The South Sea Trader. 
3°9 
older days in the Caroline and Marshall Islands, 
where some two or three white men equalled in 
power and position the highest chiefs in the 
land. On Ponape, in 1820, one such man 
maintained a force of some hundreds of fighting 
men, all of whom were armed with muskets and 
cutlasses. He had originally been the master 
of a trading and whaling vessel, which also did 
a little quiet privateering, during 1815-20. 
Chased away from the East Indies by Dutch 
and English men-of-war, he was sailing east¬ 
ward to try his luck against the Spaniards on 
the coast of South America when he lost the 
vessel at Ponape in the Western Carolines. 
Out of his crew of thirty men, nearly 
twenty returned to China in a small schooner 
they built from the wreck for the purpose ; 
while he and the remainder accepted the offer 
of the principal chief of the Jakoits district to 
stay on the island and assist him in his warlike 
expeditions. Like the survivors of the mas¬ 
sacred crew of the English privateer Port-au- 
Prince ., who assisted the warlike chief Finau to 
subjugate the whole of the Tongan Islands, these 
eleven adventurous seamen went to work with 
such zeal that in six months the three districts 
