[5] Mr G.F. says some of them had bunches of feathers on their heads, others a white shell tied on the forehead, and one a sago leaf rolled round his head forming a kind of cap.  They came near enough to the vessel to receive presents, and shewed a peculiar partiality for nails, which implied some acquaintance with their value and use.  It was impossible to hold conversation with them by any known language, but it would seem, that their numerals bore strong resemblance to those of the Friendly Islands, or were indeed the same.  There is reason to think then, as Captain Cook afterwards notices, that these are the same sort of people, if not the same individuals, that were seen on the following day.—­E.

[6] “Quiros had great reason to extol the beauty and fertility of this country; it is indeed, to appearance, one of the finest in the world.  Its riches in vegetable productions would doubtless have afforded the botanist an ample harvest of new plants, as, next to New Zealand, it was the largest island we had hitherto seen, and had the advantage of having never been examined by other naturalists.  But the study of nature was only the secondary object in this voyage, which, contrary to its original intent, was so contrived in the execution as to produce little more than a new track on the chart of the southern hemisphere.  We were therefore obliged to look upon those moments, as peculiarly fortunate, when the urgent wants of the crew, and the interest of the sciences, happened to coincide.”—­G.F.

This language is by no means to be imputed to any thing like disrespect towards Captain Cook, who seems to have stood very high in the author’s estimation; it is, in fact, the natural expression of disappointment at the unexpected and unintended failure of a favourite speculation, without any reference to the moral agents by whom it had been immediately occasioned.  It does, however, seem to imply censure of those, who, in planning the expedition, were far more anxious to make discoveries, than to extend their importance by the labours of the naturalist.  Considering then from whom it comes, a liberal interpreter would concede a little allowance to its poignancy of complaint.  Men very naturally attach superior importance to studies which have long and almost exclusively engrossed their own attention, and are exceedingly apt to ascribe to ignorance, or something still more dishonourable, that indifference to them which those who are in power seem to manifest.  Much self-denial, as well as much liberal observation, is required, to overcome such evil surmisings, and to induce a candid construction of the conduct that thwarts our own sanguine prospects.  These perhaps are rarely to be met with in young men, who, in general, are intolerant in proportion to the really honest industry they exercise in particular pursuits, and their consciousness of the disinterestedness by