33

A.—3b

world, and to take, as they will do, the place of the ancient incurable barbarian throughout the torrid zone of the Pacific. In certain spots to the north of the equator, there is now springing up a race who will, beyond question, exercise in time a most powerful influence on the destinies of the Pacific. They are remarkable for superior intelligence, and for energy, patience, skill in navigation, and a faculty of acquiring the mechanical arts. They are the progeny of European and American mariners by Japanese mothers, and in them are to be found combined the grandest elements of success in life —that is to say, all tho courage and spirit of adventure which distinguished their wild and roving fathers, mingled with the acuteness, ingenuity, and concentration of purpose which is so characteristic of the Mongolian, and especially of the Japanese. Among the progenitors of this kind of bastard civilization are to be found wanderers from every land of Christendom. They have not suffered by the change, but they revel in it. They have " eaten the lotus " (whereby, as said the ancients, a man loses all remembrance of his native country). They are acclimatized, they are no longer Europeans ; they have no more liking for cold lands, they love the weather and the ways of the low latitudes. Take any of those men back to the old world, and he would pine for the Pacific, and die in a short time if you did not let him return to it. Most of them could not be persuaded to return to tho old world or tho States by any human inducement. Just as says Paunchy Billy, of Samoa, who was born in the same village as John Paul Jones, and who is in the habit of declaring, " Sir, I wouldn't go back to Britain now if you were to give me £1,000 a year, and yet I will say that when I came here first—more than thirty years ago —I had a fashion of sitting on the stones by the seaside of a night, and crying to myself for the home and friends I should never see again; but I know better now, and have done this many a year." Billy relates how, when Commodore AVilkes' Exploring Expedition visited tho Navigators Isles, he went on board the " Porpoise," dressed in savage mats, and begged the Captain to take him away. " I don't want any men," was the answer, "but what countryman are you?" " A •Scotchman," said Billy. " Well, then," replied the Yankee, " I guess I pity you more than a little ; I cannot take you away, but here's a sheath knife and a plug of James Eiver cavendish, of which I make you a present; had you been an American, I would have had you tied up to the gangway and have given you a dozen with the cat o' nine tails. Billy did not understand what he could have been guily of to have deserved this punishment, and asked the American to explain. "Because," retorted the commander, "had you been a citizen of the United States, I should have counted you a disgrace to humanity for letting yourself run wild among a lot of scalping savages ; but seeing you arc a Britisher, and there is not room enough for you all in your overcrowded country, I pity you from the bottom of my soul, I dew!" No. V.—The Low Aechipelago. After the well-known incident of the mutiny of the " Bounty " very few vessels visited the Society Islands until the renewal of war between England and France after the peace of Amiens, w rhen tho South Seas became traversed in all directions by strolling privateers or rather pirates —as very many of them were in reality, disguising their real practices under cover of a letter of marque. The true object for which many of these vessels had been fitted out was to loot the more unprotected settlements of the coasts of Chile and Peru, or wheresoever on the Spanish Main (as all the seaboard from the Gulf of California to the Strait of Magalhaens is called) they might effect a landing, and force a trade —that is to say, compel the authorities to barter with them at their own price, under threats of burning their towns in case of refusal. Many of these expeditions, chiefly under the British flag, had been fitted out at the seaports of Hindostan, while others had been organized in Manilla or Guam. Port Jackson, as Sydney was then styled, was not behind hand in supplying her quota to the congregation of rascals who had presented themselves with the freedom of the seas. Among her contributions was the celebrated Captain Jorgensen, who took to London two natives of Tahiti, and presented them to Sir Joseph Banks, who put them in a mission school, where, as might have been expected, they shortly died ; and the famous Mr. Bass, a man of great valour and intelligence, the discoverer of the Straits which bear his name, and which he is said to have surveyed in an open boat. He came to a melancholy end; for at Valdiora, on the coast of Chile, having compelled the Spaniards by force of arms to barter for his cargo, he was daring enough to go on shore with a great part of his crew and drink in their company, when being attacked by the inhabitants they defended themselves to no purpose, but were all taken prisoners, and transported to the silver mines, where they ended their days in misery and chains. This state of affairs continued with but little improvement up to the year 1825 and beyond it, when the South American States having successfully shaken off the yoke of Spain, became in a position to free themselves from the smaller tormentors in the shape of pirates and contrabandiers who had stung them in every available spot during the terrific struggle for liberty which they had sustained for so many years. Does it not speak well for the climate of the Pacific Islands when there arc still to bo found ancient mariners who can relate their experience of those stirring times —such as Mr. Nobbs, of Norfolk Island; Bainbridge, of Papeite (who was a powder-boy on board the "Macedonian" when she was captured by Commodore Decatur) ; Old Joe, of Mauki; and Jack Sclate, of Nukunau, who served under Cochrane in that terrible business when he cut out a prize from under the guns of Valparaiso. Among the Australian adventurers of that day, one not the least remarkable was one Captain Goodenough, or " Koronake," as he is called among the South Sea Islanders, who visited tho beautiful island of Barotonga long before it was known to the world, and which Cook had missed in so strange a manner, since he must have passed close by it without seeing it, though he was not in reality its first discoverer, as the tradition of the natives places it beyond a doubt that it was visited by the " Bounty," while under the command of Fletcher Christian, on her passage from Tofoa to Tubuai. This Goodenough appears to have had a gay time of it, and to have been a person of an easy disposition. Being hospitably entertained by the natives, he came into collision with them in consequence of the unruly amativeness displayed by his crew. The savages in revenge killed his wife, and another European woman, her servant or companion (who, suspecting no danger, were on shore washing linen by the bank of a creek), and, according to immemorial usage, baked and ate them. Goodenough, 5—A. 3b.