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Updated: May 3, 2025
We thought it probable, that we were now once more in the territories of Teratu; but upon enquiring of these people, they said that he was not their king. After a short time, they went away, much gratified with the presents that we had made them; and we pursued our course along the shore to the N.E. till eleven o'clock the next morning.
The land on the north-west side is covered with wood, and the soil being much more fertile, would doubtless produce all the necessaries of life with proper cultivation: It is not however so fertile as the lands that we have seen to the southward, nor do the inhabitants, though numerous, make so good an appearance: They have no plantations; their canoes are mean, and without ornament; they sleep in the open air; and say, that Teratu, whose sovereignty they do not acknowledge, if he was to come among them, would kill them.
Farther on more villages were in sight, with some hundreds of large canoes drawn up on the beach under them. The whole country from Cape Turnagain, thus far, was said to be under the rule of a single chief, called Teratu. A large inlet was next entered, and here the ship anchored. Several canoes of a less ornamental description came alongside, and tried to steal the buoy of the anchor.
It was also discovered that they acknowledged neither Teratu, nor any other person, as their king: As in this particular they differed from all the people that we had seen upon other parts of the coast, we thought it possible that they might be a set of outlaws, in a state of rebellion against Teratu, and in that case they might have no settled habitations, or cultivated land, in any part of the country.
As far as we had yet coasted this country from Cape Turnagain, the people acknowledged one Chief, whom they called Teratu, and to whose residence they pointed, in a direction that we thought to be very far inland, but afterwards found to be otherwise. About one o'clock three canoes came off to us from the main, with one-and-twenty men on board.
It was, probably, a chief of this class of whom Cook heard at various places where he put in along the east coast of the northern island, on his first visit to the country. He calls him Teratu; and he found his authority to extend, he says, from Cape Turnagain to the neighbourhood of Mercury Bay.
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