xlvi 



PREFACE. 



ployed. We wanted no coffee-houses to kill time ; 

 nor no Vauxhalls for our evening entertainments. 



Every nightly assembly in the plantations of this 

 happy Isle, is furnished by beneficent Nature, with a 

 more luxurious feast than all the dainties of the most 

 sumptuous champetre^ though lavished with unlimited 

 profusion, and emblazoned with the most expensive 

 decorations,^^ ^c, " But, amidst so many delights, 

 it was not for human nature to subsist long without 

 satiety. Our officers began to be punctilious, and our 

 seamen to be licentious. Several of the latter were 

 punished severely for indecency in surpassing even the 

 natives, by their shameless manner of indulging their 

 passions ; and two of the latter ivent on shore, to ter- 

 minate an affair of honour by the decision of their 

 pistols,'^'^^ ^c. 



After referring the reader to pages 1301, 1469, 

 1513, 1618, 1925,f and fifty others, if it were ne- 

 cessary, for similar passages, to prove, that wherever 

 Cook went, there was a free intercourse, of the most 

 licentious kind, kept up between the sailors and officers 

 on one hand, and the native women on the other ; 

 which intercourse is described in the most free, not 

 to say gross, manner, the author will pass from this 

 subject, with a few remarks. — The first thing to be 

 noticed is, the uniform mode in which all these navi- 

 gators have described the intercourse alluded to ; the 

 open and free, not to say licentious, terms they have 

 used ; and the omission, on almost all occasions, to 

 make any apology, either for themselves or the natives. 

 The author does not state this so much with a view 

 to his own justification, as to point out the folly of 

 the Reviewer in provoking an investigation so little 



* See Journal of Cook's Voyage, vol. 4. p. 1527, 28 and 29 in the Col- 

 lection. 



t See also pp.496, 695, 1285, 1297, 1490, 1555, 1558, 1707, 1944, he. of 

 <*'o1]prtion, 



