THE WHITE WORLD 



the words of the charge, " the said Lieutenant Charles 

 Wilkes did tell the said Assistant-surgeon Gillou, in a 

 loud and angry tone, ' I deny the fact, I deny the fact, sir, 

 positively. I never said any such thing,' at the same time 

 rising from his chair and advancing toward the said Assist- 

 ant-surgeon Gillou, shaking at him his finger and hand 

 in an insulting manner; — the said Lieutenant Charles 

 Wilkes, having approached the said Assistant-surgeon 

 Gillou, and continuing his violent gesticulation, the said 

 Lieutenant Charles Wilkes exclaimed in a threatening 

 tone, 'Leave the presence, sir! Leave the presence!'" 

 The assistant-surgeon left the presence, and Wilkes 

 climbed to an upper piazza and shouted to his officer, 

 ordering him to return to his ship, at the same time 

 " threatening him with his finger in this public place in 

 a foreign land." To this indignity Wilkes added the exas- 

 peration of a refusal to forward to the Secretary of the 

 Navy, Assistant-surgeon Gillou's report of the interview. 



Another charge was cruelty to the natives in the Pacific 

 seas. On the Island of Malolo the inhabitants had killed 

 a certain Lieutenant Underwood, and Wilkes had retali- 

 ated by storming the principal town. The charge cites 

 the fact that natives were put to death, and goes on to 

 state that " after a large deputation from the reduced in- 

 habitants of the aforesaid Island of Malolo had, crouching 

 down before the said Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, crawled 

 upon their elbows and knees toward his feet, and groaned 

 forth their repentant submission, grappling up the earth 

 and throwing it on their heads and shoulders, the afore- 

 said Lieutenant Charles Wilkes did order them to bring 

 or drive down their hogs to supply the brig " Porpoise," 

 and to carry water to fill the tanks of said vessel, and to 

 yield up to him arms and other property, thereby leaving 

 them, with their wives and children, exposed to the mur- 

 derous hate and anthropophagian appetites of their 

 cannibal neighbors." 



Wilkes replied to the charge of cruelty by pointing out 

 that if he were to be tried at all for shooting natives, he 

 must be tried for murder; he could not be accused of a 

 lesser crime. The court-martial reprimanded him, how- 

 ever, for cruelty to his men; he had caused twenty-five of 



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