Story: Perceptions of the landscape

This hand-coloured engraving is based on a sketch by H. D. Spöring, the assistant naturalist on Cook’s first voyage. When the Endeavour stopped for water at Cook’s Cove, he sketched this arched rock because, as his boss Joseph Banks noted, it was ‘an extraordinary natural curiosity’. Later on the trip, Sydney Parkinson copied Spöring’s drawing, turning it into a picturesque, romantic image. Another artist produced this engraving in 1784, adding a Māori figure and several mariners.