Excepting in the river Thames, Captain Cook had not found finer timber in all New Zealand; the most considerable species of which is the spruce tree; for that name he had given it, from the similarity of its foliage to the American spruce, though the wood is more ponderous, and bears a greater resemblance to the pitch pine.
Many of these trees are so large, that they would be able to furnish mainmasts for fifty-gun ships.

Amidst the variety of aromatic trees and shrubs which this part of New Zealand produced, there was none which bore fruit fit to be eaten.

The country was not found so destitute of quadrupeds as was formerly imagined.
As Dusky Bay presented many advantages to our navigators, so it was attended with some disagreeable circumstances.

There were great numbers of small black sandflies, which were troublesome to a degree that our commander had never experienced before.

Another evil arose from the continual quantity of rain that occurred in the bay.