A.—4

52

Harry Williams, of Mauihiki; George Bicknell, of Farming's Island; and a very great proportion of the "beachcombers " who have scattered themselves over the face of the whole coral sea. These men are not emaciated, pale, liver-disordered, or enervated by the heat of the climate. They are stalwart, smart, and lively. They have strength to lift a kedge-anchor, and to carry two hundred cocoanuts upon their shoulders out of the forests in the heat of the day (and they do it). They climb trees like apes, and dive for shell-fish to feed their families. They wear no shoes, but go barefooted at all times on beaches of sharp gravel and reefs of prickly coral. They gather beche-de-mer, or chop wood for whale-ships all through the long tropic day. Some,of these men have as many as twenty children—with huge frames and gipsy countenances. Their sons are like bronze statues, their daughters models of beauty and strength. Their intellect is of a low order, it is true, and their morals of a very lax description; but they may improve in these respects as they continue to multiply (as they are doing very rapidly), and they are well fitted to do the -work of the 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 wilLJbeyond 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 the 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 these 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 the Old World or the 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 mo £1,000 a year; and yet I will say that when I came here first—more than thirty years ago—l 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 Wilkes's Exploring Expedition visited the Navigator 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 Spotchman," 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 sheathknife and a plug of James Biver 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 guilty 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 are 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 I " No. V.—The Low Ahchipelago. 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, when the 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 Chili 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 Manila or Guam. Port Jackson, as Sydney was then styled, was not behindhand 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 Chili, 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 themselve%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.

..-Trade and trading arrangements: Mr, Sterndale.