Flights

MAPPING THE VOID

James Cook set out on the southern seas to observe the passage of Venus over the solar disk. Venus revealed to him not only its beauty, but also the land that had already been noticed by the Dutchman Tasman. From his notes the sailors already knew it had to be here somewhere. Every day they looked out for it, and every day they made the same mistakes – taking clouds for land. In the evenings they would talk about the mysterious island – that it would certainly be beautiful, given it was in the custody of Venus, but that it had to also have other superior characteristics, being the land of Venus. Everyone had his own fantasy about it.

The first officer was from Tahiti; he was certain that this land would be like his Hawaii – warm, tropical, sun-drenched, surrounded by long, endless beaches, full of flowers, useful herbs and beautiful women with bare breasts. The captain himself came from Yorkshire (of which he was very proud), and as a matter of fact he wouldn’t have anything against here being like there. He even wondered if maybe lands on the other side of the globe might not be connected by some sort of correspondence, a planetary intimacy, a likeness – if not obvious and trivial, then perhaps manifested in some other, deeper way. The cabin boy, Nils Jung, dreamed of mountains, wanted this land to be mountainous, for them to reach up into the sky and have snow-capped peaks, and between them, for there to be fertile valleys, filled with grazing sheep, and clear streams in which trout swam (he apparently came from Norway).

And it was his eyes that first spotted New Zealand on 6 October 1769.

From then on the Endeavour sailed straight ahead, and the sight of land emerged from the clouds, mile by mile. In the evenings an emotional Captain Cook transferred its contours onto paper, drawing maps.

Over several years of this mapping they had many adventures, which have already been colourfully described. When a crew member mused aloud that such an extraordinary land must be inhabited, the next day they saw smoke over the bush. When they began to fear obstacles in securing provisions on land and to imagine it peopled by valiant savages, that same morning they appeared on the land – scary and frightening. They had tattooed faces, they stuck out their tongues and shook their spears. To definitively demonstrate their advantage and immediately establish a hierarchy, they shot several savages – that’s when the explorers were attacked.

New Zealand was, it seems, the last land we invented.