284 COMMODORE PORTER. vation of the world to lead them in the paths of truth and righteousness. Towards evening of the same day, Lieutenant Stribling and myself took a stroll over the ground occupied by the encampment of Commodore Porter. It is just abreast of our ship, on the eastern shore, a small plain skirted and studded with thickets and coppices of hybiscus, with a fine sand beach in front, and guarded on the side towards the ocean by the rocky promontory terminating in the East Sentinel, and in the rear by steep and wooded acclivities. The whole is separated from the inhabited parts of the valley by a spur of the mountain and a small round hill jutting into the bay with a rocky base, on which was placed a breast-work and battery, commanding every approach to the encampment. Not a trace of such occupation, however, is now discoverable. Commodore Porter appears to be held in very general and kind remembrance by this tribe, the elder chiefs and people often inquiring where and how he is, and whether he will never return to see them, and the younger asking, in reference to the captain, "whether this chief is Pota ?" A kind of wild cucumber, which we found spread widely over the hills in the vicinity, we at first supposed to have been introduced by him, but have since learned that it is a plant indigenous to the country, and one capable of being converted into a fine pickle. About twilight, the Duchess de Berri got under weigh, with the intention of prosecuting her voyage; but the wind was light and baffling, with occasional strong puffs, and getting too much under the lee of DANGER OF THE FRENCH SHIP. 285 the eastern cliffs, she was thrown, just after dark, into a very critical situation, near a rocky point and indentation of the precipice. Her danger was announced by the firing first of musketry and afterwards of a large gun. Three boats were immediately despatched from the Vincennes, under the command of Lieutenant Dornin, followed by the launch with a kedge and hawsers. They arrived just in time to prevent her striking; she was already under the influence of the swell and almost upon the rocks: five minutes later and she would have been utterly lost, and in so unpropitious a situation that the whole ship's company might have perished with her. After the effort of an hour, however, on the part of our officers and men, she was towed to a place of security and succeeded in passing the Sentinels and getting safely to sea. LETTER XXXI. REMOVAL OF THE VINCENNES TO THE TERRITORIES OF THE TAIPIIS. Tower Bluff.-Dangerous Anchorage. - Visit from the Chiefs.— Interesting Conference.-Visit to the Shore.-Man-stealing and Cannibalism.-Scene on the Beach.-Case of Sickness.Diseases.-Expression of Ill-will. Bay of Oomi, at Nukuhiva, PARTLY in apology for any special dullness that may be discoverable under the present date, I must 286 REMOVAL OF THE commence the record of the day by apprising you, my dear H, that I am sadly disspirited just at present, and most cordially weary of the vileness of the Nukuhivans. Though somewhat hardened to scenes which I am obliged to witness, without the power to control, I am more and more disgusted with the nakedness and a hundred other of the odious appurtenances of heathenism forced on us at every turn. That the Taipiis might have no reason for supposing us the friends only of the tribes at war with them, Captain Finch determined some days since to remove the Vincennes to their waters, to evince to them our perfect neutrality, by holding similar intercourse and bestowing the same gifts on them that he had on the Teiis, Taioas, and Hapas, and to exert his influence there also, in bringing the present hostilities to an amicable adjustment. As mentioned in my last letter, he apprised the chiefs on Saturday of this design, and proposed to them to send a deputation of their principal personages by the ship, to hold a conference under his protection with the rulers of that tribe, that if possible peace might at once be formed. To this they readily acceded; appointing the young prince Moana, and Te Ipu, a chief warrior from the Teiis and Taioas, and Piaroro from the Hapas. Though there was no fear for the personal safety of the young prince in landing among the Taipiis, from the power of his near relatives among them, still Haapé, his guardian, made it a condition of his accompanying us, that he should go on shore only with the VINCENNES TO OOMI. 287 captain, lest he might be detained by his friends in a kind of honourable captivity. We intended to leave Taiohae on the fourth inst., but on taking our anchors after breakfast, and attempting for an hour, with a light and baffling wind, to get out of the bay, we were obliged to return to our moorings and wait the land-breeze of an earlier hour the next day. Accordingly all hands were called yesterday at four o'clock in the morning, and we cleared the harbour in a short time without difficulty. Our course, for the six or eight miles intervening between Taiohae and Oomi, being directly in the face of the trade-wind, we were obliged to beat up, and in doing it made two stretches into the mid channel between Nukuhiva and Uapou twenty-five or thirty miles south of it. We had fine views of both. The outline of Uapou is altogether the most romantic, and is most singularly marked by two or three elevated and wild peaks in the centre, one of which rises in the proportions of a spire, leaning much on one side, to a perfect point, at least a thousand feet above the elevation of the general range. By twelve o'clock we had approached near "Tower Bluff;" and in the lights and shade we then saw it, a more magnificent object of the kind can scarce be imagined. Though evidently a mass of dark lava only, the whole is so softened by a delicate moss of green, interspersed with bushes in the crevices of the rocks and creeping plants richly mantling its irregularities, that beauty is imparted to that which otherwise might seem an unvaried deformity; and as to the tower, as we term it, and the parapeted 288 DANGEROUS ANCHORAGE. rocks around, were we in a country where remains of feudal power and grandeur are to be found, no one would be thought drawing heavily on his imagination, in pronouncing it, even at a short distance, the majestic ruin of some baronial castle. A half mile from the promontory, a single rock rises eight or ten feet above the water, like the shaft of a column, with a rounded top. It forms a good mark by which to enter this inlet, the most eastern of three, communicating with the ocean by a common passage three or four miles wide, sometimes called Comptroller's Bay. We passed close by it, and are told that ships have gone between it and the bluff, but should think not without danger. We carried the wind in with us, and ran readily to our present anchorage. The bay is very narrow, with high hills on each side and deep water to their very base. By the direction of Morrison, we ran so far in as to become uneasy as to a want of room in case of accidents to our anchor or cable, and brought up in fourteen fathoms, little satisfied with our berth. The steep hills on either side, at a distance of two or three cables' length only, are rocky and slightly covered with grass. About a mile north of us, the direction in which they run, they join at the water's edge in a short sand-beach, skirting a narrow valley filled with luxuriant groves. Behind this the mountains, richly wooded to their summits, and sprinkled with cottages, rise abruptly till lost in the clouds brushed over their tops by a fresh trade-wind. There is nothing particularly attractive, however, in the scenery thus presented, especially after having |