APR. 1769 DEATH OF MR. BUCHAN 79 
what we saw yesterday. At noon went ashore, the people 
rather shy of us, as we must expect them to be, till by good 
usage we can gain anew their confidence. 
Poor Mr. Buchan, the young man whom I brought out 
as landscape and figure painter, was yesterday attacked by 
an epileptic fit; he was to-day quite insensible, and our 
surgeon gives me very little hopes of him. 
17th, At two this morning Mr. Buchan died; about nine 
everything was made ready for his interment, he being 
already so much changed that it would not be practicable 
to keep him even till night. Dr. Solander, Mr. Sporing, 
Mr. Parkinson, and some of the officers of the ship, attended 
his funeral. I sincerely regret him as an ingenious and 
good young man, but his loss to me is irretrievable; my 
airy dreams of entertaining my friends in England with the 
scenes that I am to see here have vanished. No account 
of the figures and dresses of the natives can be satisfactory 
unless illustrated by figures; had Providence spared him a 
month longer, what an advantage would it have been to my 
undertaking, but I must submit. 
Our two friends, the chiefs of the west, came this morning 
to see us. One I shall for the future call Lycurgus, from 
the justice he executed on his offending subjects on the 14th ; 
the other, from the large size of his body, I shall call Hercules. 
Each brought a hog and bread-fruit ready dressed as a present, 
for which they were presented in return with a hatchet and 
a nail apiece. Hercules’s present is the largest; he seems 
indeed to be the richest man. 
In the afternoon we all went ashore to measure out the 
ground for the tents, which done, Captain Cook and Mr. 
Green slept ashore in a tent erected for that purpose, 
after having observed an eclipse of one of the satellites of 
Jupiter. 
18th. The Indians brought down such great provision of 
cocoanuts and bread-fruit to-day that before night we were 
obliged to leave off buying, and acquaint them by signs that 
we should not want any more for two days. Everything 
was bought for beads, a bead about as large as a pea 
