70 CAPTAIN COOK 



In the course of a visit to a native village the 

 English saw, with the greatest surprise, a cross 

 exactly similar to the emblem of Christianity. 

 It was decorated with feathers, and in reply to 

 questions on the subject the natives replied that 

 it was "a monument erected to a man who was 

 dead." This was all that the travellers were 

 able to make out. 



Cook spent thirty-four days mapping the 

 northern part of New Zealand, into which he 

 was the first European to penetrate. He made a 

 detailed examination of the coast, and compiled 

 a chart of remarkable accuracy, leaving such na- 

 tive names as he had been able to learn, and 

 christening bays, capes, islands and rivers ac- 

 cording to the events appropriate to them, as 

 Poverty Bay, Abundance Bay, Mercury Bay 

 (because he there observed the transit of the 

 planet), Oyster River, the Thames (because the 

 width of the river resembled that of the Thames 

 at Greenwich). Sometimes he used the names 

 of his friends or his superiors, as Cape Palliser, 

 Cape Colvile, Hawke's Bay, Banks' Peninsula. 



Cook, after his thirty-four-days' sail, entered 

 the great strait known as Queen Charlotte 

 Sound. Having landed, he climbed a hill, and 

 saw in front of him, across the Sound, another 

 land. The sea stretched west and east. The 



