1830. 



MATAVAI INDUSTRY. 



521 



their return the following year.* Curvature of the spine, or 

 a hump-back, never appeared until after Cook's visits ; and as 

 he had a hump-backed man in his ship, they attribute that 

 deformity to him. ' Ua' told me that I need not yet have any 

 anxiety about a westerly wind, or bad weather. " The wind 

 would be light and variable during that day, but on the mor- 

 row would draw round to the eastward, and two days after- 

 wards the sky would be nearly free from clouds."" Thanking 

 the old man with some presents, I returned on board ; and the 

 Beagle then got under weigh, ' swept"* out of the harbour, and, 

 by the sails and sweeps, alternately employed, regained her 

 former anchorage in Matavai Bay. In the course of a walk 

 among the cottages between Papawa and Matavai, I found 

 numerous tokens of industry, such as I had not expected in a 

 South Sea island. In an enervating climate, where abundance 

 of food is easily procured, one ought not to expect the con- 

 tented natives to distress their minds or bodies, with anxious and 

 industrious endeavours to supply wants which they do not feel, 

 in any degree like the inhabitants of cold or temperate cli- 

 mates ; yet the men of Otaheite undergo great fatigue, and 

 carry heavy burthens up and down most difficult tracks in the 



pointed by the Spanish g-overnment to make a survey of the coasts be- 

 tween the Brazils and the Tierra del Fucgo, Falkland Island, &c. 

 When the society of Jesuits was dissolved, he was sent back to Spain, 

 and after an absence of near forty j'tars, arrived in his native country. 

 Soon after his return to England he became domestic chaplain to Robert 

 Berkeley, esquire, of Spetchley, near Worcester, a Roman Catholic gen- 

 tleman of distinguished knowledge, most respectable character, and large 

 fortune. There he wrote the account of Patagonia, which has been quoted 

 in this volume, and was afterwards published, with a map corrected from 

 that of D'Anville, according to his own observations. Mr. Falkner pos- 

 sessed a very acute mind, a general knowledge, and most retentive me- 

 niory. Of his medical experience and practice, I have heard physicians 

 of eminence speak in the highest terms of commendation. His manners, 

 as may be supposed from the tenor of his life, were at once singular and 

 inoffensive : and he retained somewhat of his Indian habits to the last. 

 He died, as I have been informed, about the year 1781."— Colnett's Voy- 

 age, page 25, note, 



* Spanish ships, from Lima, in 177'l-6. 



