st not hastily conclude that theft is a testimony of the same
depravity in them that it is in us, in the instances in which our people
were sufferers by their dishonesty; for their temptation was such, as to
surmount would be considered as a proof of uncommon integrity among
those who have more knowledge, better principles, and stronger motives
to resist, the temptations of illicit advantage: An Indian among penny
knives, and beads, or even nails and broken glass, is in the same state
of trial with the meanest servant in Europe among unlocked coffers of
jewels and gold.

On the 26th, I mounted six swivel guns upon the fort, which I was sorry
to see struck the natives with dread: Some fishermen who lived upon the
point removed farther off, and Owhaw told us, by signs, that in four
days we should fire great guns.

On the 27th, Tabourai Tamaide, with a friend, who eat with a voracity
that I never saw before, and the three women that usually attended him,
whose names were TERAPO, TIRAO, and OMIE, dined at the fort: In the
evening they; took their leave, and set out for the house which Tubourai
Tamaide had set up in the skirts of the wood; but in less than a quarter
of an hour, he returned in great emotion, and hastily seizing Mr Banks's
arm, made signs that he should follow him. Mr Banks immediately
complied, and they soon came up to a place where they found the ship's
butcher, with a reaping-hook in his hand: Here the chief stopped, and,
in a transport of rage which rendered his signs scarcely intelligible,
intimated that the butcher had threatened, or attempted, to cut his
wife's throat with the reaping-hook. Mr Banks then signified to him,
that if he could fully explain the offence, the man should be punished.
Upon this he became more calm, and made Mr Banks understand that the
offender, having taken a fancy to a stone hatchet which lay in his
house, had offered to purchase it of his wife for a nail: That she
having refused to part with it upon any terms, he had catched it up, and
throwing down the nail, threatened to cut her throat if she made any
resistance: To prove this charge the hatchet and the nail were produced,
and the butcher had so little to say in his defence that there was not
the least reason to doubt of its truth.

Mr Banks having reported this matter to me, I took an opportunity, when
the chief and his women, with other Indians, were on board the ship, to
call up the butcher, and after a recapitulation