470 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



seemed to be in the highest possible spirits. During the night, 

 however, they gave way to grief, sighed often and deeply, and sang 

 low and solemn tunes like psalms. The next morning they were 

 brilliantly decorated with beads, bracelets, and necklaces, and 

 displayed in this guise to their countrymen on shore. The nego- 

 tiation totally failed : the boys were sent home, and the ship 

 stood away from the inhospitable shore on Wednesday, the 11th. 



Cook coasted along the island to the south, now alarming the 

 natives by a single musket-shot, now dispersing a hostile fleet of 

 a dozen well-armed canoes by a discharge of a four-pounder 

 loaded with grape-shot, but aimed wide of the mark. At another 

 time Tupia would be ordered to acquaint a party of shouting and 

 dancing savages that the strangers had weapons which, like 

 thunder, would instantaneously destroy them. Cook was badly 

 worsted in a bargain he made with a species of New Zealand 

 confidence-man, who came under the stern and proposed to trade. 

 Cook offered him a piece of red baize for his bear-skin coat. The 

 savage accepted. Cook passed over the article, upon which the 

 islander paddled rapidly away, taking with him the baize and the 

 bear-skin. An attempt made by a party of the natives to kidnap 

 Tupia's servant, Tayeto, — a Tahitian like himself, — and which 

 was near being successful, induced Cook to name the deep 

 indentation of the sea at this point of the coast, Kidnapper's 

 Bay. 



Somewhat farther to the south they found the natives more 

 disposed to be friendly, and Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander went 

 ashore and shot several birds of exquisite beauty. Some of the 

 ship's company returned at night with their noses besmeared with 

 red ochre and oil, — a circumstance which Cook explains by saying 

 that " the ladies paint their faces with substances which are gene- 

 rally fresh and wet upon their cheeks and were easily transferred 

 to the noses of those who chose to salute them. These ladies," 

 he goes on to say, " were as great coquettes as any of the most 

 fashionable dames in Europe, and the young ones as skittish as 



