CAPTAIN COOK’S SECOND VOYAGE.

S74

and many other forts. Thefe are to be found in great numbers about this bay, on thefmall rocks and ifles near the fea-coad. .

They found here five different kinds of ducks, lomeof which Captain Cook did notrecollect to have any where feen before. The larged are as big as a Mufcovy duck,with a very beautiful variegated plumage, on which account they called it the PaintedDuck ; both male and female have a large white fpotoneach wing; the head and neckof the latter is white, but all the other feathers, as well as thofe on the head and neck ofthe drake, are of a dark variegated colour.

For three or four days after they arrived, and were clearing the woods to fet up theirtents, &c. a four-footed animal was feen by three or four of the failors, but as no twogave the fame defcription of it, it is not eafy to fay of what kind it is. All, however,agreed, that it was about the fize of a cat, with Ihort legs, and of a moufe colour. Oneof .the feamen, and he who had the bell view of it, faid it had a bufhy tail, and was themod like a jackall of any animal he knew. The mod probable conjecture is, that it isof a new fpecies.

The mod mifchievous animals here are the fmall black fand-flies, which are very nu-merous, and exceedingly troublefome. Wherever they bite they caufe a fwelling, andfiich intolerable itching, that it is not poflible to refrain from fcratching, which at ladbrings on ulcers like the fmall-pox.

The inhabitants of this bay are of the fame race of people with thofe in the other partsof this country, fpeak the fame language, and obferve nearly the fame cudoms. Thefeindeed feem to have a cudom of making prefents before they receive any ; in whichthey come nearer the Otaheitans than the red of their countrymen. What could inducethree or four families (for there does not appear to be more) to feparate themfelves f°far from the fociety of the red of their fellow creatures, is not eafy to guefs. Few asthey are, they live not in perfect amity one family with another. For if they did, whydo they not form themfelves into fome fociety ? a thing not only natural to man, butobferved even by the brute creation.

After leaving Dufky Bay, they deered for Queen Charlotte’s Sound, where they ex-pected to find, the Adventure. In this paffage they met with nothing remarkable °rworthy of notice, till the 17th at four o’clock in the afternoon, when the Iky becamefuddenly obfcured by dark denfe clouds, and feemed to forbode much wind. Prefentlyafter fix water-fpouts were feen. Four rofe and fpent themfelves between them andthe land; that is to the fouth-wed, the fifth was without them ; the fixth app earein the fouth-wed, at the didance of two or three miles from them. Its progreffiy emotion was to the north-ead, not in a draight but in a crooked line, and palled wkhmfifty yards.of the dern, without their feeling any of its effects. The diameter of * ebafe of this fpout was judged to be about fifty or fixty feet; that is, the fea within thisfpace was agitated, and foamed up to a great height. From this a tube or round bodywas formed, by which the water, or air, or both, was carried in a fpiral dream up tot eclouds. Some of the failors faid, they faw a bird in the one near them ; which vvaSwhirled round like a fly of a jack as it was carried upwards. During the time the efpouts laded, they had, now and then, light puffs of wind from all points of the comp 3 , s ‘From the afcending motion of the bird, and feveral other circumdances, it is very P aI !f!that thefe fpouts are caufed by whirlwinds ; and that the water in them was violeiF/hurried upwards, and did not defcend from the clouds as is generally fuppofed. t n ~fiid appearance of them is by the violent agitation and riling up of the water ; and V? e ,lently after, you fee a round column or tube forming from the clouds above,