Location

New Holland is Closer to Asia than to Europe, the New World, or Africa. In fact, when Gulliver sails off in canoe with a sail, of his own design and manufacture, it takes him a mere seven days to reach the southeast point of New Holland (Swift 266). New Holland is just southeast of China.

Natural History

Dampier reaches for comparisons when describing the inhabitants of New Holland. He compares them to Negroes and Indians. Swift uses a parallel form of comparison when describing the Yahoos; however, instead of comparing them to other races of people he compares them to animals. They have beards like goats; they climb trees like squirrels and apes.

Yahoos and the natives of New Holland can also be compared to prehistoric humans or cave men. Charles Darwin had not yet published Origin of the Species in the 18^th-century, but that does not mean that the 18^th-century public is unaware of prehistoric man or failing to make connections between cavemen and modern men. In 1851 Daniel Wilson claims to coin the term protohistory in The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, but notions of protohistory and prehistoric man were popular long before (“Prehistory”). Swift even displays his familiarity with the concept of evolution in Gulliver’s Travels. He writes of the evolution of the Yahoo, “Degenerating by degrees, became in process of time much more savage than those of their own species in the county from whence these two originals came” (256). He goes on to explain how Gulliver has evolved from this original species into a being of reason (256).

18^th-century scholars, historians, and writers are aware of and debating the similarities and dissimilarities of prehistoric and modern humans. Swift and Dampier could be harking back to archaeology when they describe the large brows of their subjects, as most scientists agree large brow ridges are a common facial feature of prehistoric humans. Dampier description of the inhabitant’s large heads, flat faces, and large brows is consistent with the skulls of prehistoric humans.

(Neanderthalers 230)

This skull was discovered in china. (China, History of 340)

John Hawkesworth: The Unfortunate Compiler

Hawkesworth was appointed to edit the journals of the commanders and scientists of the naval explorations to the Pacific Ocean. He had to tell a tale that was not his own for publication. He wrote his journals in the French tradition, in the first person, as though he himself had been on the voyage. As a result he bore the brunt of the intense criticism for the scandalous tales he had brought home from the pacific.

Massacre at Poverty Bay

James Cook

Rough surf won’t allow him to land. He approaches two canoes, which flee Cook’s ship. A musket is fired to stop them in hopes the natives will either surrender or jump overboard for Cook’s crew to fish out. Cook writes, “either two or three were killed” when, too Cook’s surprise, the natives fought back. Those who jumped overboard when hauled out, “clothed and treated with all imaginable kindness and to the surprise of every body became at once as cheerful and as merry as if they had been with their own friends; they were all three young” (75). He does not defend firing the warning shot, but claims that so long as the natives were attacking his crew he could not stand idly by.

Joseph Banks

Canoes with sails so fast they managed to outrace the HMS Endeavor. The unarmed fisherman natives attacked with stones and paddles, items they had at hand. (Dampier says the natives of Cygnet Bay had no fishing tools.) Acknowledges, “we were obliged to fire into her by which 4 were killed” (76). He observes that the natives plucked from the water “squatted down expecting no doubt instant death,” but when they were given clothes they appeared “almost totaly insensible of the loss of their fellows” (76). They heartily tried all dishes at dinner, preferring most salt pork. Tupia consoled the boys in the middle of the night with music, which Banks took the time to observe and dissect in comparison to British hymns. The scientist also mentions the pumice stone they pluck from the sea. Banks regrets the murderous day.

John Hawkesworth

Acknowledges two canoes, one with sail capable of out running the Endeavor. Has Tupia tell the fishermen that the British mean them no harm, and only fires the musket as a last ditch effort to catch the fleeing boats. Recognizes four deaths, and apologizes to his readers for his rash and deadly decision of firing against the natives, but essentially offers the excuse that he was just doing his job.

Questions about these passages: What is filtered out and what is added? For what reasons? How does this reflect British perceptions of the natives as viewed by Hawkesworth?

The Timorodee Dance

James Cook

Indecent dance, songs and actions from early childhood to maturity/marriage. “A custom I do not expect to be believed, contrary to the first principal of human nature?” (79). “More than half the inhabitants cohabitate with the utmost freedom” (79). While dancing “they give full liberty to their desires but I believe keep up the appearance of decency” (79).

Who defines decency and freedom? What do they desire?

Cook is never allowed to see the dance; he can only comment on the conversation he hears of sex and chastity. A woman’s infidelity punished by a mere beating. Children born of cohabitation are smothered at birth so that the parents can go back to enjoying their sexual freedom.

Wouldn’t one principal of human nature be to promote the race?

Mothers generally wish to raise their children, but must find a man outside this lifestyle to raise the child otherwise it will be an outcast. Marriage after free love is disgraceful in this society according to Cook.

John Hawkesworth

Goes beyond the sexual nature of the dance to comment on the precise nature of it, “they keep time with an exactness which is scarcely excelled by the best performers upon the stages of Europe” (81). Grown women don’t dance because they understand the symbolism of the dance; they live the dance. Mothers seldom with to vacate the community in favor of motherly instinct. The Arreoy are proud of this lifestyle and the infanticide that accompanies it.

Johann Reinhold Forster: Providential Cannibalism

Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World

Custom vs. Hunger
Political evolution: ‘tis better to eat the captives than enslave them or reverse evolution: treating fellow men like animals and thus making the self the animal, but cannibalism is in decline because live people are more useful to their own tribes if they are alive and two tribes living in cannibalism of equal military might will soon decimate one another (97).
Delicacy? “human flesh…one of the most palatable dishes” (96).
They never eat those who die a natural death from their own community
War tactic, scare off the enemy by threatening to dismember and eat him
Were all South Sea nations formerly cannibal as Forster believes?