on, that it would
have been far better for these poor people, never to have known our
superiority in the accommodations and arts that make life comfortable,
than, after once knowing it, to be again left and abandoned to their
original incapacity of improvement. Indeed, they cannot be restored to
that happy mediocrity in which they lived before we discovered them,
if the intercourse between us should be discontinued. It seems to me
that it has become in a manner incumbent on the Europeans to visit
them once in three or four years, in order to supply them with those
conveniences which we have introduced among them, and have given them
a predilection for. The want of such occasional supplies will probably
be felt very heavily by them, when it may be too late to go back to
their old less perfect contrivances, which they now despise, and have
discontinued since the introduction of ours. For by the time that the
iron tools, of which they are now possessed, are worn out, they will
have almost lost the knowledge of their own. A stone-hatchet is, at
present, as rare a thing amongst them, as an iron one was eight years
ago; and a chisel of bone or stone is not to be seen. Spike-nails have
supplied the place of these last, and they are weak enough to fancy
that they have got an inexhaustible store of them; for these were not
now at all sought after. Sometimes, however, nails much smaller than a
spike would still be taken in exchange for fruit. Knives happened,
at present, to be in great esteem at Ulietea, and axes and hatchets
remained unrivalled by any other of our commodities at all the
islands. With respect to articles of mere ornament, these people are
as changeable as any of the polished nations of Europe; so that what
pleases their fancy, while a fashion is in vogue, may be rejected,
when another whim has supplanted it. But our iron tools are so
strikingly useful, that they will, we may confidently pronounce,
continue to prize them highly; and be completely miserable, if,
neither possessing the materials, nor trained up to the art of
fabricating them, they should cease to receive supplies of what may
now be considered as having become necessary to their comfortable
existence.[3]

[Footnote 3: Captain Cook's reasoning here is irresistibly convincing;
yet it is very remarkable that no practical benefit resulted from
it, in favour of the people whose cause he pleads. One can scarcely
account, far less apologize, for the extrao