DEATH OF TUPIA.

Before leaving Batavia there had been seven deaths, including Mr. Reynolds, artist, and Tupia and his boy servant, and Cook gives the number of sick as "forty or more." Hoping the sea breezes might have a beneficial effect, preparations were hurried forward, and they managed to leave the day after Christmas Day, being duly saluted by the garrison with fourteen guns, and the Earl of Elgin with thirteen guns and three cheers, "all of which we return'd."

Calling at Prince's Island in the straits of Sunda, where some of the Batavian water was replaced by better, the sailors were allowed to purchase whatever they fancied in hopes of diminishing the dysentery which was rampant. Every precaution that could be thought of was tried, but in vain. Mr. Banks lost Messrs. Sporing and Parkinson, and on 29th January Mr. Green died; he had been long ill, but Cook says he would not take proper care of himself. To judge from his own Journal, he must have been rather a difficult man to get on with, but his services as observer were invaluable, and he at all times and seasons was devoted to his special duty: indeed, at times he appears to have thought that every other work should give way to his. It is a somewhat suggestive fact that Banks hardly makes any reference to Mr. Green throughout his Journal. On 27th February the terrible list of losses was closed by the deaths of three of the crew, making in all thirty deaths since their arrival at Batavia.

It was afterwards discovered that the season in Batavia had been unusually unhealthy, and several ships that had called in there had to report heavy losses. Cook says:

"Thus we find that ships which have been little more than twelve months from England have suffer'd as much or more by sickness than we have done, who have been out near three times as long. Yet their sufferings will hardly, if at all, be mentioned or known in England; when, on the other hand, those of the Endeavour, because her voyage is uncommon, will very probably be mentioned in every News Paper, and, what is not unlikely, with Additional hardships we never Experienced; for such are the dispositions of men in general in these Voyages, that they are seldom content with the Hardships and Dangers which will naturally occur, but they must add others which hardly ever had existence but in their imaginations, by magnifying the most Trifling accidents and Circumstances to the greatest Hardships, and unsurmountable Dangers without the immediate interposition of Providence, as if the whole merit of the Voyages consisted in the real dangers and Hardships they underwent, or that the real ones did not happen often enough to give the mind sufficient anxiety. Thus Posterity are taught to look upon these Voyages as hazardous to the highest degree."