1774 Instruments of the South Sea Islanders
DESCRIPTION
Tools and a nose flute of the Pacific islanders appear in this excerpted plate from the French edition of John Hawkesworth's account of the voyages of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Cook.
In it, labeled tools fill the sheet: two cord-bound chisels or gouges at top, a small adze, a flared stone pounder for reducing breadfruit to paste, a long cord-wrapped flute played with the nose, a slender needle, and a ridged beater for making cloth. The caption reads "Instruments des insulaires de la mer du Sud," or "Instruments of the South Sea islanders."
Hawkesworth's Voyages
In 1773 John Hawkesworth published, at the Admiralty's commission, a compiled account of the British voyages of John Byron, Samuel Wallis, Philip Carteret, and James Cook's first voyage, which together opened the South Pacific to European readers. It was translated into French the following year as Relation des voyages entrepris par ordre de Sa Majesté britannique (Paris: Saillant et Nyon and Panckoucke, 1774), with its plates re-engraved under the direction of Robert Bénard and others. Wallis's Dolphin reached Tahiti in 1767, the first European ship known to have done so, and Cook's Endeavour followed in 1769.
CONDITION
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