Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 - No. 0421
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[Page 421]
Manners & Customs of South Sea Islands
know what she had done
After their meals & in the heat of the day they often sleep middle ag'd people especialy the better sort of whoom seem to spend most of their time in eating or sleeping The young boys & girls are uncommonly lively & active & the old people generaly more so than the middle ag'd ones which perhaps is owing to the excessive venery which the heat of the climate & their dissolute manners tempt them to diversions they have but few shooting with the bow is the cheif one I have seen at Otahite which is confind almost intirely to the cheifs the shoot for distance only with arrows unfledgd kneeling upon one knee & dropping the bow from their hands at the instant of the arrows parting from it I measurd a shot that Tubourai Tamite made 274 yards yet he complaind that as the bow & arrows were bad he could not shoot so far as he ought to have done. At Ulhietea bows were less common but the people amusd themselves by throwing a kind of Javelin 8 or 9 feet long at a mark which they did with a good deal of force & dexterity often striking the body of a plantain tree their mark in the very center but I could never observe that either these or the Otahite people stakd any thing but seemd to contend merely for the honour of victory
[In right margin]
Compare with the acct referred to p. 321 & 322.