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Early New Zealand Botanical Art
New Zealand again
New Zealand again
The naturalists now found a number of plants in flower for the first time, including flax (Phormium tenax) and wild Spaniard (Aciphylla squarrosa). They found too the rengarenga or rock lily, Arthropodium cirratum, now so popular in cultivation. Some orchids were also flowering, and one of them "of a very singular structure & making absolutely a new genus" was named Thelymitra longifolia, a name still valid. George Forster painted it, and it had been sketched by Parkinson (as Serapias regularis, a name George Forster used in his Florulae Insularum Australium Prodromus (1786), despite having used Thelymitra for it in Characteres Generum Plant arum (1776)). Again, three weeks were spent in the sounds, and after two weeks there Johann Forster noted, "I have not yet got 30 new plants; & but few animals, so that my Expectations were not quite answered in coming here in the beginning of Spring. The Season is not much advanced, whether owing to a cold winter, or whether this is the annual constant state of the Climate, I cannot determine."
Despite the three-week stay in Queen Charlotte Sound, the Adventure did not join the Resolution and it was feared it might have been destroyed in the storm. Cook left a note buried for Furneaux in case the Adventure did eventually reach the rendezvous, and on 25 November 1773 the Resolution set off for another summer in Antarctic waters. As fate would have it, the Adventure arrived in Ship Cove five days after the departure of the Resolution. Fumeaux and his crew remained in Queen Charlotte Sound until 23 December. During their stay, ten of the crew, on a trip in the cutter to "gather wild greens for the Ship's Company", met some Maoris, and apparently one of them stole something from the boat (while the crew were dining on the beach) and was shot at and killed. The Maoris attacked the sailors, most of whom had left their weapons on the boat. The sailors were all killed and roasted for food! Furneaux headed south in the Adventure and explored southern waters, reaching 6l°S off Cape Horn. Provisions became short and the ship headed for Cape Town (19 March 1774), where it remained for a month before sailing for England, arriving on 14 July 1774.