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CHA P. X.

Of the Canoes and Navigation of the Inhabitants of New Zealand; their Tillage, Weapons, and Mufic; Government, Religion, and Language: With fome Reafons against the Existence of a Southern Continent.

392

1

AN

A

Voyage round the World

BY

LIEUTENANT JAMES COOK.

BOOK I.

СНАР. XVI.

An Expedition of Mr. Banks to trace the
River: Marks of fubterraneous Fire:
Preparations for leaving the Iland: An
Account of Tupia.

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1769.

July.

N the 3d, Mr. Banks fet out early in the morning with fome Indian guides, to trace our river up the valley from Monday 3. which it iffues, and examine how far its banks were inhabited. For about fix miles they met with houses, not far diftant from each other, on each fide of the river, and the valley was every where about four hundred yards wide from the foot of the hill on one fide, to the foot of that on the other; but they were now fhewn a house which they were told was the laft that they would fee. When they came up to it, the master of it offered them refreshments of cocoanuts and other fruits, of which they accepted; VOL. III.

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after

1769. July.

after a fhort ftay, they walked forward for a confiderable time; in bad way it is not easy to Monday 3. compute distances, but they imagined that they had walked about fix miles farther, following the course of the river, when they frequently paffed under vaults, formed by fragments of the rock, in which they were told people who were benighted frequently paffed the night. Soon after they found the river banked by steep rocks, from which a cafcade, falling with great violence, formed a pool, so steep, that the Indians faid they could not pafs it. They seemed, indeed, not much to be acquainted with the val ley beyond this place, their business lying chiefly upon the declivity of the rocks on each fide, and the plains which extended on their fummits, where they found plenty of wild plantain, which they called Vae. The way up these rocks from the banks of the river was in every respect dreadful; the fides were nearly perpendicular, and in fome places one hundred feet high; they were also rendered exceeding flippery by the water of innumerable fprings which issued from the fiffures on the furface: yet up these precipices a way was to be traced by a fucceffion of long pieces of the bark of the Hibiscus tiliaceus, which ferved as a rope for the climber to take hold of, and affifted him in fcrambling from one ledge to another, though upon these ledges there was footing only for an Indian or a goat. One of these ropes was nearly thirty feet in length,

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