8th April 1769

Cape Horn to Tahiti

Trade and pleasant weather, but about noon had a few flying showers of rain. Variation 6 degrees 32 minutes East. Wind East by South and East; course North 87 degrees West; distance 100 miles; latitude 17 degrees 43 minutes South, longitude 145 degrees 16 minutes West.

JosephBanks Journal

Pleasant breeze but we have as yet found the trade hardly so strong as it was in the Atlantick. At 2 O'Clock Land was seen from the masthead, the ship stands for it and about sunset came abreast of it distant 2 leagues. It prove'd an Island larger than any we had seen as it extended 6 or 7 leagues, it was every where coverd with plenty of large trees probably Cocoa nuts and it is also inhabited as we judge from a smoak rising from among the trees; in everything it appeard exactly of the same nature with the rest which we have seen. We could plainly distinguish it in some places broken off into reefs behind which we saw distant land and thence judg'd that there was a lagoon within it; the land however appeard to be broader than any we had seen before.