Chapter VI.



LAPEROUSE IN THE PACIFIC.


On the 6th December, 1787, the expedition made the eastern end of the
Navigator Islands, that is, the Samoan Group. As the ships approached,
a party of natives were observed squatting under cocoanut trees.
Presently sixteen canoes put off from the land, and their occupants,
after paddling round the vessels distrustfully, ventured to approach
and proffer cocoanuts in exchange for strings of beads and strips of
red cloth. The natives got the better of the bargain, for, when they
had received their price, they hurried off without delivering their own
goods. Further on, an old chief delivered an harangue from the shore,
holding a branch of Kava in his hand. "We knew from what we had read of
several voyages that it was a token of peace; and throwing him some
pieces of cloth we answered by the word 'TAYO,' which signified
'friend' in the dialect of the South Sea Islands; but we were not
sufficiently experienced to understand and pronounce distinctly the
words of the vocabularies we had extracted from Cook."

Nearly all the early navigators made a feature of compiling
vocabularies of native words, and Cook devoted particular care to this
task. Dr. Walter Roth, formerly protector of Queensland aboriginals
a trained observer, has borne testimony as recently as last year
(in THE TIMES, December 29, 1911) that a list of words collected from
Endeavour Strait blacks, and "given by Captain Cook, are all more or
less recognisable at the present day." But Cook's spellings were