Tupia told us, that there were several islands lying at different distances, and in different directions from this, between the south and the north-west; and that at the distance of three days sail to the north-east, there was an island called Manua, Bird-island: He seemed, however, most desirous that we should sail to the westward, and described several islands in that direction which he said he had visited: He told us that he had been ten or twelve days in going thither, and thirty in coming back, and that the pahie in which he had made the voyage, sailed much faster than the ship: Reckoning his pahie therefore to go at the rate of forty leagues a-day, which from my own observation I have great reason to think these boats will do, it would make four hundred leagues in ten days, which I compute to be the distance of Boscawen and Keppel’s Islands, discovered by Captain Wallis, westward of Ulietea, and therefore think it very probable that they were the islands he had visited. The farthest island that he knew any thing of to the southward, he said, lay at the distance of about two days sail from Oteroah, and was called Moutou; but he said that his father had told him there were islands to the southward of that: Upon the whole, I was determined to stand southward in search of a continent, but to spend no time in searching for islands, if we did not happen to fall in with them during our course.
[Footnote 47: These and other islands since discovered in the South Sea, will be properly laid down in a map to be afterwards given. The chart that accompanied the preceding volume was restricted to the state of geographical knowledge at the time of publishing Hawkesworth’s work, and is, of coarse, imperfect. But it was judged unadvisable to anticipate recent information.—E.]
The Passage from Oteroah to New Zealand; Incidents which happened on going a-shore there, and while the Ship lay in Poverty Bay.
We sailed from Oteroah on the 15th of August, and on Friday the 25th we celebrated the anniversary of our leaving England, by taking a Cheshire cheese from a locker, where it had been carefully treasured up for this occasion, and tapping a cask of porter, which proved to be very good, and in excellent order. On the 29th, one of the sailors got so drunk, that the next morning he died: We thought at first that he could not have come honestly by the liquor, but we afterwards learnt that the boatswain, whose mate he was, had in mere good-nature given him part of a bottle of rum.
On the 30th we saw the comet: At one o’clock in the morning it was a little above the horizon in the eastern part of the heavens; at about half an hour after four it passed the meridian, and its tail subtended an angle of forty-two degrees. Our latitude was 38 deg. 20’ S., our longitude, by log, 147 deg. 6’ W., and the variation of the needle, by the azimuth, 7 deg. 9’ E. Among others that observed the comet, was Tupia, who instantly cried out, that as soon as it should be seen by the people of Bolabola, they would kill the inhabitants of Ulietea, who would with the utmost precipitation fly to the mountains.