off by the sea.' The morning of their coming in sight of it, was additionally signalized by magnificent sports in the sea around them. There was an astonishing number of whales, which came so near as to alarm the officer of the watch, before day-break, by the noise they made in spouting up water, who fancied we were near breakers.'-It was determined to go round Staatenland, in preference to passing through Straits Le Maire; and during the course the most accurate observations were taken for ascertaining the longitude of Cape St. John. The result tended to establish the superior accuracy of Cook to all the other navigators. His longitude is, 63° 47' 00".

They found, themselves, at last, in a sea of a very different character from any thing they had previously beheld, a sea that would not suffer them to amuse themselves with it.

It seemed as though Staatenland were the boundary between two directly opposite regions. We had beautiful weather until our arrival there, and, with little exception, constantly 'fair winds, as our very quick run of twenty one days from St. Catherine's to Staatenland sufficiently shews. But scarce had we passed Staatenland, and approached the latitude of Cape Horn, when the south-west winds set in with cold weather, and a constantly clouded sky. Our imagination had been set in motion by our hitherto favourable passage; led us in a few days round Cape Horn; and transported us in a few weeks into the mild regions of the ocean. But the west wind, which wore a fixed appearance, soon deprived us of this prospect.' Krusenstern, p. 93.

One of the omens of a rather short but tremendous storm, is thus described:

The sky all round the horizon became overcast, while snowclouds appeared some five or six degrees high, and from their coJumnar form, and the black clouds bordering on them, bore a beautiful but terrible aspect.'

It cost them a long and laborious contest with boisterous west, and, sometimes, north west winds, and all the harassing circumstances of storms in such a region, to get fairly round into the mild climates and steady winds of the Pacific Ocean. There can be no stronger testimony to the Captain's excellent management than the fact that the toils and rigours of this part of the course, in which they went as far south as 60°, did not put one person of the Nadeshda on the sick list.

In a thick fog they were separated from the Neva, and were not rejoined by her till after reaching Nukahiwa, one of the north western portions of the islands, called Marquesas, but to which portion our voyager, with no good reason, seconds an American

captain in giving the denomination of "Washington's Islands." He is quite right, however, in retaining the native names of Nukahiwa and several others of this group, instead of the names impertinently fixed on them by the vanity of Europeans.

Langsdorff very well describes the sort of passionate fondness with which they all gazed towards the little emerging point of earth to which they were approaching as the appointed place of their brief sojourn and refreshment. It had a picturesque, but not, for a while, a very attractive aspect. The coast presented a long front of naked, gloomy rocks, connected with a chain of mountains stretching inland, and rising into bare craggy peaks. A number of beautiful cascades were seen falling into the sea from the height of a thousand feet. They were beginning to be a little disturbed at descrying but very slight signs of the population by which they had expected to be very soon surrounded, when they were surprised by the approach of a white flag, borne at the head of a canoe by a man who, like the rest of the islanders, was divested of all clothing but a girdle round the waist. He proved, however, to be an Englishman, of the name of Roberts, who said he had been seven years on the island, and two years previously in that of Santa Christina, where he had been put on shore out of an English merchant ship, the crew of which had mutinied against their captain, and could not prevail on him to join them. In Nukahiwa he had lately married, he said, a relation of the king's, from which circumstance he acquired great consideration, and could therefore be of service to these new visiters, as he shewed certificates from two Americans to prove that he had been to former ones, particularly in the way of procuring them wood and water. The captain gladly accepted the offered assistance of a man so capable of being useful in various ways; among others in the capacity of interpreter, and in imparting the knowledge he must have acquired concerning the inhabitants.

He lost no time in warning the captain against a mischievous, and more than half savage Frenchman of the name of Cabri, who was also on the island, and who, besides being a mortal enemy to the Englishman, was evidently a depraved wretch, while it appears equally unquestionable that Roberts was a very worthy man. In whatever degree, therefore, the Captain's indignant observations on the inveterate, widely spread, and untameable animosities between the French and English, are generally just, as applied to the latter, there is something rather petulant and very unjust in making them so as to convey an equal condemnation of these two men, and to imply that it was a mere unreasonable nationality that put such a man as Roberts in hostility to such a man as Cabri, who had repeatedly attempted

his rival's life, was the quintessence of spite and treachery, and thought it an excellent amusement to slaughter men by surprise, in order to exchange them with the cannibals for hogs. Roberts appeared not averse to a reconciliation, or rather pacification, had such a thing been possible. He made offers to this effect to Cabri, but he would never agree to it; and he added, with much emphasis, that it was easier to float the rocks, to which he pointed, than to inspire this Frenchman with friendly sentiments.' The Captain had no doubt of the truth of this, and yet, with the lofty air too of a judicial cosmopolite, he goes off in the following strain of equitable rebuke:

Here, too, the innate hatred between the French and English appeared. Not content to disturb the peace of the whole civilized world, even the inhabitants of the lately discovered islands of this ocean must feel the influence of their odious rivalship, without so much as knowing the origin of it. How unfortunate it is, that at such a distance, upon islands the inhabitants of which are yet rough in their manners, and whose mode of life is still horribly cruel, where alone the necessity of self-preservation ought to have united two civilized men, though half the globe had been interposed between their native countries; that here, I say, two Europeans should hate, and strive after each other's life!'

The stay of the Nadeshda at Nukahiwa was but about ten days, and that of the Neva several days less. The account of it, however, occupies a large space in each of the books; and very considerable activity of observation and inquiry must have been exerted, to collect so much information. Nearly all, however, that could be considered as of much value in that information was obtained from the two Europeans; and it is acknowledged by the voyagers, that but for this aid, they should have gone away, as some former visitants have done, with a notion of the character of the people not merely defective, but nearly the reverse of the true one. They considered these two witnesses, though such bitter enemies to each other, as equally unlikely to have any motive to deceive; and the general truth of their evidence was confirmed by its substantial agreement, while particular care was taken that the testimony of each should be given without his being aware what the other had deposed. For some not very important differences between the representations of Krusenstern and Langsdorff, the latter apologizes, in terms of the utmost respect to the Captain, accounting for them from the circumstance that the Captain took his information almost exclusively from the Englishman, whereas the Doctor drew much of his from the Frenchman, whom he deemed the better authority, notwithstanding that there was confessedly no comparison between the moral qualities of the two men, and that Roberts was a man of more understanding. The preference of

Cabri was founded on his having been a much longer time, it is asserted, in the island; his appearing to be much more perfect in the use of the language; (now his only language, he having very nearly forgotten his native tongue;) and especially his having associated much more intimately with the people, adopting, in a great measure, their customs,-whereas Roberts seemed to have maintained a great degree of reserve and separation, to which it is partly attributed that he appeared to be regarded with much more respect, and to have much more influence, among them.

It is from data so extremely imperfect that it can hardly deserve to be called a calculation, that he gives 18,000 as somewhere about the probable number of people on the island. Their number was, at all events, materially less than it had been some years before, the diminution having been effected by the infallible consequence of deficiency of rain,-a famine,which, besides its more ordinary and inseparable effects, is the signal for these children of nature to fall upon and eat one another.

The population of the island appears to be divided, by those deep valleys, and those steep mountains of bare rocks, by which it is so wildly trenched and dented, into a number of independent sections, with each its king or principal chief, and a due proportion of an inferior aristocracy. There is no ascertaining the precise nature and limits of the power of these monarchs and nobles. They have a due share, very likely, of the appropriate ambition and arbitrary temper. But there seems to be at least one good thing about them; they do not cost the people much for the gaudy decorations and equipage of state. Perhaps, however, it is in truth a sign of the deepest barbarism, that these personages can trust for their influence with the people to the mere virtue and efficacy of their birth and personal qualities, without the appendages of an enormous pomp, to be supported by these people as an additional labour and duty to that of providing for themselves.-The king of that part of the island nearest to port Anna Maria, in which the Russian ships anchored, and who was the first, we believe, of the natives that came on board, had no mark of distinction froin the others, except that of being more completely tatooed; which even our Hyperboreans,' as the Doctor in one place denominates them, were far enough advanced in civilization to regard as a very unkingly circumstance. It seemed very laughable to us,' says the Dr. when we immediately gave permission for His Majesty to come on board.' It would appear, however, that his majesty had himself a proper sense of the

innate dignity of his own person, if we may judge from the prolonged, indeed the endless delight with which he would contemplate it in a mirror.

I led them into my cabin to make them a present. A portrait in oil of my wife struck them particularly, and they stood for a long time before it with every symptom of pleasure and surprize, pointing out to each other the curled hair, which they consider as a great beauty. A looking-glass was no less an object of their astonishment. It was not improbable that some of them had already seen such a thing, yet they all looked behind the glass to discover the cause of this wonderful appearance. large mirror in which they were able to view their whole persons must have been something new to them; and the king was so particularly delighted with it, that, either from vanity or curiosity, upon every visit he immediately went into my cabin to this glass, standing before it for whole hours to my great annoyance.' Krusenstern, p. 117.

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The men are generally,-indeed so generally that the voyagers make no scruple of saying all,'-strongly built, tall, and of the finest shape. If we may depend on the united testimony of these and several other respectable navigators, this island, and the other Marquesas, afford a tribe of human forms, of the male sex, not to be equalled on the whole earth. The philosophers and artists of this expedition were so struck with the almost magnificent perfection of one person, a young man named Mufau, twenty years old, six feet eight inches high, and of prodigious strength, that Dr. Tilesius was induced to make a measurement, with the utmost exactness, of every part; it is given by Langsdorff, in more than twenty distinct particulars, and he adds,

After our return to Europe, Dr. Tilesius imparted his observations to Counsellor Blumenbach, of Gottingen, who has studied so assiduously the natural history of man. The latter compared these proportions with the Apollo of Belvedere, and found that those of that master-piece of the finest ages of Grecian art, in which is combined every possible integer in the composition of manly beauty, corresponded exactly with our Mufau, an inhabitant of the island of Nukahiwa. We were told that the chief of a neighbouring island, by name Upoa, with equally exact proportions as Mufau, was a head taller; so at least both Roberts and Cabri both assured us.' Langsdorff, p. 109.

The forms of the women appeared much less perfect, especially of that degraded and miserable portion of them who frequented the shore and haunted the ship. A few of those of superior rank and less abandoned habits, who were seen in a more retired state of life, at some distance VOL. XI. 3 Q