204 
VOYAGE TO THE 
feelings, as men and Englishmen, than this visit to the 
Sandwich Islands, and the intercourse we have had with 
their very interesting inhabitants. 
We had left the Sandwich Islands with the hopes of 
visiting Otaheite, or more properly Tahiti; but after ten 
days’ vain attempts to get to windward, we altered our 
course and gave up our design. We were in some measure 
consoled for this disappointment, however, when, on the 
morning of the 29 th of July, we unexpectedly saw broken 
water and low land at a distance, and at first supposed it to 
be Starbuck’s Island, though differing from the latitude laid 
down for that place*. We steered for it immediately; and 
about noon hove-to abreast of it. Mr. Malden and some 
others immediately went in a boat to examine it. It ap¬ 
peared to be a low coral formation, about twelve or fourteen 
miles in extent, and having on it several clumps of thick 
fresh-looking trees, so compact, that at a distance they were 
taken for rocks: these clumps are useful in approaching the 
land, for it is in no place higher than forty feet. We found 
the landing easy; but we were accompanied to the beach 
by shoals of sharks, which were so ravenously inclined that 
* This, as it will appear, was a mistake. The discoverer of the real Star- 
buck’s Island was Starbuck, who conveyed the king of the Sandwich Islands to 
