DISCOVERY OF EASTERN AUSTRALIA 419 



stingrays seemed likely to prevail. The seamen's journals 

 are full of praises of their number and of their size. But, 

 though Banks ate stingrays with reasonable appetite 

 a stingray, he says, "was not quite so good as a skate nor 

 was it much inferior " his mind centred in his collection 

 of plants, now grown so immensely large that it had become 

 necessary to take extraordinary care lest they should spoil 

 in the books. One day, he says, he " carried ashore 

 all the drying paper, nearly two hundred quires, of which 

 the greater part was full, and spreading them upon a sail 

 in the sun, kept them in this manner exposed the whole 

 day, and sometimes turning the quires in which there 

 were plants inside out. By this means they came on 

 board at night in very good condition." They are still 

 in very good condition, in spite of a bad soaking in 

 the Endeavour River, and some of them are now in 

 the Mitchell Library in Sydney, a few miles from the spot 

 where they were gathered a century and a half ago. No 

 wonder if Banks began to think them more worthy than 

 a 336 Ibs. stingray to give name to the Bay. 



It was a doubtful matter. Should the Bay be named " Stingray 

 after a delight of the body, or after a delight of the mind ? Harbour -" 

 Eighteenth-century seamen were carnal men, and the sting- 

 ray won. The Logs, which Cook and several other seamen 

 wrote from day to day, all tell that on the evening of the 

 6th of May the Bay was named Stingray Harbour. Both 

 Cook and Banks also wrote the same name in their farewell 

 notice of the coast of New Holland. An officer named 

 Pickersgill made a map, and wrote on it Stingray Harbour. 

 The plan at the Admiralty has the same name. 1 The 

 author of the Journal of a Voyage Round the World, published 

 September, 1771, wrote: "We sailed from the bay 

 which we named Stingray Bay." . 



Yet, when we look at the copy of Cook's Journal that " Botany 

 was sent home from Batavia, we read the following curious ay ' 

 passage. " In the evening the yawl returned from fishing, 

 having caught two stingrays, weighing near six hundred 

 pounds. The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and 

 1 Wharton, p. 247. 



