Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  Isabella Godin was not dead. For nine days she wandered through the jungle, eating grubs and fruit, before she met three Indians who led her, in January 1770, to a Jesuit mission. Word reached Don Pedro, who returned upriver to escort her to Cayenne where she was finally reunited with her husband. It took two years to arrange a ship to France, with the result that it was 1773 before the Godins finally came home. Thirty-eight years after it had set out, Condamine’s expedition had officially terminated.

  By this time Condamine was one of the most famous scientists in France, having made a name for himself not only as an expert on South America but as a champion of vaccination* and, in his determination for the world to adopt a standard unit of measurement, as the father of the metric system. He was in poor health, however. Deaf and paralysed, he died in 1774.

  IN SEARCH OF THE GREAT SOUTHERN CONTINENT

  James Cook (1768–79)

  The world’s astronomers calculated that in 1769 the planet Venus would pass across the face of the sun. This rare event was of considerable importance in that, if the transit was observed simultaneously from several points on the globe, it would be possible to determine the distances between the earth and its surrounding planets – measurements that were of interest both to scientists and to navigators. There had been one such transit in 1761, but its observation had been thwarted by bad weather. The next transit not being until 1874, it was vital that the 1769 readings be a success. As part of an international programme, involving Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Russia, Britain proposed the erection of observatories in three places: North Cape, Hudson’s Bay and an undetermined spot in the Pacific – perhaps the newly discovered island of Otaheite (Tahiti) that had entered the charts as King George III Island. Of these three the last was the most promising, partly because the skies there were expected to be clear, partly too because the Pacific had yet to be properly explored. The man who led such an expedition would have to have a taste for discovery, be an expert navigator and surveyor, and be willing to sail halfway round the globe, if not to circumnavigate it. As it happened, just such a man was to hand, an officer who had recently returned from a survey of Newfoundland, who had proven himself in peace and war, and who had impressed the Admiralty as a level-headed, intelligent and humane leader of men. Thus, Lieutenant James Cook took command of the 368-ton Whitby barque Endeavour on 25 May 1768 for a voyage that would make him one of Britain’s most famous explorers.

  The Endeavour left Plymouth on 26 August 1768 carrying 18 months’ stores, 22 cannon (ten carriage, 12 swivel), a crew of 85, and seven scientists: a botanist, Daniel Solander; two draughtsmen, Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan; a secretary, Herman Spöring; a surgeon, William Monkhouse; an astronomer, William Green, who would be responsible along with Cook for the celestial observations; and, in charge of them all, a young botanist named Joseph Banks, who came aboard with four servants, two greyhounds and an unquenchable fount of enthusiasm. No greater contrast could be imagined than that between Banks and Cook. Banks was a wealthy, well-educated, irrepressibly inquisitive 25-year-old, whose charm and ability had already secured him membership of Britain’s Royal Society. By contrast, Cook was 40, the self-taught son of a labourer, who had worked his way through the ranks and had a steadfast, commonsensical approach to life. Whereas Banks had been once to Newfoundland, Cook was widely travelled, had seen danger and knew how to overcome it. He may not have enjoyed the same formal education as Banks, but he was by no means stupid, as his appointment to the expedition proved. Yet, despite the dissimilarities in their background and temperament, they made a surprisingly effective team.

  The Endeavour sailed down the Atlantic, stopping at Madeira, where Banks and Solander dug up 700 plant specimens in the space of five days, and then Rio de Janeiro – again, the two botanists procured large quantities of plants, slipping ashore by night to confound the Portuguese guards placed around their ship – before entering the sub-Antarctic seas off the Falklands. By the second week in January 1769 they were in the Straits of Le Maire with Tierra del Fuego to the north and the Pacific beckoning enticingly to the west. Thus far, Cook had paid little attention to Banks’s plant-gathering activities, being more concerned with keeping his ship sound and its crew healthy. Fresh meat had been taken aboard at every stop, along with quantities of sauerkraut to combat scurvy. But the sailors, accustomed to a diet of salt beef and hard tack, had refused the healthier provisions. It took constant supervision – and the occasional 12 lashes – before they accepted the regime. Once again, at Cape of Good Success on the north side of the Straits of Le Maire, Cook was too busy taking on water, wood and food to heed Banks’s latest plan. When the eager botanist asked permission to explore Tierra del Fuego he gave him his vague blessing and continued with the business at hand.

  On 16 January 1769 Banks led the entire scientific personnel of the Endeavour on a trip ‘to penetrate into the countrey as far as we could’.* With two seamen and Banks’s four servants to carry their equipment, the 12 men trudged through groves of evergreen Antarctic beech towards the mountains, from where they hoped to obtain an overview of the area. Previous explorers had warned that the Fuegan climate was treacherous, but Banks took no notice of this. The weather was ‘vastly fine much like a sunshiny day in May,’ he wrote, ‘so that neither heat nor cold was troublesome to us nor were there any insects to molest us, which made me think the travelling much better than what I had before met with in Newfoundland’. It was such a nice day that he had no doubt they would be there and back before nightfall. In his confidence he packed neither a tent nor any provisions beyond a cold lunch and a bottle of rum. On they went, ‘pressing through pathless thickets, always going up hill’, until in the mid-afternoon they were greeted by a green plain, little more than a mile across, beyond which rose the mountains. But to their dismay the plain was not grass but a mass of waist-high dwarf birch set in glutinous moorland. The birch, Banks wrote, ‘were so stubborn that they could not be bent out of the way, but at every step the leg must be lifted over them and on being plac’d again on the ground was almost sure to sink above the anckles in bog. No travelling could possibly be worse than this.’

  They were two-thirds of the way through the birch bog when Buchan, the draughtsman, had an epileptic fit. Banks built a fire to comfort him and, leaving most of the party behind, continued with Solander, Green and Monkhouse. The mountains, he was pleased to find, had plants of an alpine nature. Less pleasingly, however, the climate was alpine too. Buffeted by strong winds, and with snow falling, they made their way back to the plateau, collected Buchan, and headed for the shelter of the beech woods. But the weather followed them and, halfway to safety, ‘the cold seemd to have at once an effect infinitely beyond what I have ever experienced’. Solander collapsed and, saying he needed a few moments rest, fell asleep in the snow. A servant, Tom Richmond, did likewise. When Banks tried to rouse him, ‘[he] answerd that there he would lay and dye’. Banks split the party: his servant, George Dalton, accompanied by a seaman, was to remain with Richmond; the rest were to go ahead to build a fire; he, meanwhile, would drag Solander in their wake. As soon as the main group were safely in the woods, he ordered another two men to rescue the three who were still in the birch bog. They returned after half an hour, saying ‘that they had been all round the place shouting and hallowing but could not get any answer’. Banks soon found why: the bottle of rum was missing; Richmond and his two guardians were too drunk to hear anything. The seaman did, eventually, stagger back to camp and was able to lead Banks to where Richmond and Dalton lay. But they were too comatose to walk, and in the bitter cold, unable to build a fire, Banks could only cover them with branches and hope they survived the night. He wrote: ‘In these employments we had spent an hour and a half expos’d to the most penetrating cold I ever felt as well as continual snow. Peter Briscoe, another servant of mine, now began to complain and before we came to the fire became very ill but got there at last almost dead with cold. Now might our situation truely be
calld terrible: of twelve our original number were 2 already past all hopes, one more was so ill that tho he was with us I had very little hopes of his being able to walk in the morning, and another very likely to relapse into his fitts either before we set out or in the course of our journey.’

  The blizzard continued all night, and at dawn, Banks recorded, ‘we had no hopes now but of staying here as long as the snow lasted and how long that would be God alone knew’. In fact, it lasted only a few hours more, and by 6.00 a.m. they were able to trek back for the invalids. Richmond and Dalton were dead. The remainder then cooked a vulture they had shot the previous day, which gave them three mouthfuls of meat apiece, and headed back to the ship. It took three hours to reach the Endeavour, which was considerably less than the journey out. This, they discovered to their chagrin, was because instead of marching directly inland they had trudged in a lengthy semicircle through the forest. Once aboard, they collapsed into bed – all that is, save Banks, who took the opportunity, ‘considering our short Stay & the Uncertainty of the weather, to cast about with a seine net for marine specimens’. Only when the task was complete did he look back on the events of the last two days. ‘With what pleasure ... did we congratulate each other on our safety no one can tell who has not been in such circumstances.’

  The incident was not, in itself, particularly remarkable. Compared to the more extreme sufferings endured by others in the polar regions, the journey had been a bagatelle. That two people had died, however, was a salutary reminder that in unknown territory even a day trip could be hazardous. The experience did not check Banks’s enthusiasm one jot; but in future he would act with more caution.

  The Endeavour sailed on, Banks trawling the seas and scanning the skies for specimens. He caught a shark and was delighted to find it was pregnant: when its offspring were prised from the womb they swam energetically in a tub of water. He shot everything that flew overhead, including several albatross. In his journal he described how best to cook such a bird: ‘The way of dressing them is thus: Skin them over night and soak their carcases in Salt water till morn, then parboil them and throw away the water, then stew them well with very little water and when sufficiently tender serve them up with a Savoury sauce.’ They continued in this fashion until 13 April, when Banks wrote: ‘This morn early came to anchor in Port Royal bay King George the third’s Island.’ They had arrived at Tahiti.

  Cook was not the first European to visit the island. In 1767 Lieutenant Samuel Wallis of the Dolphin had spent time there, leaving a number of cannonballs, a goose and a turkey as mementos of his stay. And a year later he had been followed by Comte Louis Antoine de Bougainville* in the Boudeuse and Etoile, on a voyage that took him to the Falklands and then in a great loop through the Pacific to Tahiti, New Guinea and the north-east coast of New Holland (as Australia was then called). Cook was unaware of Bougainville’s visit, but several of his crew had sailed with Wallis and they told extravagant tales of Tahiti’s delights: it had a hierarchical society with kings and queens just like at home, the scenery was beautiful, there were fleets of impressive canoes, the houses were magnificent, the roast pork splendid and the natives exceptionally friendly. It was a perfect example of the Romantic dream as imagined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a realm of’noble savages’.

  As Cook sailed along the coast searching for a place to build an observatory, he found the island was not quite as described. Its hierarchy had been fragmented by recent wars, and a sense of uncertainty was prevalent. The grand houses had fallen into ruin, and there was little in the way of roast pork, there being only a few runty pigs. The natives, far from being noble, had a regrettable tendency to thieve. But they were, as reported, remarkably hospitable and would do anything for the price of a few nails. Banks wrote that ‘the ladies ... shewed us all kind of civilities our situation could admit of, but as there were no places of retirement, the houses being entirely without walls, we had not the opportunity of putting their politeness to every test that maybe some of us would not have failed to have done had circumstances been more favourable’. Not everyone was so squeamish. The ladies being willing, the crew having been a long time at sea, and the Endeavour being a ship that carried a great many nails, Cook became a reluctant pimp. To ensure that his nails did not become debased he regulated their issue so that a man could only draw a certain number, rather than ‘leave it to it to everyone’s fancy which could not fail to bring on confusion’. Most men took ‘wives’, and Banks, after one ceremony, was entertained by a girl ‘quickly unveiling all her charms’. Another girl soon appeared. ‘I could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour,’ he wrote levelly.

  In these libertine circumstances time passed quickly enough: the transit of Venus was observed successfully on 3 June; Banks and Solander gathered countless specimens; Cook became friendly with the local rulers; and if the pigs were not at their best, there was enough fish, breadfruit and vegetables to provide a healthy diet. The scientists did not delve into the Tahitians’ intricate social and religious structure or the restrictions of taboo, but they recorded a few ethnological details. One of these was the practice of tattooing – Banks watched with fascination as a young girl’s buttocks were pierced and inked; several of the crew underwent the same procedure, but on their arms. Another was a bizarre amusement whereby the ‘Indians’, as Banks called them, paddled into the sea and rode back on the waves, using broken canoes as a platform ‘in a manner truly surprizing’. It was the first recorded example of surfing. ‘We stood admiring this very wonderful scene for full half an hour,’ Banks wrote, ‘in which time none of these actors attempted to come ashore but all seemd most highly entertained with their strange diversion.’ They also discovered a temple platform – the largest in Polynesia – that was built of, and paved with, stones cut to a perfect fit. ‘Its size and workmanship almost exceeds belief, I shall set it down exactly,’ Banks marvelled: ‘[It is] not smooth at the sides but formed into 11 steps, each of these 4 feet in hight making in all 44 feet, its length 267 its breadth 71. Every one of these steps were formd of one course of white coral stones most neatly squard and polishd ... The whole made part of one side of a spatious area which was walled in with stone, the size of this which seemd to be intended for a square was 118 by 110 paces ... It is almost beyond beleif that Indians could raise so large a structure without assistance of Iron tools to shape their stones or mortar to join them ... it is done tho, and almost as firmly as a European workman would have done it.’ Beyond ascertaining that it was used for religious ceremonies, burials and sacrifice, they did not inquire further.

  Against these gentlemanly peregrinations, their stay had its darker side. There were several contretemps involving theft, during one of which Cook’s men shot and killed a Tahitian, and wounded several others. The Venusian observatory was less a scientific base than a fort, manned by armed patrols and equipped with cannon, both swivel and fixed. (The Tahitians still managed to steal several items, including one of the more vital pieces of equipment, later returned.) The draughtsman Buchan died of epilepsy, and John Reading, the bosun’s mate, expired after swallowing three pints of rum.* There were arguments over women: at one point Banks and the surgeon Monkhouse were ready to fight a duel. The butcher got drunk and threatened to cut the throat of a chief’s wife if she didn’t give him the axe he wanted to kill her with. (He was thrashed on deck, to the dismay of the Tahitian women who were invited to witness his punishment.) An outbreak of syphilis – or perhaps the related disease yaws – did nothing to ease ship-shore relations. And two marines fled with their ‘wives’ into the mountains, upon which Cook felt it necessary to take several notables hostage until the deserters were returned. The Tahitians responded by kidnapping a midshipman and three marines. In turn, Cook sent an even stronger force of marines with the message that if every Briton, including the deserters, was not handed over forthwith, the consequences would be dire. His display of arms and the promise that ‘the chiefs would suffer’ did the trick. Things could ha
ve been handled more smoothly but, by the standards of the time, the Endeavour’s visitation had been relatively benign. When, at the end of his stay, Cook assured the Tahitians ‘of our friendly disposition’, he was not joking. And the Tahitians accepted his good wishes at face value. After all, the encounter could have been a lot worse.

  The Endeavour sailed on 13 July, carrying with it a priest named Tupia and his servant Tiata. The two Tahitians came of their own accord, and Banks considered Tupia quite a catch. ‘I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity,’ he mused, ‘as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tigers at a larger expense than he will ever put me to.’ More practically, he would be useful as a guide and interpreter on the voyage, and his knowledge of the region would be most helpful to any navigators following in Cook’s wake.

  Cook’s formal instructions had been simply to observe the transit of Venus. However, he had also been given a secret set of orders that he opened only when the Endeavour was on its way. These stated that, once he had finished with Venus, he was to proceed south in search of the great continent that was rumoured to lie at the bottom of the world. There was no reliable evidence that such a continent existed; but cartographers and natural philosophers were convinced that it did on the grounds that, in order to harmonize the globe, there must be a southern landmass to balance those that existed in the north.* Cook’s orders, therefore, instructed him to sail as far as 40° S in search of this Terra Australis Incognita. He did not believe the continent existed (though Banks did) and, having gone as far south as his orders instructed without spying land, he examined those orders again. They read: ‘If you should fail of discovering the Continent... you will upon falling in with New Zealand carefully observe the latitude and the longitude in which the land is situated.’