MERCURY BAY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LVII, Issue 10147, 9 August 1929, Page 3

MERCURY BAY

CAPTAIN COOK'S JOURNALS

“Koran,” writing in the Thames i Star, says: Some very interesting I reading may be culled by those 1 witli sufficient leisure from the < very minute and detailed accounts I given by Captain Cook to the Admiralty of that day. The writer, < by the courtesy of the librarian of the Auckland Public Library, was ■ enabled to peruse the original J journals of Cook, though the style s of printing of that date, with its 1 curious “f’s” instead of “s’s” are very puzzling and curious in their E effect; thus “fish” is written ’ “fifh.” The practise of medicine I of that date was also evidently ; of the rough and ready order, with ‘ the surgery a shade worse. We J are told that Cook himself,fi desper- , atcly ill, was fed on broth made from the carcase of a dog be- ] longing to- Mr Banks, the scien- ‘ tist of the expedition, who gladly , slew his favourite to save the life ’ of his chief. One reflects that ’ the gastronomy of Cook and his crew was almost capable of anything—they ate propoises, seals, pen guins, and even Polar bears when they were off the coasts of the Arctic, though they do admit that the latter were “rather fishy.” The dread scourge of scurvy was an ever-present nightmare to Cook, who describes his efforts to combat its effect by gathering on the New Zealand coasts what he calls “scurvy grass and celery,” but what these are it would be difficult 1 to say unless the well-known rauriki and some forms of dwarf cab-bage-tree are indicated. Shags, too, came into their culinary resources, for we read ■ that in an expedition by one of the ship’s boats up what he calls “Mangrove Elver,” past the present site of Whitianga, some four miles up the stream they came on a “shag rookery” and in their quaint phraseology they “took about forty of them and dined upon the spot.” How shags ; would strike the fancy of present-day persons as ? an epicurean repast is a question I calling for no guess-work as to the answer. Many of the names given by Cook to prominent points about Mercury Bay and the drawing of the artists of the expedition render various localities, even after this lapse of time, easily identifiable. Thus the Alderman Islands lying to the- south are mapped by Cook and called the “Court of Alderman.” “The Mercury Isles” arc. to-day the “Great Mercury” and the “Red Mercury,” while “Mercury Point” is evidently the projecting point beyond Opito Bay and opposite the “Great Mercury.” “Tower Rock” and “Castle Isle,” both so named by Cook, still retain the names Captain Cook gave them. He also shows by illustration as well as Jjy descriptive letters the “Hole in the Wall” as having a fighting pa of small dimensions built above its arch with ! palisading and whares drawn very i truly and clearly. He gives, too, 1 sunken rocks and soundings, ; though the latter seem from the experience of the writer to beshallower than those existing at the entrance to Mercury Bay at the present time by a good number of fathoms. _ Perhaps, however, the great navigator and map maker chose to err on a safe and , conservative basis from careful i seamanship, or maybe a little of i the native inborn Yorkshire cau--1 tion.