ISLAND OF MUWE. 155 



been my great source of pleasure. The conduct 

 of a vessel through distant seas, and through 

 its conflicts with the variable element, is not 

 indeed an uninteresting occupation ; but the 

 object which has always chiefly attracted my 

 inclinations, is an intimate knowledge of various 

 countries and their inhabitants ; and I have 

 always considered the time spent at sea, as a 

 necessary hardship submitted to with this re- 

 ward in view. Perhaps I was not born for a 

 sailor : an accident, by no means calculated 

 upon in my previous education, made me such 

 in my fifteenth year. 



We sailed in the night past O Wahi, the 

 principal of the Sandwich group, with its cele- 

 brated giant mountain Mou-na-roa. At break 

 of day on the 13th, we saw in the west the 

 elevated island of Muwe, and continued our 

 course along the northern shore of this and its 

 neighbour ^lorotai, to Wahu, where we in- 

 tended to land. The landscape of a tropical 

 country is always pleasing, even when, as here, 

 high lava hills, and masses of sometimes naked 

 rocks piled like to^vers upon each other, form 

 the principal features of the coast, at first in- 



