considered, I could not help looking upon Taloo as offering a
splendid opening for us adventurers. To say nothing of the facilities presented
for going to sea in the whaler, or hiring ourselves out as day labourers in the
sugar plantation, there were hopes to be entertained of being promoted to some
office of high trust and emolument about the person of her majesty, the queen.
    Nor was this expectation altogether Quixotic. In the train of many
Polynesian princes, roving whites are frequently found: gentlemen pensioners of
state, basking in the tropical sunshine of the court, and leading the
pleasantest lives in the world. Upon islands little visited by foreigners, the
first seaman that settles down is generally domesticated in the family of the
head chief or king; where he frequently discharges the functions of various
offices, elsewhere filled by as many different individuals. As historiographer,
for instance, he gives the natives some account of distant countries; as
commissioner of the arts and sciences, he instructs them in the use of the
jack-knife, and the best way of shaping bits of iron hoop into spear-heads; and
as interpreter to his majesty, he facilitates intercourse with strangers;
besides instructing the people generally in the uses of the most common English
phrases, civil and profane; but oftener the latter.
    These men generally marry well; often - like Hardy of Hannamanoo - into the
blood royal.
    Sometimes they officiate as personal attendant, or first lord in waiting, to
the king. At Amboi, one of the Tonga Islands, a vagabond Welshman bends his knee
as cup-bearer to his cannibal majesty. He mixes his morning cup of arva, and,
with profound genuflections, presents it in a cocoa-nut bowl, richly carved.
Upon another island of the same group, where it is customary to bestow no small
pains in dressing the hair - frizzing it out by a curious process into an
enormous Pope's-head - an old man-of-war's-man fills the post of barber to the
king. And as his majesty is not very neat, his mop is exceedingly populous; so
that, when Jack is not engaged in dressing the head entrusted to his charge, he
busies himself in gently titillating it - a sort of skewer being actually worn
about in the patient's hair for that special purpose.
    Even upon the Sandwich Islands, a low rabble of foreigners is kept about the
person of Tammahammaha, for the purpose of ministering to his ease or enjoyment.
    Billy Loon, a jolly little negro, tricked out in a soiled blue jacket,
studded all over with