Returning towards the harbor, we tarried to exchange a kind word with the Catholic priest attached to the garrison. It is needless to add that he had made no proselytes among the natives, and when, from idle curiosity or merriment, they attended mass, and were under no apprehensions from Franee bayonets, they delighted themselves by mimicking every word and gesture of the good father.
During the jaunt we encountered two or three American or English vagabonds, residing permanently on the island, subsisting on poee poee and raw fish, lost to all the tastes and habits of civilized society, making a livelihood by trading with ships touching at the group, or idolized by the islanders for their skill in the distillation of deleterious intoxicating drinks from the dragon-tree, kava, or sugar-cane. They are a class of persons, who, if not naturally unprincipled, are driven by harsh usage to desert from the whalers, and the contrast of the indolent voluptuous life of the islands, with the hardships and disease of shipboard, is more than sufficient to reconcile them to the change.
The whaling interests of the United States have now attained so vast a magnitude, that it is high time our government should take measures exclusively for their protection in these seas. The enterprise of our hardy fishermen has driven the ships of all other nations almost entirely off the ground of competition. In the Pacific, and its continental seas alone, we have a mighty fleet of more than five hundred whale ships, manned in the aggregate by twenty thousand seamen. The larger portion of these vessels are fitted for the right whale, and seek their prey on the northern coasts of America or Asia, in high southern latitudes, and latterly, with extraordinary success, on the shores of Japan and sea of Okokts. The sperm fishermen cruise near the equator, and not only are frequently surrounded by dangerous navigation, amidst islands or reefs little known, but have also to guard against surprise, and the treachery of savages of the uncounted groups of Polynesia; unavailingly at times, for, in addition to the long catalogue of crimes committed in this ocean, was that of the capture of the ship Triton, in December of '47, by the natives of Sydenham Island—one of the King's Mill cluster—a number of whose crew were inhumanly massacred.
It does not necessarily follow that the natives are always to blame—gross outrages sometimes demand prompt vengeance;—but yet a small squadron of double-decked corvettes, of light draught, and ample stowage, constantly cruising, and touching among these groups, would tend in a great degree to shield our whalers from harm, and the natives themselves from the imposition and injustice so commonly practised upon them.
Again, if there were stringent laws for the internal government of this branch of our marine—were masters not allowed under any circumstances to keep the sea beyond the usual period comprised in a fishing season, before visiting port, and the scurvy considered a capital offense, we should meet with fewer instances of desertions or mutiny, and fewer diseased, vicious vagabonds drifting about these islands at the mercy of the natives.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
On the 28th of September, the well-used chains and anchors were raised from their beds, and with a light wind we drifted slowly from the lonely bay of Anna Maria. The sun arose the next morning, and a dim blue haze alone pointed to the spot on the ocean where lie the Marquesas.
The fifth day after sailing from Nukeheva, we approached the north-western clusters of the Society group, and passed a number of low coralline islands, appearing like a raft of upright spars adrift upon the sea. One was Kruzenstein's—named by Kotzbue, in compliment to his old commander.