48 cook's first voyage march, 



curiosity that carried us to look at them, we never 

 saw a single person who appeared to have any bodily 

 complaint, nor among the numbers that we have seen 

 naked did we once perceive the slightest eruption 

 upon the skin, or any marks that an eruption had 

 left behind. At first, indeed, observing that some of 

 them when they came off to us were marked in 

 patches with a white flowery appearance upon differ- 

 ent parts of their bodies, we thought that they were 

 leprous, or highly scorbutic ; but upon examination 

 we found that these marks were owing to their 

 having been wetted by the spray of the sea in their 

 passage, which, when it w T as dried away, left the salts 

 behind it in a fine white powder. 



Another proof of health, which we have mention- 

 ed upon a former occasion, is the facility with which 

 the wounds healed that had left scars behind them, 

 and that we saw in a recent state ; when we saw the 

 man who had been shot with a musket-ball through 

 the fleshy part of his arm, his wound seemed to be 

 so well digested, and in so fair a way of being per- 

 fectly healed, that if I had not known no application 

 had been made to it, I should certainly have enquired, 

 with a very interested curiosity, after the vulnerary 

 herbs and surgical 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 loss 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. 



