POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
481 
probable 5 yet there was leisure afforded for reflection, 
and the sensibilities and powers of the mind were roused 
to an unusual state of excitement by the mighty conflict 
of the elements on every side. 
A retrospect of life, now perhaps about to close, 
presented all the scenes through which I had passed, 
in rapid succession and in varied colours, each ex¬ 
hibiting the lights and shades by which it had been 
distinguished. Present circumstances and connexions 
claimed a thought. The sorrow of the people—the 
dearest objects of earthly attachment, left but a few 
hours before in health and comfort on the receding 
shore—those unconscious infants that would soon, per¬ 
haps, be left fatherless, and dependent on their widowed 
mother, who, in cheerless loneliness, far from friends, 
and home, and country, might remain an exile among 
a strange, untutored race, emerging from the rudest 
barbarism;—these reflections awakened a train of 
feelings not to be described. But the most impressive 
exercise of mind was that referring to the awful change 
approaching. The struggle and the gasp, as the 
wearied arm should attempt to resist the impetuous 
waves, the straining vision that should linger on the 
last ray of retiring light, as the deepening veil of water 
would gradually conceal it for ever, and the rolling 
billows heaving over the sinking and dying body, which, 
perhaps ere life should be extinct, might become the 
prey of voracious inhabitants of the deep, caused scarcely 
a thought, compared with the appearance of the disem¬ 
bodied spirit in the presence of its Maker, the account 
to be rendered, and the awful and unalterable destiny 
that would await it there. These momentous objects 
absorbed all the powers of the mind, and produced an 
3q 
