Joseph Banks

“ Strange and unheard of as it must appear to a European, to draw nourishment from a class of plant which in Europe no animal, hardly even insects, will taste, I am much inclined to think that it affords a nourishing and wholesome diet. These people eat but little, and this is the foundation of their meals all summer, at least from the time that their roots are planted, till the season for digging them up. Among them I have seen several very healthy old men, and in general the whole of them are as vigorous a race as can be imagined. ”

“ The land on both sides appeared most miserably barren, till we got some way up the harbour, when it began to mend gradually. Here we saw some canoes, which, instead of coming towards us, went to an Indian town or fort built upon an island nearly in the middle of the passage, which appeared crowded with people, as if they had flocked to it from all parts. As the ship approached it they waved to us as if inviting us to come to them, but the moment we had passed, they set up a loud shout, and every man brandished his weapons. ”

“ The harbour of Rio de Janeiro is certainly a very good one: the entrance is not wide, but the sea breeze which blows every morning makes it easy for any ship to go in before the wind, and when you get abreast of the town it increases in breadth prodigiously, so that almost any number of ships might lie in five or six fathoms of water with an oozy bottom. It is defended by many works, especially the entrance, where it is narrow, and where is their strongest fortification, Santa Cruz, and another opposite it. ”

“ In short, the contrast between the Cape of Good Hope, which, though by nature a mere desert, supplies abundantly refreshments to all nations who touch there, and this island highly favoured by nature, shows not unaptly the genius of the two nations for making colonies. Nor do I think I go too far in asserting that were the Cape now in the hands of the English it would be a desert, as St. Helena in the hands of the Dutch would as infallibly become a paradise.
Small as the island is, and not raised very much above the surface of the sea, it enjoys a variety of climates hardly to be believed. ”

“ They have, however, some horses and mules wonderfully clever in travelling upon these roads, notwithstanding which they bring every drop of wine to town upon men's heads in vessels made of goat-skins. The only imitation of a carriage which they have is a board slightly hollowed in the middle, to one end of which a pole is tied by a strap of white leather, the whole machine coming about as near the perfection of an European cart as an Indian canoe does to a boat; with this they move the pipes of wine about the town. ”

“ We often admired a man running along shore and apparently carrying nothing in his hand, yet as he ran along just stooping down every 50 or 100 yards; smoke and fire were seen among the drift-wood and dirt at that place almost the instant he had left it. This we afterwards found was done by the infinite readiness every kind of rubbish, sticks, withered leaves, or dry grass, already almost like tinder by the heat of the sun and dryness of the season, would take fire. ”

“ During this time they brandish their spears, hack the air with their patoo-patoos, and shake their darts as if they meant every moment to begin the attack, singing all the while in a wild but not disagreeable manner, ending every strain with a loud and deep-drawn sigh, in which they all join in concert. The whole is accompanied by strokes struck against the sides of the boats with their feet, paddles, and arms; the whole in such excellent time, that though the crews of several canoes join in concert, you rarely or never heard a single stroke wrongly placed. ”

“ How beautiful it must appear when covered with its springing crops of maize, millet, indigo, etc., which cover almost every foot of ground in the cultivated parts of the island, imagination can hardly conceive. The verdure of Europe, set off by those stately pillars of India, palms—I mean especially the fan-palm, which for straightness and proportion, both of the stem itself and of the head to the stem, far excels all the palms that I have seen—requires a poetical imagination to describe, and a mind not unacquainted with such sights to conceive. ”

“ When the women have been employed in dyeing cloth, they industriously preserve the colour upon their fingers and nails, upon which it shows with its greatest beauty; they look upon this as no small ornament, and I have been sometimes inclined to believe that they even borrow the dye of each other, merely for the purpose of colouring their fingers. Whether it is esteemed as a beauty, or a mark of their housewifery in being able to dye, or of their riches in having cloth to dye, I know not. ”

“ For two hours now it had snowed almost incessantly, so that we had little hopes of seeing any of the three alive; about midnight, however, to our great joy, we heard a shouting, on which I and four more went out immediately, and found it to be the seaman, who had walked, almost starved to death, from where he lay. I sent him back to the fire and proceeded by his direction to find the other two. Richmond was upon his legs, but not able to walk; the other lay on the ground as insensible as a stone. ”

“ I have seen fifteen paddles of a side in one of their canoes move with immensely quick strokes, and at the same time as much justness as if the rowers were animated by one soul, not the fraction of a second could be observed between the dipping and raising any two of them, the canoe all the while moving with incredible swiftness. ”

“ How vain are the hopes of man! Whilst the whole botanical world, like myself, has been looking for the most transcendent benefits to our science, from the unrivalled exertions of your countrymen, all their matchless and truly astonishing collection, such as has never been seen before, nor may ever be seen again, is to be put aside untouched, to be thrust into some corner, to become perhaps the prey of insects and of destruction. ”

“ An immense throng of people met us on the shore, crowding us very much, though they were severely beaten for so doing by a tall good-looking man, who laid about him most unmercifully with a long stick, striking all who did not get out of his way without intermission, till he had cleared for us a path to Dootahah, who was seated under a tree, attended by a few grave-looking old men. ”

“ We were now almost too sanguine, talking of nothing but of getting her into some harbour where we might lay her ashore and repair her, or if we could not find such a place we little doubted of being able by repeated fotherings to carry her quite to the East Indies.
During the whole time of this distress, I must say for the credit of our people that I believe every man exerted his utmost for the preservation of the ship, contrary to what I have universally heard to be the behaviour of seamen, who commonly, as soon as a ship is in a desperate situation, begin to plunder and refuse all command. ”

“ During my whole stay I did not see a tree in its native soil as tall as myself; indeed housekeepers complain of the dearness of firewood, as almost equal to that of provisions, nothing being burnt here but roots, which must be dug out of the ground. What, indeed, proves the influence of the wind in prejudice to vegetation is that a stem not thicker than my thumb (and thicker they never are) will have a root as thick as my arm or leg. ”

“ Some days before this, as I was walking the streets with Tupia, a man totally unknown to me ran out of his house, and eagerly accosting me, asked if the Indian whom he saw with me had not been at Batavia before. On my declaring that he had not, and asking the reason of so odd a question, he told me that a year and a half before, Mr. De Bougainville had been at Batavia with two French ships, and that with him was an Indian so like this that he had imagined him to be the identical same person, until I informed him of the contrary. ”

“ By all that is great and good, I entreat you, who know so well the value of science, to do all that in you lies for the publication of these new acquisitions, that the learned world may not be deprived of them. . . .
Again the plants of Solander and Banks recur to my imagination. When I turn over Feuillée's figures, I meet with more extraordinary things among them than anywhere else. ”

“ My first business this morning was to see that the butcher was punished, as I promised Tubourai and Tamio, and of which they had not failed to remind me yesterday, when the crowd of people who were with us had prevented its being carried out. I took them on board the ship, where Captain Cook immediately ordered the offender to be punished; they stood quietly and saw him stripped and fastened to the rigging, but as soon as the first blow was given, interfered with many tears, begging that the punishment might cease, a request which the captain would not comply with. ”

“ A shark taken, but not one pilot fish attended it, which is rather uncommon, as they are seldom without a shoal of from ten to twenty. At noon I went in the boat, and took the Sallee man, Phyllodoce velella, Linn., which is a sailor, but inferior in size to the Portuguese man-of-war, yet not without its beauty, chiefly from the charming blue of the lower side. Its sail is transparent, but not movable, so it trusts itself to the mercy of the winds, without being able to turn to windward, as the Portuguese man-of-war perhaps can. ”

“ Tools among these people we saw almost none, indeed, having no arts which require any, it is not to be expected that they should have many. A stone sharpened at the edge and a wooden mallet were the only ones that we saw formed by art: the use of these we supposed to be to make the notches in the bark of high trees by which they climb them for purposes unknown to us; and for cutting and perhaps driving in wedges to take off the bark which they must have in large pieces for making canoes, shields, and water-buckets, and also for covering their houses. ”

“ Wild celery greatly resembles the celery in our gardens, only that the leaves are of a deeper green; the flowers, as in ours, stand in small tufts at the top of the branches, and are white. It grows plentifully near the beach, generally on soil which is just above the spring tides, and is not easily mistaken, as the taste resembles celery or parsley, or rather is between both. ”

“ The sea, in the neighbourhood of which they always live, supplies them with vast variety of fish, better than is generally met with between the tropics, but these they get not without some trouble. Every one desires to have them, and there is not enough for all, though while we remained in these seas we saw more species perhaps than our island can boast of. I speak now only of what is more properly called fish, but almost everything which comes out of the sea is eaten and esteemed by these people. ”

“ Few parts of the world, I believe, are better furnished with the necessaries as well as the luxuries of life, than the island of Java. The unhealthiness of the country about Batavia is in that particular rather an advantage to it; for the very cause of it, a low flat situation, is likewise the cause of a fruitfulness of soil hardly to be paralleled, which is sufficiently testified by the flourishing condition of the immense quantities of fruit-trees all round the town, as well as by the quantity and excellence of their crops of sugarcane, rice, Indian corn, etc. ”

“ Yesterday and to-day the Heiva no Metua, or chief mourner, walked. My curiosity was raised by his most singular dress, and being desirous of knowing what he did during his walk, I asked Tubourai, at the same time desiring leave to attend him to-morrow, which was readily granted upon my consenting to act a character.
Bread-fruit has for some time been scarce with us; about ten days ago, when there had been a great show of fruit, the trees were thinned all at once, and every one was employed in making mahie for about a week. ”

“ It is only necessary to remember how difficult it would be to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of our own religion to the faith of an infidel, and to recollect how many excellent discourses are daily read to instruct even us in the faith which we profess, to excuse me when I declare that I know less of the religion of these people than of any other part of their policy. ”