PREFACE ix 
tion of our knowledge of that interesting people. And 
when it is considered that the information obtained was at 
comparatively few points, and those on the coast only, the 
fulness and accuracy of the description of the New Zea- 
landers, even as viewed in the light of modern knowledge, 
are very remarkable. Nor should it be forgotten that it was 
to the drawings made by the artists whom Banks took in 
his suite that the public is indebted for the magnificent 
series of plates that adorn Hawkesworth’s account of the 
voyage. Still another motive is, that Banks’s Journal gives 
a life-like portrait of a naturalist’s daily occupation at sea 
and ashore nearly one hundred and thirty years ago ; and thus 
supplements the history of a voyage which, for extent and im- 
portance of geographic and hydrographic results, was unique 
and “to the English nation the most momentous voyage of 
discovery that has ever taken place” (Wharton’s Cook, Pre- 
face), and which has, moreover, directly led to the prosperity 
of the Empire; for it was owing to the reports of Cook and 
Banks, and, it is believed, to the representations of the latter 
on the advantages of Botany Bay as a site for a settlement, 
that Australia was first colonised. 
The following brief history of the Journal itself is in- 
teresting. On Sir J. Banks’s death without issue in 1820, 
his property and effects passed to the Hugessen (his wife’s) 
family, with the exception of the library, herbarium, and 
the lease of the house in Soho Square. These were left to 
his librarian, the late eminent botanist, Robert Brown, F.R.S., 
with the proviso that after that gentleman’s death, the 
library and herbarium were to go to the British Museum. 
Banks’s papers and correspondence, including the Journal 
of the voyage of the Endeavour, were then placed by the 
trustees in Mr. Brown’s hands, with the object of his writ- 
ing a Life of Banks, which he had agreed to do. Age and 
infirmities, however, interfered with his prosecution of this 
