166 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
At a season such as this, when I have reflected 
on our actual situation, so far removed, in the 
event of any casualty, from human observation and 
assistance, and preserved from certain death only 
by a few feet of thin board, which my own un- 
skilful hands had nailed together, a sense of the 
wakeful care of the Almighty has alone afforded 
composure; and when I have gazed on the mag- 
nificent and boundless assemblage of suns and 
worlds, whose rays have shed their lustre over the 
scene, and have remembered that they were form- 
ed, sustained, and controlled, im all their complex 
and mighty movements, by Him on whose eare I 
could alone rely, I have almost involuntarily uttered 
the exclamation of the psalmist, ‘‘ Lord, what is 
man, that thou art mindful of him !” 
The contemplation of the heavenly bodies, al- 
though they exhibit the wisdom and majesty of 
God, who “bringeth out their host by number, 
and calleth them all by names, by the greatness of 
his might,” impressed at the same time the con- 
viction that I was far from home, and those scenes 
which i memory were associated with a starlight 
evening in the land I had left. 
Many of the stars which I had beheld in Ene- 
land were visible here: the constellations of the 
zodiac, the splendours of Orion, and the mild 
twinkling of the Pleiades, were seen; but the 
northern pole-star, the steady beacon of juvenile 
astronomical observation, the Great-bear, and 
much that was peculiar to a northern sky, were 
wanting. The effect of mental associations, con- 
nected with the appearance of the heavens, is sin- 
gular and impressive. During a voyage which J 
subsequently made to the Sandwich Islands, many 
a pleasant hour was spent m watching the rising 
