March.

1770 fleeping with their women and children under bushes, with their weapons ranged round them, in the manner that has already been described. The party confifting of forty or fifty, whom we faw at Mercury Bay, in a district which the natives call Opoorage, never erected the leaft fhelter while we staid there, though it fometimes rained inceffantly for four and twenty hours together.

Food,

Cookery.

The articles of their food have been enumerated already; the principal, which to them is what bread is to the inhabitants of Europe, is the roots of the fern which grows upon the hills, and is nearly the fame with what grows upon our high commons in England, and is called indifferently fern, bracken, or brakes. The birds which fometimes ferve them for a feast, are chiefly penguins and albatroffes, with a few other species that have been occasionally mentioned in this narrative.

Having no veffel in which water can be boiled, their cookery confifts wholly of baking and roafting. They bake nearly in the fame manner as the inhabitants of the South Seas, and to the account that has been already given of their roafting, nothing need be added, but that the long skewer or spit to which the flesh is fastened, is placed floping towards the fire, by fetting one stone against the bottom of it, and supporting it near the middle with another, by the moving

of

of which to a greater or less distance from the end, the degree of obliquity is increased or diminifhed at pleasure.

To the northward, as I have observed, there are plantations of yams, fweet potatoes, and coccos, but we faw no fuch to the fouthward; the inhabitants therefore of that part of the country must fubfift wholly upon fern root and fish, except the fcanty and accidental refource which they may find in fea fowl and dogs; and that fern and fish are not to be procured at all seasons of the year, even at the fea fide, and upon the neighbouring hills, is manifeft from the ftores of both that we faw laid up dry, and the reluctance which fome of them expreffed at felling any part of them to us when we offered to purchase them, at least the fifh, for fea ftores and this particular feems to confirm my opinion that this country scarcely fuftains the prefent number of its inhabitants, who are urged to perpetual hoftilities by hunger, which naturally prompted them to eat the dead bodies of those who were flain in the contest.

Water is their univerfal and only liquor, as far as we could difcover, and if they have really no means of intoxication, they are, in this particular, happy beyond any other people that we have yet feen or heard of.

As there is perhaps no fource of disease either critical or chronic, but intemperance and inac

1770. March.

March,

1770. tivity, it cannot be thought ftrange that these people enjoy perfect and uninterrupted health: in all our vifits to their towns, where young and old, men and women, crowded about us, prompted by the fame curiofity that carried us to look at them, we never faw a fingle perfon who appeared to have any bodily complaint, nor among the numbers that we have feen naked, did we once perceive the slightest eruption upon the skin, or any marks that an eruption. had left behind at firft, indeed, obferving that fome of them when they came off to us were marked in patches with a white flowery appearance upon different parts of their bodies, we thought that they were leperous, or highly scorbutic; but upon examination we found that these marks were owing to their having been wetted by the fpray of the fea in their paffage, which, when it was dried away, left the falts behind it in a fine white powder.

Another proof of health, which we have mentioned upon a former occafion, is the facility with which the wounds healed that had left fcars behind them, and that we faw in a recent ftate; when we faw the man who had been shot with a musket ball through the fleshy part of his arm, his wound seemed to be fo well digested, and in so fair a way of being perfectly healed, that if I had not known no application had been made to it, I fhould certainly have inquired,

with a very interested curiofity, after the vulnerary herbs and furgical art of the country.

A farther proof that human nature is here un tainted with disease, is the great number of old men that we saw, many of whom, by the lofs of their hair and teeth, appeared to be very ancient, yet none of them were decrepit, and though not equal to the young in muscular strength, were not a whit behind them in cheerfulness and vivacity.

1770.

March,

392

1770. March.

Canoes.

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 Reasons against the Existence of a Southern Conti

nent.

TH

in

HE ingenuity of these people appears nothing more than in their canoes: they are long and narrow, and in fhape very much resemble a New England whale boat: the larger fort seem to be built chiefly for war, and will carry from forty to eighty, or an hundred armed men. We measured one which lay afhore at Tolaga fhe was fixty-eight feet and an half long, five feet broad, and three feet and an half deep; the bottom was fharp, with ftrait fides like a wedge, and consisted of three lengths, hollowed out to about two inches, or an inch and an half thick, and well fastened together with strong plaiting: each fide consisted of one entire plank, fixty-three feet long, ten or twelve inches broad, and about an inch and quarter thick, and these were fitted and lashed to the bottom part with great dexterity and strength, A con

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