After Hinchinbrook Island came Gould Island. It was continually very warm and close, and everything had a damp feeling.
We arrived at Cooktown on 1st September. The ship lay a long way out, and the town was not visible, as it lay behind Grassy Hill on the Endeavour River. Mount Cook, 1500 feet high, and a “great mountain” here, is near. Captain Cook discovered the river in his ship the Endeavour, hence its name. It was in 1770 that Captain Cook beached the Endeavour on the opposite side of the harbour to where is now the town. This celebrated explorer, whose father was a farm servant at Marton in Cleveland, a village a few miles from Great Ayton in Yorkshire, was born there the 27th October 1728.
It was on the 6th May 1770 that he left Botany Bay in New South Wales, afterwards called Port Jackson,and after spending the evening in Broken Bay named a high point Cape Byron, as he sailed north. On the 27th he named Cape Manifold, between which cape and the shore is Keppel Bay and the island that then bore that name also. They were greatly struck at this part with the clouds of white butterflies which covered the trees like snow, and the nests of the white ants “as big as a bushel” hanging on the branches of the gum trees.
On Trinity Sunday, after passing Cape Clevethey visited various islands and named Trinity Bay—then Cape Tribulation, as they ran on a rock and were nearly wrecked, so had to seek refuge for repairs in a harbour into which flowed the river they named the Endeavour. When aground on this reef near Cape Tribulation in lat. 15° 45′ S., six or seven leagues from the mainland, land, six guns were thrown overboard, and yet—
