missed, and Parkinson was left to do his sketches and paintings alone. This was the low point of the Endeavour's stay in Tahiti. Life picked up a kind of pattern as the people of the two cultures got accustomed to each other's ways. Early on, visitors and Tahitians came together in a church service. Cook, a man indifferent to organized religion, noted with evident approval that the Tahitians understood the English were speaking to their God , "as they themselves worship an invisible and omnipotent being." On another occasion, when the ship' s butcher forced the chief's wife to trade him the chief's stone hatchet for a nail, Cook had the man hauled before the Tahitians and flogged-a punishment that the Tahitian women tried to stop. Interestingly, though Cook and Banks were deeply sympathetic with the Tahitians, they used the European names they gave to Tahitians they came to know and do business with , rather than Polynesian names, which the English found difficult to pronounce. The humble artist Parkinson uses the Polynesian names consistently, so we read in his journal, for instance, of "one of their chiefs, named Tubora Tumaida, whom we called Lycurgus. " He compiled a vocabulary of nearly 500 words , including such sensitive translations as: "Tetooa-a title usually given to their women of rank, though every woman will answer to it," and "Tatta maro-a contradictory person, one that will not aJlow another to know as well as he," or as precise as "Peeo-bent, bending, crooked, turning, winding." He recorded words not just for brute need or commands, but words that lead you into a whole culture and human interchange. He also noted the names Tahitians used for the English, not being able to deal with some consonants: Toote, for Cook, Patine for Parkinson himself, and Mata for Monkhouse, the midshipman who ordered the attack that killed a Tahitian-leading one to wonder if the name, so different from the original, might not mean something else. He noted also that the language is very soft, having a great number of vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs, and very metaphorical. As an illustration, he cited "Mataavai, the name of the bay we anchored in, literally signifies Watery-eye," which he supposed was for the heavy rains, and, touchingly, Tehaia, the name of a woman who was lost as a child, "so SEA HISTORY 83 , WINTER 1997-98
her friends went about crying Tehai? which means, Where is she." One would have to get quite deep in conversation to get that kind of derivation! The observation of the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun, the leading scientific object of the voyage, took place in perfect weather on 3 June 1769. One of the quadrants used had been tinkered with after being stolen by an acquisitive Tahitian, but this had been adjusted and everything worked well. The only problem , as Richard Hough puts it in his fine recent biography Captain James Cook, was one they could do nothing about, since it occurred 67 million miles awaywhere the edges of the planet were obscured by what Cook called "an atmosphere or dusky cloud," which rendered impossible an accurate timing of the entry and exit of the blurry body across the Sun's face . Cook averaged the figures he and the others had secured, -noting that there was excessive variation. In the end, it turned out that, with confused readings from other quarters of the world, the project had to be scrapped-a notable but failed astronomical effort. Cook went on to make a trip by boat and on foot around the island, calling on King Tiarreboo at the southern end, who had attacked Queen Obadia, ruler of the east coast, despoiling many settlements, slaughtering the inhabitants, and inducing a healthy fear in all the Tahitians Cook had been dealing with. Cook 's small party reported finding occasional heaps of fresh bones in their tour of the islands, and more decorating the king 's headquarters. Fortunately all went off smilingly with this formidable monarch. The great explorer Comte de Bougainville, who had stopped by in Tahiti in the well named La Boudeuse (saucy woman), shortly aftertheDolphin's visit, and a year before the Endeavour' s, brought back to France tales of smiling islanders living an idyllic life, giving ri se to the cult of the "Noble Savage," immune to all diseases and above the petty strifes and competition of modern civilization. It would take a long time to unlearn this myth , but while Cook, like Banks, recognized the islanders' quali-
A morai, or burial place , on the island of Yoolee-Etea , drawn by Sydney Parkinson.
ties, on more than one occasion calling them "nob le," he also had a keen awareness of their thievery and readiness to kill each other. The Endeavour Sailswith a Passenger The Endeavour set sail on 13 July 1769 with Cook's meticulous charts of the island, Parkinson's sensitive drawings, a host of new plants and animal and insect life recorded by Banks and Solander-and with a Tahitian guest aboard, the young aristocrat Tupia and his boy servant. They went on to explore the nearby Society Islands, where Tupia served well as ambassador, and then embarked on a long lunge deep to the southward to discover Terra Australis (as Banks felt they would) or disprove its existence (as Cook was sure they would). This was a rough, wild passage through the Roaring Forties and further south, leading to Parkinson ' s wry comments about things below decks, quoted at the beginning of our story. They came to New Zealand, inhabited by the warlike Maori, who shared the basic Polynesian language they'd encountered in Tahiti, and used similar utensils. The proud Maori battled the English in several encounters. The sur~ vivors of these encounters laughed and feasted with the English after the fray, with what seemed remarkable equanimity, and three stowaways actually tried to sail off in the Endeavour. Perhaps they feared retaliation from their brethren, but the Endeavour people, watching through glasses after they were put ashore, saw that they were welcomed back by their fellows on the beach. On one occasion, sailing down New Zealand's rocky east coast in the strong prevailing onshore wind, Cook refused to sail into a narrow inlet that he could not be sure of getting out of in the face of the adverse wind and high seas. Banks 15