Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

1835. MATAVAI INDUSTUY. 521 their return the following year.* Curvature of the spine, or a hump-back, never appeared until after Cook"'s visits ; and as he had a hump-backed man in his ship, they attribute that deformity to him. ' Ua' told me that I need not yet have any anxiety about a westerly wind, or bad weather. " The wind would be light and variable during that day, but on the mor- row would draw round to the eastward, and two days after- wards the sky would be nearly free from clouds."" Thanking the old man with some presents, I returned on board ; and the Beagle then got under weigh, ' swept' out of the harbour, and, by the sails and sweeps, alternately employed, regained her former anchorage in Matavai Bay. In the course of a walk among the cottages between Papawa and Matavai, I found numerous tokens of industry, such as I had not expected in a South Sea island. In an enervating climate, where abundance of food is easily procured, one ought not to expect the con- tented natives to distress their minds or bodies, with anxious and industrious endeavours to supply wants which they do not feel, in any degree like the inhabitants of cold or temperate cli- mates ; yet the men of Otaheite undergo great fatigue, and carry heavy burthens up and down most difficult tracks in the pointed by the Spanish government to make a survey of the coasts be- tween the Brazils and the Tiena del Fuego, Falkland Island, &c. When the society of .Jesuits was dissolved, he was sent back to Spain, and after an absence of near forty years, arrived in his native country. Soon after his return to England he became domestic chaplain to Robert Berkeley, esquire, of Spetchley, near Worcester, a Roman Catholic gen- tleman of distinguished knowledge, most respectable character, and large fortune. There he wrote the account of Patagonia, which has been quoted in this volume, and was afterwards published, with a map corrected from that of D' Anville, according to his own observations. Mr. Falkner pos- sessed a very acute mind, a general knowledge, and most retentive me- mory. Of his medical experience and practice, I have heard physicians of eminence speak in the highest terms of commendation. His manners, as may be supposed from the tenor of his life, were at once singular and inoflfensive : and he retained somewhat of his Indian habits to the last. He died, as I have been informed, about the year 17^1." — Colnett's Voy- age, page 25, note. * Spanish ships, from Lima, in 1774-6.