FEB. 1770 COOK’S STRAITS 215 
place where we were shooting shags, and invited us to join 
the rest of them, twenty or thirty in number, men, women, 
and children, dogs, etc. We went, and were received with 
all possible demonstrations of friendship, if the numberless 
hugs and kisses we got from both sexes, old and young, in 
return for our ribbons and beads may be accounted such. 
26th. Went to-day to take another view of our new 
straits, as the captain was not quite sure of the westernmost 
end. We found a hill in a tolerably convenient situation, 
and climbing it, saw the strait quite open, and four or five 
leagues wide. We then erected a small monument of stone, 
such as five stout men could do in half an hour, and laid in 
it musket balls, beads, shot, etc., so that if perchance any 
Europeans should find and pull it down, they will be sure 
it is not of Indian workmanship. 
5th February. Our old man, Topaa, was on board, and 
Tupia asked him many questions concerning the land, etc. 
His answers were nearly as follows: “That the straits 
we had seen from the hills were a passage into the 
eastern sea; that the land to the south consisted of two or 
several islands round which their canoes might sail in three 
or four days; that he knew of no other great land than 
that we had been upon (Aehie no Mauwe), of which Tera 
Whitte was the southern part ; that he believed his ancestors 
were not born there, but came originally from Heawije”* 
(from whence Tupia and the islanders also derive their 
origin), “which lay to the northwards where were many lands; 
that neither himself, his father, nor his grandfather had ever 
heard of ships as large as this being here before, but that 
they have a tradition of two large vessels, much larger than 
theirs, which some time or other came here, and were totally 
destroyed by the inhabitants, and all the people belonging 
to them killed.” 
This last Tupia says is a very old tradition, much older 
1 Cook’s Straits. 
2 The Maoris are by some authorities supposed to have originally come 
from Hawaii, the direction of which agrees very fairly with that given by the 
natives to Banks. The Sandwich Islands really lie N.N.E. from New 
Zealand. 
