234 T'ransactions.— Miscellaneous. 
there I heard something jump. I knew it was a fish, and, rousing up, I 
got a pearl hook that I had brought with me, and caught three albicore. I 
sucked their blood and swallowed their eyes, but could not eat the flesh— 
` my throat seemed stuck together. 
* It was now four days since the last native died, and the 40th of my 
voyage, when looking overboard I saw land, what I could hardly imagine, 
but supposed it must be the Navigators. It now fell calm and remained so 
two days, but on the 42nd day I saw ten canoes with five men in each, pull 
towards me. I raised my head over the side when I judged they were 
pretty close. They raised a ery of horror and pulled away. I beckoned 
to them, and intimated I wanted something to drink. They returned and 
gave me a cocoa-nut. 
* One of the chiefs proposed to kill me—I understood this from their 
language, resembling that of Chain Island—but others said ‘no.’ Hight of 
them came with their paddles into my boat and pulled it ashore. I found 
that the island was Manua. I was kindly treated, and after a while went 
to Tutuila, and thence to Upolu. I found there a vessel, the ** Currency 
Lass,” bound for Tahiti. I was offered a passage. We sailed on the 30th 
January, 1845. We met with nothing but contrary winds. Our food and 
water was expended, and had only yams to eat for twelve days before 
reaching Atiu, and it took us 43 days to make Tahiti, 1,200 miles—just one 
day more than my voyage in the boat, which had been 100 miles longer." 
Thus a boat without oars, steered first in one direction then in another, 
next left to itself, actually made the voyage from Chain Island to the 
Navigators in less time than a well-appointed vessel could make the return 
tripto Tahiti. The lost oars also had set from east to west. 
You see the detention experienced by the double canoe, and the ** Cur- 
rency Lass's" tedious voyage from west to east, and how a canoe and open 
boat made the reverse voyages, as it were, on their own account, and all 
this took place in one twelve months. Cook found at Tonga a canoe which 
had drifted from Tahiti, and mentions finding at Wateoo three men, the 
survivors of a party, who having set out from Tahiti for Ulitea had been 
blown past their destination, and had fetched Wateoo, 200 leagues to the 
westward, and observes “ that this serves to explain better than a thousand 
speculative conjectures how the islands of the South Seas had been 
peopled.” 
Had the question at issue been merely whether a single eastern island, 
say Tahiti, had réceived its inhabitants from a single western island, say 
Savaii, the facts of winds and currents prevailing, though not uniformly, 
would have less weight. A casual voyage against the wind could be 
performed, and the wind does change and blow from the westward at times, 
