PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
439 
The cocoa-nut tree, as I before remarked, was said to have 
been brought from Ootoopoo, an island which is supposed by the 
natives to be situated somewhere to the windward of La Magda¬ 
lena. 
None of our navigators have yet discovered an island of that 
name, so situated; but in examining the chart of Tupia , that na¬ 
tive of the island of Ulitea who left there with captain Cook on 
his first voyage; we find nearly in the place assigned by the na¬ 
tives of Noociheevah to Ootoopoo an island called Ootoo. Po , 
which signifies night, black, or. dark, may be an addition of our 
islanders or an omission of Tupia's; this chart, although not drawn 
with the accuracy which could be expected from our hydrogra- 
phers, was, nevertheless, constructed by sir Joseph Ranks under 
the direction of Tupia , and was of great assistance to Cook and 
other navigators in discovering the islands he has named. He 
had himself visited upwards of eighty, of which he gave the 
names, and among others he has named the islands composing 
the Marquesas group as they are.called by the natives, and as this 
was done on the first voyage of Cook, and as they were not 
known to Europeans before that period, but by the name of saints 
which the Spaniards imposed on them, it could not have been from 
them he derived his knowledge of them, but from some of the 
navigators of this great nation; for Tupia, although the greatest 
voyager of his nation, does not pretend that he ever was so far to 
windward. The intercourse between the most distant of those 
islands does not seem difficult or even rare to the natives, although 
to us it may seem so extraordinary; but we are apt to forget that 
those islands are situated in an ocean seldom troubled by tempests, 
and from its remarkable serenity is denominated the Pacific. Of 
the existence of Ootoo or Ootoopoo there cannot be a doubt: Tupia 
received such information from the accounts of other navigators 
as enabled him to give it a position on his chart near fifty years 
ago, and the position now ascribed to it by Gattanewa , differs little 
from that of Tupia, 
Of JYookuahe and Kappenooa , which lay four days sail to 
leeward of Madison’s Island, I know not how they obtained their 
information, but the island of Pooheka they say they have seen of 
a clear day from the heights of Robert’s Island, and the smoke 
VOL. II. 
T 
