LEAVING THE GUERRIERE. 209 him in my morning round; and now, stretching out his left hand, while he held his pipe in the other, he seized mine as I was passing, and shook and piped, and shook and piped, again and again--the officer of the deck, marines, captain, and all, waiting my movements-till the tears rolled down his cheeks, and I was obliged to tear my hand from his iron grasp, and hasten over. Captain Smith could not avoid a smile as he followed, and evidently was not displeased at the disre gard of ceremony into which the feelings of the generous hearted man had betrayed him and as he looked up, after taking his seat in the gig, and saw every port filled with sober faces, he broke silence by saying "It makes our good fellows look sad, Mr. Stewart, to see you shove off; and to tell the truth, I suspect none of us have felt more so since we bade our own fire-sides farewell." I mention these trifles to show you the reason there is to believe that the office and services of piety are far from being regarded with indifference on board a man-of-war; and that even in the hardiest sailor's bosom, there are affections alive to the true character, design, and value of the appointment. The wind was too light to allow of sailing at the time intended; and we did not get under way till sunset-but we then did it beautifully. The hour was greatly in our favor for effect, as we filled gently away, in the gaze of all the shipping of the port, and dropt closely under the stern of the Guerriere, crowded with eager spectators, from the quarter deck to the forecastle. 210 PARTING OF THE VINCENNES As in the deepest silence we approached her quarter, the rigging of the Vincennes, at a given signal, was in an instant manned by the whole crew in holiday dress, and we gave three noble cheers, followed by "Hail Columbia" from a delightful band. A thundering answer was quickly poured from the shrouds of the Guerriere, filled as by magic with hundreds that I love. It seemed to come from the heart; and while I accredited a full portion of the enthusiasm breathed in it to myself-it thrilled. through the heart: then we gave another three, followed by "Yankee Doodle"-and as we glided by, heaping sail upon sail to the breeze, cheer after cheer burst upon and around us, from the Guerriere, the St. Louis, and the Dolphin, till, hiding my face in my cap, and leaning against the mizen rigging, I wept like a child—and mine, I can assure you, dear H- were far from being the only tears. As we rapidly cleared the shipping, "Auld Lang Syne," in all the power of its best associations, breathed its plaintive melody around; and I know not where the excitement would have ended, had not "Homesweet-sweet Home!" as we spread all our canvass to the breeze, brought, with the fullness of its tones, thoughts and affections that hurried the imagination, for the time, far from the passing scene. The darkness of the night almost immediately afterwards gathered round us, and I retired to my state-room; but had scarce thrown myself on my matress for a moment of repose, before the cry-“A man overboard!" rang once more through the ship. I had been under the excitement of such strong feel 2 FROM THE SQUADRON. 211 ing during the whole day, however, that it scarce produced on me its almost irresistible effect: and had not the lad-it proved to be a boy of fifteen or sixteen-been speedily picked up by a boat, I should have been obliged to charge myself with a want of sensibility, notwithstanding the many gushes of feeling through which I had just gone. The agitation I experienced, however, may have been quite as great as that suffered by the boy himself: for, on scrambling over the ship's sides, and stepping on the deck again, his only exclamation, as he looked at his feetand that too with an air of no little nonchalancewas, "I'll be hanged if one of my shoes an't gone!" LETTER II. VOYAGE TO THE WASHINGTON ISLANDS. U.S. Ship Vincennes, at Sea, THE first destination of the Vincennes is to the Washington Islands-a group in the vicinity of the Marques de Mendoça's, and frequently included with them under the general appellation of the "Marquesas." They bear a relation to these last, both in position and proximity, similar to that which the Society Islands do to the Georgian group, a few degrees farther west. 212 DISCOVERY AND STATE Though the Marquesas were discovered by a Spanish voyager so early as the year 1595, the Washington group scarce a degree distant to the northwest from them-remained unknown to the world till 1791; when they were first seen by Captain Ingraham, of Boston, and in the succeeding year visited by Captain Roberts, of the same place, who gave them the name by which they are now generally designated, and to which, by established usage in such cases, they are justly entitled. They are three in number-Huahuka, Nukuhiva, or Nuuhiva, and Uapou, forming a triangle by their relative position to each other, the points of which are included within the paralels of 8° 38′ and 9° 32' S. latitude, and 139° 20′ and 140° 10′ W. longitude from Greenwich. Huahuka is the most eastern of the three: Nukuhiva lies about twenty miles directly west of it, and Uapou thirty miles south of the central parts of Nukuhiva. Nukuhiva-twenty miles in length, and of nearly the same breadth, and having three or four good harbors on its coast-is much the largest and most important of the three; and that alone which ships have frequented. It is the island, you will recollect, at which Commodore Porter refitted his squadron in the Pacific during the late war between the United States and Great Britain and is the principal scene of the journal which he subsequently placed before the world. The inhabitants are now, as they then were, in an entire state of nature: and their primeval condition is in every respect unchanged, except it may be in an addition of corruption-among those in the imme diate vicinity of the harbor occasionally visited by ships-from a licentious intercourse with unprincipled white men from civilized and Christian countries. It will add much to the interest of our cruise among the different islands we expect to visit in the course of our voyage, thus to commence our observations on those which are still in the original heathenish state of the whole of Polynesia-not only from the greater degree of novelty to be anticipated in the scenes we may witness-but also from the advantage it will afford of enabling us to make a just comparison between the condition and prospects of immortal beings still in all the darkness of paganism, and others—most emphatically and truly "bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh,"-upon whose characters and condition the enlightening and regenerating influences of Christianity have been made, in a greater or less degree, to bear. The inhabitants of the Marquesas-radically the same people are both physically and morally in circumstances precisely similar; and although it is not the intention of Captain Finch to touch at that group, the account I shall give, and every observation we shall make on the Nukuhivans will apply essentially to them. We are now sixteen days from Callao without any incident worthy of notice. Having run 'the whole distance in the full strength of the southeast trade winds, and directly in their course, we have had a breeze unceasingly fresh and fair, with all the inconvenience of rolling so heavily before it, as to have been denied, to a great degree, every profitable |