lad had gone overboard at a
moment when it was utterly impossible to render him any assistance.
Under other circumstances he might easily have been saved, as the sea,
though rough, was not sufficiently so to prevent a boat being lowered.
Now, however, we could not go back to look for him; indeed, as Tamaku
said, he must long before this have perished.

We after this sighted the Marquesas, to which the French have laid
claim, though they have made no attempt to colonise these beautiful and
fertile islands.

The Sandwich Islands were at length reached, and we brought up off
Honolulu, in the island of Oahu. We were more struck with the beauty of
the scenery than with that of the female portion of the inhabitants; but
as the islands have been so often described, I will not attempt to do
so; merely remarking that they are eleven in number, some of them about
a hundred miles in circumference. Hawaii, formerly known as Owhyhee, is
very much the largest, being eighty-eight miles in length by sixty-eight
in breadth; and it contains two lofty mountains, each upwards of
thirteen thousand feet in height--one called Mauna Kea, and the other
Mauna Loa, which latter is for ever sending forth its volcanic fires,
while it casts its vast shadow far and wide over the ocean.

After leaving Honolulu, which in those days was a very different place
to what it is now, we brought up in the Bay of Kealakeakua, celebrated
as the place where Captain Cook lost his life. As we entered the bay we
could see in the far distance the towering dome of Mauna Loa. The whole
country round bore evidence of the volcanic nature of the soil; broken
cliffs rose round the bay, on the north side of which a reef of rocks
offers the most convenient landing-place. It was here that Captain Cook
was killed, while endeavouring to reach his boat. A few yards from the
water stands a cocoa-nut tree, at the foot of which he is said to have
breathed his last. The _Imogene_ carried away the top of the tree; and
her captain had a copper plate fastened on to the stem, the lower part
of which has been thickly tarred to preserve it. On the plate is a
cross, with an inscription--"Near this spot fell Captain James Cook, the
renowned circumnavigator, who discovered these islands, A.D. 1778."

Tamaku having been allowed to remain on shore during the time we were
here, came off again of his own free will, and expressed his readiness
to continue on board.

We again sailed