506 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



off, the gentleman, it seems, came breathless on the scene 

 with a parcel of documents, and consulted the good-natured 

 Irish policeman on the wharf, who promptly volunteered to 

 fling the parcel on board. He flung, and it fell into the sea. 

 " Oh ! Mr. Constable," one is tempted to exclaim, " you little 

 know the mischief you have done"; nor, indeed, do I, for I 

 know not what was in the parcel that wasted its lore upon 

 the waters of " Hawkes Bay."* 



Morning found our steamer in Poverty Bay, Young Nick's 

 Head on our left. It is often said that this was the first land 

 of New Zealand that was seen by the men on the " Endea- 

 vour." It was pointed out to me by the bishop that the land 

 seen must have been the higher mountainous land in the in- 

 terior. Nor does Cook sav that the head was the first seen : 

 " At noon the south-west point of Poverty Bay, which I have 

 named ' Young Nick's Head ' (after the boy who first saw 

 this land)." It has been noticed more than once that in the 

 list of the "Endeavour's" crew no such name as Nicholas 

 Young is to be found. In the journal kept by Parkinson, the 

 artist to Mr. Banks, published by his brother just before the 

 official publication by Hawkes worth, it is said that Young 

 was the surgeon's boy. In a list of the servants that Mr. 

 Banks intended to take with him on the second voyage, had 

 he made it, the name of Nicholas Young figures ; so that it is 

 evident that Banks liked the sharp-sighted lad who first saw 

 the land in New Zealand, and again the land when the ship 

 was nearing England, which proved to be the Lizard. 



Two lists of the " Endeavour's " crew have been printed — 

 the one in the "Historical Records of New South Wales" 

 (vol. i., part i., page 334), and the other in Admiral Whar- 

 ton's "Cook" — and there are many discrepancies. Neither 

 has Young's name. Perhaps boys were not among the souls 

 counted on board. 



From Napier I desired to make a trip to the Wairoa, but 

 found the distance too far and the place too inaccessible. My 

 desire was in honour not of James Cook, but of Robert Brown- 

 ing. " How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end? " he 

 asked in the " Guardian Angel " of his friend Alfred Domett, 

 poet, Prime Minister, and the lay figure from which Browning 

 painted his " Waring." This is the highest place in literature 

 attained by the name of a New Zealand river, and I wished to 

 be able to answer the question about the rolling ; nor was my 



* Cook spelt this name without the apostrophe. Sir Edward Hawke 

 was First Lord of the Admiralty when the "Endeavour" left England. 

 It is not known whether Cook had ever heard the story about Hawke's 

 emphatio refusal to confirm Alexander Dalrymple in the command of 

 the barque, when he said he would cut off his right hand rather than sign 

 a commission for a civilian. 



