Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 - No. 0353
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[Page 353]
Otahite
July 1769
as the sight which was to reward our hazard was nothing but a grove of Vae trees which we had often seen before.
In the whole course of this walk the rocks were almost constantly bare to the view so that I had a most excellent opportunity of searching for any apearance of minerals but saw not the smallest The stones every where shewd manifest signs of having been at some time or other burnd indeed I have not seen a specimen of stone yet in the Island that has not the visible marks of fire upon it small peices indeed of the hatchet stone may be without them but I have peices of the same species burnd almost to a pumice the very clay upon the hills gives manifest signs of fire possibly the Island owes its original to a volcano which now no longer burns or Theoreticaly speaking for the sake of those authors who balance this globe by a proper weight of continent placed near about these latitudes that so nesscessary continent may have been sunk by Dreadfull earthquakes & Volcanos 2 or 300 fathoms under the sea the tops of the highest mountains only still remaing above water in the shape of Islands an undoubted proof that such a thing now exists to the great emolument of their theory which was it not for this proof would have been already totaly demolishd by the Course our ship made from Cape Horn to this Island
4. Very little company today I employd myself in planting a large quantity of the seeds of Water melons Oranges Lemons limes &c. which I had brought from Rio de Janeiro they were planted on both sides of the fort in as many varieties of soil as I could chuse.