NOV. 1769 THAMES RIVER TIMBER 201 



inviting us in ; they had heard of us from our last friends. 

 We landed, and while we stayed they were most perfectly 

 civil, as indeed they have always been where we were 

 known, but never where we were not. We proceeded up 

 the river and soon met with another town with but few 

 inhabitants. Above this the banks were completely clothed 

 with the finest timber l my eyes ever beheld, of a tree we had 

 before seen, but only at a distance, in Poverty Bay and 

 Hawke's Bay. Thick 'woods of it were everywhere upon the 

 banks, every tree as straight as a pine, and of immense size, 

 and the higher we went the more numerous they were. 

 About two leagues from the mouth we stopped and went 

 ashore. Our first business was to measure one of these trees. 

 The woods were swampy, so we could not range far ; we 

 found one, however, by no means the largest we had seen, 

 which was 19 feet 8 inches 2 in circumference, and 89 

 feet in height without a branch. But what was most re- 

 markable was that it, as well as many more that we saw, 

 carried its thickness so truly up to the very top, that I dare 

 venture to affirm that the top, where the lowest branch took 

 its rise, was not a foot less in diameter than where we 

 measured it, which was about 8 feet from the ground. We 

 cut down a young one of these trees ; the wood proved heavy 

 and solid, too much so for masts, but it would make the 

 finest plank in the world, and might possibly by some art 

 be made light enough for masts, as the pitch-pine in America 

 (to which our carpenter likened this timber) is said to be 

 lightened by tapping. 



Up to this point the river has kept its depth and very 

 little decreased in breadth ; the captain was so much pleased 

 with it that he resolved to call it the Thames. It was now 

 time for us to return ; the tide turning downwards gave us 

 warning, so away we went, and got out of the river into the 

 bay before it was dark. We rowed for the ship as fast as we 



1 Podocarpus dacrydioides, A. Cunn. 



2 The dimensions were left blank in Banks's Journal. In Wharton's Cook, p. 

 159, it is stated to be 19 feet 8 inches at 6 feet above the ground, and its 

 length from the root to the first branch 89 feet ; and it tapered so little that 

 Cook judged it to contain 356 feet of solid timber, clear of the branches. 



