 -
very generally, and often very deservedly, receives high commendation. Such
passages will be found, however, to be based upon facts admitting of no
contradiction, and which have come immediately under the writer's cognisance.
The conclusions deduced from these facts are unavoidable, and in stating them
the author has been influenced by no feeling of animosity, either to the
individuals themselves or to that glorious cause which has not always been
served by the proceedings of some of its advocates.
    The great interest with which the important events lately occurring at the
Sandwich, Marquesas, and Society Islands, have been regarded in America and
England, and indeed throughout the world, will, he trusts, justify a few
otherwise unwarrantable digressions.
    There are some things related in the narrative which will be sure to appear
strange, or perhaps entirely incomprehensible, to the reader; but they cannot
appear more so to him than they did to the author at the time. He has stated
such matters just as they occurred, and leaves every one to form his own opinion
concerning them; trusting that his anxious desire to speak the unvarnished truth
will gain for him the confidence of his readers.

                                   Chapter I

 
    The Sea - Longings for Shore - A Land-sick Ship - Destination of the
    Voyagers - The Marquesas - Adventure of a Missionary's Wife among the
    Savages - Characteristic Anecdote of the Queen of Nukuheva.
 
Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land;
cruising after the sperm whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed
on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific - the sky above, the sea around, and
nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There
is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam. Those glorious bunches of bananas
which once decorated our stern and quarter-deck have, alas, disappeared! and the
delicious oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays - they, too, are
gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left us but salt-horse
and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so much ado about a
fourteen-days' passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the
privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting,
lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking
champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of
mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but
