10 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES, 
the evident feeling with which Mr. Nott_, who^ after 
an absence of thirty years^ visited England in the 
summer of 1826^ exclaimed^ as he a second time left 
the British shore^ to return to the South Sea Islands, not, 
in the language of the poet, (Camoens,) Ungrateful 
country, thou shalt not possess my bones,^’ but, ^^lo nei 
oe e tau fenua ! eita vau e tahi faahou adu ia oe Fare¬ 
well, my native land, I shall never step on you again. 
Out of sight of land, and proceeding every day farther 
from it, the feelings in immediate connexion therewith 
gradually began to subside, our thoughts were in¬ 
creasingly occupied with the novel scenes by which we 
were surrounded; and our attention was engaged by the 
pursuits which, at sea, we were able to follow. About 
three weeks after leaving Portsmouth, we touched at 
Madeira, and, proceeding on our voyage to Rio Janeiro, 
cast anchor at the mouth of its beautiful harbour in 
the evening of the 20th of March, 1816. 
The light of the next morning presented before us one 
of the most magnificent and extensive landscapes I ever 
beheld. The mass of granite rock, surmounted by the 
fort of Santa Cruz on our right, the towering Sugar- 
loaf mountain on our left, the picturesque island at the 
mouth of the harbour, the distant town of St. Sebastian, 
the turrets of the castle, the convent of St. Antonio, the 
lofty range of mountains in the interior, whose receding 
summits were almost lost in aerial perspective, where 
^^Distance lends enchantment to the view,” 
all successively met the eye, together with the widely 
expanded and beautiful bay, one of the finest in the world, 
studded with verdant islands, rendered more picturesque 
by the white cottages with which they were adorned* 
