[Footnote 47: These and other islands since discovered in the South Sea, will be properly laid down in a map to be afterwards given. The chart that accompanied the preceding volume was restricted to the state of geographical knowledge at the time of publishing Hawkesworth's work, and is, of coarse, imperfect. But it was judged unadvisable to anticipate recent information.--E.]
_The Passage from Oteroah to New Zealand; Incidents which happened on going a-shore there, and while the Ship lay in Poverty Bay_.
We sailed from Oteroah on the 15th of August, and on Friday the 25th we celebrated the anniversary of our leaving England, by taking a Cheshire cheese from a locker, where it had been carefully treasured up for this occasion, and tapping a cask of porter, which proved to be very good, and in excellent order. On the 29th, one of the sailors got so drunk, that the next morning he died: We thought at first that he could not have come honestly by the liquor, but we afterwards learnt that the boatswain, whose mate he was, had in mere good-nature given him part of a bottle of rum.
On the 30th we saw the comet: At one o'clock in the morning it was a little above the horizon in the eastern part of the heavens; at about half an hour after four it passed the meridian, and its tail subtended an angle of forty-two degrees. Our latitude was 38° 20' S., our longitude, by log, 147° 6' W., and the variation of the needle, by the azimuth, 7° 9' E. Among others that observed the comet, was Tupia, who instantly cried out, that as soon as it should be seen by the people of Bolabola, they would kill the inhabitants of Ulietea, who would with the utmost precipitation fly to the mountains.
On the 1st of September, being in the latitude of 40° 22' S. and longitude 147° 29' W, and there not being any signs of land, with a heavy sea from the westward, and strong gales, I wore, and stood back to the northward, fearing that we might receive such damage in our sails and rigging, as would hinder the prosecution of the voyage.
On the next day, there being strong gales to the westward, I brought-to, with the ship's head to the northward; but in the mooring of the 3d, the wind being more moderate, we loosened the reef of the mainsail, set the top-sails, plied to the westward.