216 CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF NEW ZEALAND cu. 1x 
than his great-grandfather, and relates to two large canoes 
which came from Olimaroa, one of the islands he has 
mentioned. Whether he is right, or whether this is a 
tradition of Tasman’s ships (which they could not well 
compare with their own by tradition, and which their 
warlike ancestors had told them they had destroyed), is 
difficult to say. Tupia has all along warned us not to put 
too much faith in anything these people tell us, “for,” says 
he, “they are given to lying; they told you that one of 
their people was killed by a musket and buried, which was 
absolutely false.” 
The doctor and I went ashore to-day, and fell in by 
accident with the most agreeable Indian family we had 
seen upon the coast, indeed the only one in which we 
have observed any order or subordination. It consisted of 
seventeen people; the head of it was a pretty boy of about 
ten years old, who, they told us, was the owner of the land 
about where we wooded. This is the only instance of 
property we have met with among these people. He and 
his mother (who mourned for her husband with tears of 
blood, according to their custom) sat upon mats, the rest sat 
round them: houses they had none, nor did they attempt 
to make for themselves any shelter against the inclemencies 
of the weather, which I suppose they by custom very easily 
endure. Their whole behaviour was so affable, obliging, and 
unsuspicious, that I should certainly have accepted their 
invitation to stay the night with them, were not the ship to 
sailin the morning. Most unlucky shall I always esteem it 
that we did not sooner make acquaintance with these people, 
from whom we might have learnt more in a day ef their 
manners and dispositions than from all we have yet seen. 
6th. Foul wind continued, but we contrived to get into 
the straits, which are to be called Cook’s Straits. Here we 
were becalmed, and almost imperceptibly drawn by the tide 
near the land. The lead was dropped, and gave seventy 
fathoms; soon after we saw an appearance like breakers, 
towards which we drove fast. It was now sunset, and 
night came on apace; the ship drove into the rough water, 
