Until we passed Cape Grafton the weather was generally fine and favourable for our purpose; but between that Cape and Torres Strait it had been thick and cloudy with frequent rain; which not only increased the danger of the navigation, but also considerably retarded our progress; and, from the continual dampness of the cabins below, which, from the small size of the vessel and our not possessing the advantage of a stove to dry them, it was impossible to prevent, occasioned much sickness; but fortunately it was checked by our reaching a more salubrious climate.  The attention I was obliged to pay to the invalids took up a great deal of my time which ought to have been otherwise and more advantageously employed in the object of the voyage.  Sailors, of all other people, are the most incautious and careless in contracting illness; but when attacked there are none that require more attendance and nursing; besides, they were unwilling in the first instance to trust to my ignorance, until increasing sickness obliged them, and then my fear was that although I might be of service and check the disorder, their complaint was possibly not understood by me, and that eventually, instead of curing, I might destroy my patient.  And to these fears my mind was so constantly alive that on some occasions I thought of little else.

Captain Cook thus describes the method by which the natives of Endeavour River catch turtle:  “For striking turtle they have a peg of wood, which is about a foot long, and very well bearded; this fits into a socket, at the end of a staff of light wood, about as thick as a man’s wrist, and about seven or eight feet long:  to the staff is tied one end of a loose line about three or four fathoms long, the other end of which is fastened to the peg.  To strike the turtle, the peg is fixed into the socket, and when it has entered his body, and is retained there by the barb, the staff flies off and serves for a float to trace their victim in the water; it assists also to tire him, till they can overtake him with their canoes and haul him on shore.  One of these pegs, as I have mentioned already, we found in the body of a turtle, which had healed up over it.  Their lines are from the thickness of a half-inch rope to the fineness of a hair, and are made of some vegetable substance, but what in particular we had no opportunity to learn.”  Hawkesworth’s Coll. volume 3 page 232.

The above method differs only from that used by the natives of Rockingham Bay and Cape Flinders; in that the float is another piece of light buoyant wood—­the staff being retained in his hand when the turtle is struck.  The reader will here recognize, in this instrument, a striking resemblance to the oonak and katteelik, the weapons which Captain Parry describes the Esquimaux to use in spearing the seal and whale. (Parry’s Second Voyage of Discovery pages 507 and 509.)