Morris. — On the Tracks of Captain Cook. 503 



Alas, there are no bell-birds now ! Between 1 and 2 

 in the morning I was at the neighbouring Dryden Bay, 

 and none woke me, though I hoped they would. So un- 

 known are the birds that the settler who guided me to Ship 

 Cove would have me believe that the tui was the same as 

 the bell-bird, which is not exactly correct ; but it seems un- 

 fortunately true that by far the larger part of the British 

 population of New Zealand has never heard the birds that 

 charmed the ears of Mr. Banks. Many other New Zealand 

 birds — the kea and the kaka parrot — are disappearing, and the 

 most characteristic trees and flowering-shrubs threaten soon 

 to vanish likewise. 



While the "Endeavour" lay at Ship Cove Cook made a 

 trip up Queen Charlotte Sound for the purpose, never absent 

 from his mind, of surveying and exploring. With a single 

 seaman (name not recorded) he climbed a hill, and came down 

 radiant. " While Dr. Sol and er and I were botanising," wrote 

 Banks, " the captain went to the top of a hill, and in about an 

 hour returned in high spirits, having seen the eastern sea and 

 satisfied himself of the existence of a strait communicating 

 with it, the idea of which has occurred to us all, from Tas- 

 man's as well as our own observation." This account of 

 Cook's " high spirits " by another is perhaps more vivid than 

 his own account of his " abundant recompense for the trouble 

 in ascending the hill." What a subject for a New Zealand 

 painter or a poet ! The noble lines of Keats may suggest the 

 treatment : — 



Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes 

 He stared at the Pacific, and all his men 



Looked at each other with a wild surmise, 

 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 



Is the glory of these lines diminished by the knowledge that 

 Cortez never had the opportunity of staring at the Pacific 

 from a peak in Darien ? The story is true of another — Vasco 

 Nunez de Balboa. 



The hill that Cook ascended is not yet ascertained, but it 

 must be ascertainable. May I commend the problem to Wel- 

 lington men as an object for a holiday trip to the sound ? 

 A little leisure would be needed, and a disposition to scramble 

 upon hills. My own belief is that the hill must lie between 

 Tory Channel and Picton. Cook says that, making for the 

 head of the sound — that is, towards Picton — they had rowed 

 between four and five leagues, and, "finding no probability of 

 reaching it, or even of seeing the end, the wind being against 

 us and the day already half-spent, we landed at noon on the 

 south-east side, in order to try and get upon one of the hills 

 to view the inlet from thence. I took one hand with me and 

 climbed up to the top of one of the hills ; but when I came 



