The Day the World Discovered the Sun (22 page)

Cook petitioned Rolim to permit
Endeavour
's crew to make a supply run to shore. “But [Rolim] obliged me to employ a [Brazilian] person to buy them for me, under a pretense that it was the custom of the place. And he likewise insisted, notwithstanding all I could say to the contrary, on putting a soldier into the boats that brought anything to and from ship, alleging that it was the orders of his court and they were such as he could not dispense with. And this indignity I was obliged to submit to otherwise I could not have got the supply I wanted.”
²⁷

Five days later, on November 19, crew and officials on
Endeavour
stifled their visceral reactions to the ordeal that Brazilian authorities had put one of
Endeavour
's boats through. Cook had sent his lieutenant Zachary Hicks ashore to learn why authorities continued to detain the ship and to plead again for an expedient end to the unnecessary delays. Cook told Hicks to return to
Endeavour
upon delivering the memo, but not to let any Brazilian soldiers onboard.

Rolim refused even to accept Cook's message. “Hicks . . . refused admitting a Portuguese sentinel into the pinnace,” Green recorded in his journal. “Whereupon the boat's crew were drag'd to prison, Mr. Hicks made a prisoner and sent off to the ship quartered [on a Brazilian boat]. The pinnace [was] detained and his Britannic Majesty's Colours struck by the Portuguese.”
²⁸

Banks, on the other hand, couldn't stand being cooped up while so much flora and fauna awaited cataloging onshore. Referring to the ancient
Greek myth of a king punished by the gods by keeping food and drink just out of his reach, Banks wrote to the Royal Society, “All that we so ardently wish'd to examine was in our sight. We could almost but not quite touch [the onshore specimens]. Never before had I an adequate idea of Tantalus's punishment.”
²⁹

Knowing the penalties if caught, Banks nevertheless snuck ashore once under cover of night—and sent his servants ashore at least two other times as well. “I myself went ashore this morn before day break and stay'd till dark night,” Banks wrote on November 26. “While I was ashore I met several of the inhabitants who were very civil to me, taking me to their houses where I bought of them stock for the ship tolerably cheap: A porker middlingly fat for 11 shillings, a muscovy duck something under two shillings, etc. The country, where I saw it, abounded with vast variety of plants and animals, mostly such as have not been described by our naturalists as so few have had an opportunity of coming here.”
³⁰

Parkinson, Banks's young artist, described one late-night foray into the Brazilian beyond. “Having obtained a sufficient knowledge of the river and harbour by the surveys we had made of the country,” Parkinson wrote in his journal, “we frequently, unknown to the [Portuguese] sentinel, stole out of the cabin window at midnight, letting ourselves down into a boat by a rope; and, driving away with the tide until we were out of hearing, we then rowed to some unfrequented part of the shore, where we landed and made excursions up into the country.”
³¹

However, others snuck ashore for less scientific study. One American-born midshipman on
Endeavour
left behind a journal account of an undercover trip into Rio where he discovered that the city's “genteeler prostitutes . . . make their assignations at church.”
³²

And so through the end of November, Cook continued with what he called his “paper war between me and his Excellency wherein I had no other advantage than the racking of his invention to find reasons for treating us in this manner for he never would relax the least from any
one point.” Cook and his lieutenants stood flummoxed by the intransigence of the viceroy and his court. On the other hand, the viceroy's concerns weren't imaginary either. Just five years earlier, Brazil had relocated its capital from the booming city of Bahia to the smaller but more strategically situated Rio.
³³
If
Endeavour
had been on a mission to smuggle or reconnoiter Portuguese defenses, Rolim could scarcely have said he didn't see it coming. The English boat and its proclaimed mission were conspicuously strange. It didn't help matters that Cook's pride sometimes appeared to camouflage what Rolim saw as dubious motives. Cook had told the viceroy that his journey from Madeira was brief and uneventful. And Cook had admitted that at Madeira he'd stocked the ship to the gills. So, Rolim said, “Why did you want so soon water and provisions? It could only proceed from not having loaded a sufficiency of those articles in that island.”
³⁴

As a Spanish proverb from the time put it, “I can take care of my enemies, but God protect me from my friends.”
³⁵

So England and Portugal remained symbolically locked in the friendly but adversarial embrace of the former's ship in the latter's harbor. Ultimately, however, Rolim could find nothing more damning than the unusual nature of
Endeavour
's mission. He saw no overriding reason to justify holding Cook and his ship beyond December 2, when Rolim gave his blessing for
Endeavour
to proceed on its way.

Not coincidentally, Cook made his most extensive diary entry to date soon thereafter, on December 7, when the captain chronicled “the Bay or River of Rio de Janeira.” Rolim's (justifiably) paranoid insistence to the contrary, Cook had no mission to reconnoiter Rio. But as if to prove that he could do it anyway, Cook took pains in his journal to describe the kind of military details the commander of an invading force might want to know about the city and its defenses.

“I shall now give the best description I can of the different forts that are erected for the defense of this bay,” Cook wrote. “The first you meet with coming in from the sea is a battery of 22 guns . . . to hinder an
enemy from landing in that valley . . . whence I suppose they may march up to the town.”
³⁶

Condensed breath warmed fingertips exposed to the frigid South Atlantic gales. Captain Cook had issued all men onboard
Endeavour
a thick jacket named after the first European explorer who'd braved the far southern latitudes en route to the Pacific. “All hands bend their Magellan Jackets (made of a thick wollen stuff . . . call'd fearnought),” Banks recorded in his diary on January 6. “And myself put on flannel jacket and waistcoat and thick trousers.”

One of Cook's two lieutenants, John Gore—as well as the ship's master Robert Molyneux and two of his master's mates—had sailed along these same straits just two years before. Their experiences at the southern tip of South America had already entered English naval lore.

The HMS
Dolphin
and HMS
Swallow
had spent four months weaving through the maze of inlets and bays constituting the Strait of Magellan. And when they emerged into the first open stretch of the Pacific Ocean in April 1767, a strong Pacific current separated the boats, permanently. So a joint expedition consisting of two British naval vessels involuntarily split into two separate voyages.

The
Endeavour
could not spare four months. Even four weeks spent turning this corner of South America from one ocean to another, and the mission might miss its entire purpose—perhaps still wandering the Pacific as Venus made its brief voyage across the sun's disk.

On the night of January 6, Joseph Banks held fast to his swinging bed, its brass holdings creaking with each sway. Banks and the mission's other supernumeraries, encased in webbed rope beds hung from the rafters, followed the ship's each sway and jolt.
³⁷
“The evening blew
strong,” Banks recorded, shivers running through the spines of his words. “At night a hard gale, ship brought to under a mainsail; during the course of this my bureau was overset and most of the books were about the cabin floor, so that with the noise of the ship working, the books etc. running about, and the strokes our cots or swinging beds gave against the top and sides of the cabin, we spent a very disagreeable night.”
³⁸

These were days that tested every man. The captain, as taxed by the elements as any of his crew, had opted for this stormy route.
Endeavour
could have just struck out to sea till it hit 61 or 62 degrees south latitude—a parallel that lay safely beyond the hidden shoals and mast-splintering tempests that made the far end of South America infamous. The ocean to the west, in fact, took its name from the pacific calm it welcomed all sailors with who had survived the Cape Horn crossing.

However, Cook later wrote, “As to running into the latitude of 61 or 62 degrees before any endeavour is made to get to the westward, it is what I think no man will ever do who can avoid it, because it is not southing but westing that is wanted. This way, however, he cannot steer, because the winds blow almost constantly from that quarter [i.e., the west].”
³⁹

Moreover, the coast of Tierra del Fuego offered supplies, giving the captain yet one more reason to hug the dangerous coastline. It was no Garden of Eden like Madeira, but the extreme tip of South America would be the last landfall
Endeavour
might reasonably expect to make before she arrived at Tahiti. Who knew how many months thereafter the ship would be living off the rations in its stockrooms?

On January 11,
Endeavour
sailed into view of Tierra del Fuego—an island separated from the South American mainland by the Straits of Magellan. The calm weather welcomed the sub-Antarctic island's guests. “We could see trees distinctly through our glasses and observe several smokes made probably by the natives as a signal to us,” Banks wrote in his diary. “The captain now resolved to put in here if he can
find a convenient harbour and give us an opportunity of searching a country so entirely new.”
⁴⁰

Four days later, after tacking back and forth between Tierra and the nearby Staten Island, the winds and weather permitted a resting place in calm waters.
Endeavour
anchored in the Bay of Good Success, an inlet on the eastern end of the Cape Horn gauntlet. Banks and Solander rowed ashore after the noon meal and, armed with trifles, greeted the natives. “Dr. Solander and myself then walked forward 100 yards before the rest and two of the Indians advanc'd also and set themselves down about 50 yards from their companions. . . . We distributed among them a number of beads and ribbands which we had brought ashore for that purpose, at which they seem'd mightily pleased.”
⁴¹

Cook noticed the locals' familiarity with the Europeans' guns and dyed goods. “They were not at all surprised at our fire arms,” Cook wrote. “On the contrary seem'd to know the use of them by making signs to us to fire at the seals or birds that might come in the way. . . . They are extremely fond of any red thing and seemed to set more value on beads than any thing we could give them. In this consists their whole pride; few either men or women are without a necklace or string of beads made of small shells or bones about their necks.”
⁴²

Finding as welcoming a rest stop as could be hoped, Cook gave Banks permission to venture farther inland to collect specimens while
Endeavour
's crew restocked the ship. The next morning, January 16, a sunny summer day in the sub-Antarctic, the ship's three scientists plus a support crew set out to explore Tierra del Fuego.

Banks, Solander, Green, two assistants, four servants, two seamen, and a midshipman pushed inland from the beach into a thick grove of trees, on an ascending path. “Neither heat nor cold was troublesome to us nor were there any insects to molest us,” Banks recorded.
⁴³

Once they'd reached the top of their summit, however, only mire awaited. Low birch bushes cut at their sides while their boots sank into
muck. “Every step the leg must be lifted over [the bushes] and on being plac'd again on the ground was almost sure to sink above the ankles in bog,” Banks noted. A rocky outcropping seemed close at hand, though, so the party pressed on.

Then, during the unexpectedly strenuous walk to their new destination, Banks's hired sketch artist Alexander Buchan had an epileptic seizure. “A fire was immediately lit for him and with him all those who were most tir'd remained behind, while Dr. Solander, Mr. Green, Mr. Monkhouse and myself advanced,” Banks wrote.

However, snow squalls—which were not uncommon on this island of minute-to-minute weather variability—descended on the group. Facing whiteout conditions and plummeting morale, Banks changed his tack. He realized that with one man in an uncertain state of health and others beginning to succumb to cold, someone had to take charge. Gratefully, Banks had untapped leadership skills in him—no doubt augmented by learning a few things from his extraordinary ship's captain. The gentleman naturalist now began delegating people to start a real fire and prepare a shelter for the night. They were going to have to ride out the storm.

“The air was here very cold and we had frequent snow blasts,” Banks recorded. He sent Green and Monkhouse back to the group that was tending to Buchan. They'd all rendezvous at a nearby hill, Banks decided, and fashion a wigwam out of trees and branches for the night. But now the first signs of hypothermia began to appear. “We pass'd about half way very well when the cold seem'd to have once an effect infinitely beyond what I have ever experienced. Dr. Solander was the first who felt it. He said he could not go any farther but must lay down, tho the ground was covered with snow. And down he laid notwithstanding all I could say to the contrary.”