any future act of aggression or disobedience.”  I suspect that the moral code of his majesty was not unlike my own it yielded to the necessities of the time.  He must have found it particularly inconvenient not to be on speaking terms with his prime minister and arch chancellor, whom he had banished to the opposite side of the island on pain of death.  The sentence was originally for six months; but on my intercession the delinquent was pardoned and restored to favour.  I felt much self-complacency when I reflected on this successful instance of my mediatorial power, which had perhaps smothered a civil war in its birth.

The emperor informed me that an American whaler was lying at the east side of the island, filling with the oil of the walrus, or sea-horse; that she had been there at an anchor six weeks, and was nearly full.  I asked to be shown the spot where the ——­ was wrecked; he took me to her sad remains.  She lay broken in pieces on the rocks; and, not far from her, was a mound of earth, on which was placed a painted piece of board by way of a tombstone.  The fate of the vessel, together with the number of sufferers, were marked in rude but concise characters.  I do not exactly remember the words, but in substance it stated, that underneath lay the remains of one hundred as fine fellows as ever walked on a plank, and that they had died, like British seamen, doing their duty to the last.  This was a melancholy sight, especially to a sailor, who knew not how soon the same fate awaited him.

We rafted off several casks of water during that day, and on the following we completed our water, and then ran to the east end of the island to anchor near, and wait for our consort the whaler, the captain of which had come in his boat to visit us:  I conversed with him, and was struck with one remark which he made.

“You Englishmen go to work in a queerish kind of way,” said he; “you send a parcel of soldiers to live on an island where none but sailors can be of use.  You listen to all that those red coats tell you; they never thrive when placed out of musket-shot from a gin-shop:  and because they don’t like it, you evacuate the island.  A soldier likes his own comfort, although very apt to destroy that of other folks; and it a’n’t very likely he would go and make a good report of an island that had neither women nor rum, and where he was no better than a prisoner.  Now, if brother Jonathan had taken this island, I guess he would a’ made it pay for its keep; he would have had two or three crews of whalers, with their wives and families, and all their little comforts about them, with a party of good farmers to till the land, and an officer to command the whole.  The island can provide itself, as you may perceive, and all would have gone on well.  It is just as easy to ‘fish’ the island from the shore as it is in vessel, and indeed much easier.  Only land your boilers and casks, and a couple of dozen of good whale-boats, and this island