308 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
exhibiting 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, perhaps, 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 race 
emerging from the rudest barbarism these re¬ 
flections awakened a train of feelings not to be 
described. But the most impressive exercise of 
mind was that referring to the awful change ap¬ 
proaching. 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 ex¬ 
tinct, might become the prey of voracious inha¬ 
bitants of the deep, caused scarcely a thought, 
compared with the appearance of the disembodied 
spirit in the appearance of its Maker, the account 
to be rendered, and the awful and unalterable 
destiny that would await it there. These moment¬ 
ous objects absorbed all the powers of the mind, 
and produced an intensity of feeling, which for a 
long time rendered me almost insensible to the 
storm, or the liquid columns which threatened our 
destruction. 
The hours that followed were some of the most 
solemn I have ever passed in my life. Although 
much recurred to memory that demanded deep 
regret and most sincere repentance, yet I could 
