Joseph Banks. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ had made about that species; with him came on board 4 sucking fish, echineis remora Linn. who were preserved in spirit. Notwithstanding it was twelve O’Clock before the shark was taken, we made shift to have part of him stewd for dinner, and very good meat he was, at least in the opinion of Dr Solander and myself, tho some of the Seamen did not seem to be fond of him, probably from some prejudice founded on the species sometimes feeding on human flesh.

      Day after day the north-east trade carried them southwards, not leaving them until 3 October, when the Endeavour reached latitude 12^°14’ and the northern edge of the doldrums, the uncomfortable, oppressive zone of calms and squalls between the north-east and the south-east trades. The zone varies in position and width, and sometimes it was so broad and so windless that ships spent weeks or even months in getting across; this year however it was comparatively narrow – too narrow for Banks’s liking, for the doldrums provided him with wonderful opportunities for fishing, collecting and bathing – and they picked up the south-east trade well north of the equator on 17 October. A fine brisk breeze, but it brought a certain amount of unhappiness: in the first place Banks “trying as I have often (foolishly no doubt) done to exercise myself by playing tricks with two ropes in the Cabbin I got a fall which hurt me a good deal and alarmed me more, as the blow was on my head, and two hours after it I was taken with sickness at my stomach which made me fear some ill consequence.” He survived however and on 20 October he could write “Quite well today, employd in describing and attending the Draughtsmen.” But only the next day “the cat killed our bird M.Avida [a wagtail that had been captured in the rigging] who had lived with us ever since the 29th of Septr intirely on the flies which he caught for himself; he was hearty and in high health so that probably he might have livd a great while longer had fate been more kind.” And then the day after that “Trade had got more to the Southward than it usually has been, which was unlucky for me as I proposed to the Captain to touch for part of a day at least at the Island of Ferdinand Norronha, which he had no objection to if we could fetch it: that however seemd very uncertain.” Uncertain it was, alas, and the island had to wait for Darwin sixty-four years later; but there were whales, and there was the equator, which they cut on 25 October, with the usual ceremonies. Those who had not crossed before were required either to submit to being ducked three times from the yardarm or to pay a forfeit in rum or wine; Cook, Banks and Solander paid up, but a score of men and boys were dipped. All this was very cheerful and in the purest tradition, but what was a little unusual was that the names of the dogs and cat were down in the list. Banks may have compounded for his dogs, a greyhound and a nondescript bitch, but whether the cat paid or submitted does not appear.

      South of the equator they sailed into a wonderfully luminous sea, luminous in itself and luminous in its inhabitants – luminous jellyfish, luminous crabs, luminous barnacles, several of which they caught, finding them to their delight to be new species and even new genera. Southward still day after day, and Cook knew very well that the coast of Brazil lay no great way to the westward; he had no chronometer to fix his longitude, but in Dr Maskelyne’s recently completed lunar tables he had the next best thing, and he was one of the earliest scientific navigators to sail with them. Indeed, as Banks recorded on 8 November:

      At day break today we made the Land which Provd to be the Continent of S. America in Lat. 21.16; about ten we saw a fishing boat who told us that the country we saw belonged to the Captainship of Espirito Santo.

      Dr Solander and myself went on board this boat in which were 11 men (9 of whom were blacks) who all fished with lines. We bought of them the cheif part of their cargo consisting of Dolphins, two kinds of large Pelagick Scombers, Sea Bream and the fish calld in the West Indies Welshman, for which they made us pay 19 shillings and Sixpence. [It was enough for the whole ship’s company.]

      Soon after we came on board [Endeavour] a Sphynx^* was taken which proved to be quite a new one, and a small bird also who was the Tanagra Jacarini of Linn; it seemd however from Linnaeus’s description as well as Edwards’s and Brisson’s that neither of them had seen the Bird which was in reality a Loxia nitens.

      Now with varying breezes Cook took the Endeavour down the coast until 13 November, when “This Morn the Harbour of Rio Janeiro was right ahead about 2 leagues off.”

      As Banks said in a letter he wrote to Lord Morton, the President of the Royal Society, “On the 13th of this Month we arrivd here having saild up the river with a very light breeze and amusd ourselves with observing the shore on each side coverd with Palm trees a production which neither Dr Solander or myself had before seen and from which as well as every thing else which we saw promis’d ourselves the highest satisfaction.” But their promises were fallacious; with all the delights of a new flora and a new fauna within their reach they met with little but the bitterest frustration. It has been said that the Portuguese viceroy did not believe the Endeavour was a king’s ship, and that he supposed she was some kind of a pirate or smuggler; at all events he forbade anyone but the captain and the hands needed for watering and victualling to go ashore. Cook told him that the bark had to be given a heel to clean her sides and that it would be very unpleasant for people to live aboard in such conditions, and he reminded him of his predecessor’s traditionally kind and helpful reception of Byron in the Dolphin only a few years before; but neither this nor the repeated memorials that Cook and Banks sent his Excellency had any effect. The ship might victual and water, but her people were not to go ashore; and guards were placed to enforce the order.

      “Your lordship”, said Banks in another part of his letter, “can more easily imagine our situation than I can describe it all that we so ardently wishd to examine was in our sight we could almost but not quite touch them never before had I an adequate Idea of Tantalus’s punishment but I have sufferd it with all possible aggravations three weeks have I staid aboard the ship regardless of every inconvenience of her being heeld down &c. &c. which on any other occasion would have been no small hardships but small evils are totaly swallowd up in the Larger bodily pain bears no comparison to pure in short the torments of the damnd must be very severe indeed as doubtless my present ones Cannot nearly Equal them.”

      In spite of the very real danger of violence and imprisonment if nothing worse, Banks or his servants did in fact slip ashore occasionally and collect for a few hours, and he was able to botanize among the fodder brought for the livestock and the greenstuff brought for the bark’s company; but his list did not amount to more than about three hundred plants – very miserable poverty indeed when compared with the prodigious wealth only a few hundred yards away.

      It is pleasant to know that on 7 December, when the Endeavour sailed and when they were at last free of the viceroy and his troublesome guardboat, they “immediately resolved to go ashore on one of the Islands in the mouth of the harbour; their ran a great swell but we made shift to land on one called Raza, on which we gatherd many species of Plants and some insects. Alstromeria salsilla was here in tolerable plenty and Amaryllis mexicana, they were the most specious plants; we stayed till about 4 oClock and then came aboard the ship heartily tired, for the desire of doing as much as we could in a short time had made us all exert ourselves in a particular manner tho exposd to the hottest rays of the sun just at noonday.”

      This entry is followed by a long, conscientious but understandably jaundiced account of Rio gathered from those who like Monkhouse the surgeon were allowed to visit the town, but then Banks’s energy seems to have dwindled; as the Endeavour sailed into the cooler seas south of the tropic of Capricorn his journal amounted to little more than a couple of lines a day, generally saying that the wind was fair, sometimes that it was foul.

      December 17 Wind foul, blew rather fresh, so the ship heeld much which made our affairs go on rather uncomfortably.

      18 Calm at night, wind to the northward; we began to feel ourselves rather cool tho the thermometer was at 76 and shut two of the Cabbin windows, all of which have been open ever since we left Madeira.

      22 This morn quite calm. СКАЧАТЬ