HONOLULU. 387 
to be instructed to return to the Samoan Group, and re-examine the 
surveys made by the Flying-Fish and boats, of the south side of 
Upolu, in which I had detected oversights, and suspected neglect; 
to seek for several small and doubtful islands, said to be under the 
equator, and to visit the little-known groups of Ellice and Kingsmill; 
to inquire into the fate of Captain Dowsett, commanding an American 
schooner engaged in the whale-fishery at the Pescadores ; and to seek 
redress for the capture of the American brig Waverley, owned by 
Messrs. Pierce and Co., of Oahu, at Strong’s Island. 
Having by the arrival of the Porpoise learned the news of the 
murder of Gideon Smith at Upolu, I included in my orders to Captain 
Hudson, the duty of investigating the circumstances of the crime, and 
punishing the offenders. He was likewise instructed to seek for the 
magnetic equator in longitude 160° W., and to follow it down to 
the westward. These duties accomplished, I directed him, after visit- 
ing Ascension Island, to join me at the Columbia River, towards the 
end of the coming month of April. | 
These insiructions covered a wide field, which had, as far as I could 
learn, been but little explored, and which our whaling fleet is con- 
tinually traversing. To examine it could not fail to be highly useful 
to those engaged in that important branch of industry. 
I designed to employ the Porpoise in a more close examination of 
some islands in the Paumotu Group or Low Archipelago, which it 
had not been in my power to accomplish during our visit of the pre- 
vious year. She was also to leave a party, with the boring apparatus, 
upon one of the islands, as soon as she reached the group, to remain 
there for about six weeks, or so long as the vessel was engaged in the 
examination of the other islands. This examination being completed, 
Lieutenant-Commandant Ringgold was directed to touch at Tahiti, 
and thence, after surveying Penrhyn and Flint’s Islands, to return to 
Oahu before the 1st of April. 
With the Vincennes, it was my intention to proceed to Hawaii, 
there to ascend to the top of Mauna Loa; to make the pendulum ob- 
servations on the summit and at the base of that mountain; to examine 
the craters and late eruptions; and after performing these duties, if 
time allowed, to proceed to the Marquesas Islands, and thence to pass 
along the magnetic equator to the meridian of the Hawaiian Islands, 
whither it was my intention to return before the Ist of April, to meet 
the Porpoise, and proceed, in company with her, to the Northwest 
Coast. I deemed the time from the 25th of November would be amply 
sufficient, with proper attention, to enable us to perform these duties, 
