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 Morotai, 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 towers upon each other, form 

 the principal features of the coast, at first in- 



