Presents of European fowls and seeds made to the chief.
I presented the chief of the district in which we were with a couple of turkies, and some ducks and drakes; they were to be considered as the mites of the widow. I likewise desired him to make a garden in our way, and to sow various sorts of feeds in them, and this proposal was received with joy. In a short time, Ereti prepared a piece of ground, which had been chosen by our gardeners, and got it inclosed. I ordered it to be dug; they admired our gardening instruments. They have likewise around their houses a kind of kitchen gardens, in which they plant an eatable hibiscus or okra, potatoes, yams, and other roots. We sowed for their use some wheat, barley, oats, rice, maize, onions, and pot herbs of all kinds. We have reason to believe that these plantations will be taken care of; for this nation appeared to love agriculture, and would I believe be easily accustomed to make advantage of their soil, which is the most fertile in the universe.
Visit of the chief of a neighbouring district.
During the first days of our arrival, I had a visit from the chief of a neighbouring district, who came on board with a present of fruits, hogs, fowls, and cloth. This lord, named Toutaa, has a fine shape, and is prodigiously tall. He was accompanied by some of his relations, who were almost all of them six feet (French measure) high: I made them presents of nails, some tools, beads, and silk stuffs. We were obliged to repay this visit at his house, where we were very well received, and where the good-natured Toutaa offered me one of his wives, who was very young and pretty handsome. The assembly was very numerous, and the musicians had already began the hymenean. Such is their manner of receiving visits of ceremony.
On the 10th, an islander was killed, and the natives came to complain of this murder. I sent some people to the house, whither they had brought the dead body; it appeared very plain that the man had been killed by a fire-arm. However, none of our people had been suffered to go out of the camp, or to come from the ships with fire-arms. The most exact enquiries which I made to find out the author of this villainous action proved unsuccessful. The natives doubtless believed that their countryman had been in the wrong; for they continued to come to our quarters with their usual confidence. However, I received intelligence that many of the people had been seen carrying off their effects to the mountains, and that even Ereti’s house was quite unfurnished. I made him some more presents, and this good chief continued to testify the sincerest friendship for us.
Loss of our anchors, dangers which we meet with.
I hastened in the mean while the completing of our works of all kinds; for though this was an excellent place to supply our wants at, yet I knew that we were very ill moored. Indeed, though we under-run the cables almost every day with the long boat, and had not yet found them chafed[[98]], yet we had found the bottom was strewed with large coral; and besides, in case of a high wind from the offing, we had no room to drive. Necessity had obliged us to take this anchorage, without leaving us the liberty of choosing, and we soon found that our fears were but too well grounded.
Account of the manoeuvres which saved us.
The 12th, at five in the morning, the wind being south, our S. E. cable, and the hawser of the stream-anchor, which by way of precaution we had extended to the E. S. E. parted at the bottom. We immediately let go our sheet-anchor, but before it had reached the bottom, the frigate swung off to her N. W. anchor, and we fell aboard the Etoile on the larboard side. We hove upon our anchor, and the Etoile veered out cable as fast as possible, so that we were separated before any damage was done. The store ship then sent us the end of a hawser, which she had extended to the eastward, and upon which we hove, in order to get farther from her. We then weighed our sheet-anchor, and hove in our hawser and cable, which parted at the bottom. The latter had been cut about thirty fathom from the clinch; we shifted it end for end, and bent it to a spare anchor of two thousand seven hundred weight, which the Etoile had stowed in her hold, and which we sent for. Our S. E. anchor, which we had let go without any buoy-rope, on account of the great depth, was entirely lost; and we endeavoured, without success, to save the stream-anchor, whose buoy was sunk, and for which it was impossible to sweep the bottom. We presently swayed up our fore-top-mast and fore-yard, in order to be ready for sailing as soon as the wind should permit.
In the afternoon the wind abated and shifted to the eastward. We then carried out to the S. E. a stream-anchor, and the anchor we had got from the Etoile, and I sent a boat to sound to the northward, in order to know whether there was a passage that way, by which means we might have got out almost with any wind. One misfortune never comes alone; as we were occupied with a piece of work on which our safety depended, |Another murder of some islanders.| I was informed that three of the natives had been killed or wounded with bayonets in their huts, that the alarm was spread in the country, that the old men, the women and the children fled towards the mountains with their goods, and even the bodies of the dead, and that we should perhaps be attacked by an army of these enraged men. Thus our situation gave us room to fear a war on shore, at the very moment when both ships were upon the point of being stranded. I went ashore, and came into the camp, where, in presence of the chief, I put four soldiers in irons, who were suspected to be the authors of this crime: these proceedings seemed to content the natives.