with them during our course.
[Footnote 47: These and other islands since discovered in the South Sea, will be properly laid down in a map to be afterwards given. The chart that accompanied the preceding volume was restricted to the state of geographical knowledge at the time of publishing Hawkesworth's work, and is, of coarse, imperfect. But it was judged unadvisable to anticipate recent information.--E.]
SECTION XXI.
The Passage from Oteroah to New Zealand; Incidents which happened on going a-shore there, and while the Ship lay in Poverty Bay.
We sailed from Oteroah on the 15th of August, and on Friday the 25th we celebrated the anniversary of our leaving England, by taking a Cheshire cheese from a locker, where it had been carefully treasured up for this occasion, and tapping a cask of porter, which proved to be very good, and in excellent order. On the 29th, one of the sailors got so drunk, that the next morning he died: We thought at first that he could not have come honestly by the liquor, but we afterwards learnt that the boatswain, whose mate he was, had in mere good-nature given him part of a bottle of rum.
On the 30th we saw the comet: At one o'clock in the morning it was a little above the horizon in the eastern part of the heavens; at about half an hour after four it passed the meridian, and its tail subtended an angle of forty-two degrees. Our latitude was 38° 20' S., our longitude, by log, 147° 6' W., and the variation of the needle, by the azimuth, 7° 9' E. Among others that observed the comet, was Tupia, who instantly cried out, that as soon as it should be seen by the people of Bolabola, they would kill the inhabitants of Ulietea, who would with the utmost precipitation fly to the mountains.
On the 1st of September, being in the latitude of 40° 22' S. and longitude 147° 29' W, and there not being any signs of land, with a heavy sea from the westward, and strong gales, I wore, and stood back to the northward, fearing that we might receive such damage in our sails and rigging, as would hinder the prosecution of the voyage.