Mar 18, 1789 Home Logbook Mar 20, 1789
Revised Jun 30 2021
257)
Light Winds and Calms latter part Cloudy Wr. Wind NEBE, EBS and ENE. Thermr 80° to 83¾°.
Carpenters employed caulking the Starboard side. Cooper and Armourer as usual. AM Swayed up Yards and Topmasts and set the Fore Rigging up. Many Natives on board and supplies plentifull of every thing but Hogs. One Venereal in the List.
Notwithstanding the decrease of the Venereal List, the People have the same intercouse with Women. Many have absented themselves from us on the Men telling them they were diseased, however they have returned again in a short time, and kept with other men without infecting them. We may therefore from this circumstance only infer that they have some mode of cure. I have also many accounts to confirm this and to give us a knowledge of the degree of the venereal disease in this Country. I have acquired it from principal people, as they all agree in their accounts I shall just state Iddeeahs and Tynahs.
They say the Disease is triffling that if a Woman find it on her, she has nothing more to do but to retire from the men and she will get perfectly well in ten or twenty days. They say also it does not turn to any thing worse than a Gonorohea. That they have no swellings or ulcers from the Complaint, and that the disease is not troublesome.
The number of People we see with ulcers and sores in the Groins and almost every Glandular part of the Body, they deny being infected with any venereal tint, and the Surgeon has already proved that those kind of ulcers do not require the treatment of a Pox. Indeed if I can rely on good information, there is no such thing exists in the Island, which taken for granted, proves to a certainty
(258
that a clap does not in this country turn to a Pox. This account will appear very different from what has been given by former Navigators, but they have assuredly been mistaken, and considered the number of People they have seen with the Scrophula to be labouring under confirmed lues.
Should this circumstance ever be determined with more certainty it may lead equally to another fact, that the Venereal disease existed before the Natives had any intercourse with Europeans. For my part I beleive it firmly and that it was in the Sandwich Islands before we went among them. As to any information from the general run of the Natives that it was either an English disease or a French, being of weight, I do not consider so because I have had many who have told me it was not, and the nature of the People are such that unless they are carefully questioned, they will give an answer in favor of the mater investigated, and therefore the manner the question has been put to them "Has this disease been given to you by the English? or "Is it an English or French disease, can not be considered fair.
This Evening Mr. Samuel, Clerk, returned from an excursion which he had been on for two days to the summit of a high round top'd mountain the highest in this neighbourhood. His walk to it was very troublesome as he had to make his own path. Most of the Hills were covered with wood among which was very fine Timber but towards the summit of the Mountain it was covered only with bushes and ferns.
He saw no quadruped. The Birds were the Blue Paroquet and the Green dove, besides some few others he knew nothing of and were not remarkable for their Plumage; but a Single one he met with that was burrowed in the ground and he brought to me, was a white bellyed Peterel about the size of a Pidgeon, and is identically the same as I had already discovered in the high southern latitudes and which I have already described in a former part of my Log commonly called Sheerwaters.
259)
He also brought me down a branch of a Bush which proved to be a plant common at Van Diemens Land, very like the New Zealand Tea Plant and is what we principally used for Broom Stuff.
The Weather was not very favorable to him, he however was able to see Maitea and Huaheine.
Mar 18, 1789 Home Logbook Mar 20, 1789