inviting us in; they had heard of us from our last friends. We landed, and while we stayed they were most perfectly civil, as indeed they have always been where we were known, but never where we were not. We proceeded up the river and soon met with another town with but few inhabitants. Above this the banks were completely clothed with the finest timber[1] my eyes ever beheld, of a tree we had before seen, but only at a distance, in Poverty Bay and Hawke's Bay. Thick woods of it were everywhere upon the banks, every tree as straight as a pine, and of immense size, and the higher we went the more numerous they were. About two leagues from the mouth we stopped and went ashore. Our first business was to measure one of these trees. The woods were swampy, so we could not range far; we found one, however, by no means the largest we had seen, which was 19 feet 8 inches[2] in circumference, and 89 feet in height without a branch. But what was most remarkable was that it, as well as many more that we saw, carried its thickness so truly up to the very top, that I dare venture to affirm that the top, where the lowest branch took its rise, was not a foot less in diameter than where we measured it, which was about 8 feet from the ground. We cut down a young one of these trees; the wood proved heavy and solid, too much so for masts, but it would make the finest plank in the world, and might possibly by some art be made light enough for masts, as the pitch-pine in America (to which our carpenter likened this timber) is said to be lightened by tapping.
Up to this point the river has kept its depth and very little decreased in breadth; the captain was so much pleased with it that he resolved to call it the Thames. It was now time for us to return; the tide turning downwards gave us warning, so away we went, and got out of the river into the bay before it was dark. We rowed for the ship as fast as we
- ↑ Podocarpus dacrydioides, A. Cunn.
- ↑ The dimensions were left blank in Banks's Journal. In Wharton's Cook, p. 159, it is stated to be 19 feet 8 inches at 6 feet above the ground, and its length from the root to the first branch 89 feet; and it tapered so little that Cook judged it to contain 356 feet of solid timber, clear of the branches.
