Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 - No. 0351
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[Page 351]
Otahite
July 1769
telling us at the same time that when the fruit in the flats faild this became ready for use which had been by them planted upon the hills to preserve the succession The quantity was they informd us much less than was in the low land & not sufficient by any means to supply all the interval of scarcity when this was exhausted they must live upon ahee nuts Plantains & Vae a wild plantain which grows very high up in the mountains how the Dolphins who were here much about this time came to find so great plenty of Breadfruit upon the trees is to me a mystery unless perhaps the seasons of this fruit alter as for their having met with a much larger supply of hoggs fowls &c. than we have done I can most readily account for that as we have found by constant experience that these people may be frightned into any thing They have often describd to us the terrour which the Dolphins guns put them into & when we ask how many people were killd they number names upon their fingers some ten some twenty some thirty & then say worrow worow the same word as is usd for a flock of birds or a shoal of fish the Journals also serve to confirm this opinion. "When say then towards the latter end of our time provisions were scarce a party of men were sent towards Eparre to get hoggs &c. an office which they had not the smallest dificulty in performing for the people as they went along the shore drove out their hoggs to meet them & would not allow them to pay any thing for them."