Influenced by considerations of humanity, which promise speedy civilization to a race of men who enjoy every mental and bodily endowment which nature can bestow, and which requires only art to perfect, as well as by views of policy, which secure to my country a fruitful and populous island possessing every advantage of security and supplies for ships, and which of all others is most happily situated as respects climate and local position, I do declare that I have, in the most solemn manner, under the American flag displayed in Fort Madison and in the presence of numerous witnesses, taken possession of the said island for the use of the United States.

To the guileless natives, made happy with rum, listening to the necessarily imperfect translation of these words, the ceremony may well have been a strange magic to unknown gods, but it is not difficult to imagine the feelings of Wilson, the tattooed Englishman, as he translated this proclamation giving the rich and happy islands to a country at war with his own.  He listened and repeated, however, with patriotic protests unuttered, and prepared to assist Porter in his contemplated war against the Typees.

A week later one of the warships, with five boats and ten war-canoes, sailed for the Typee beach.  Ten canoes of Hapaas joined them there.  The tops of all the neighboring mountains were thronged with friendly warriors armed with clubs, spears, and slings, and altogether not less than five thousand men were in the forces under Porter, among them thirty-five Americans with guns, which he thought enough.

The Typees pelted them with stones as they sat at breakfast, and Porter sent a native ambassador, offering peace at the price of submission.  He came back, running madly and bruised by his reception.  Porter then ordered the advance.

The company advanced into the bushes, and were received by a veritable rain of stones and spears.  Not an enemy was in sight.  On all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came, and no whisper or rustle of underbrush revealed the lurking Typees.

They pushed on, hoping to get through the thicket, which Wilson had assured them was of no great extent.  Lieutenant Down’s leg was shattered by a stone, and Porter had to send a party with him to the rear.  This left but twenty-four white men.  The native allies did no fighting, but merely looked on.  They were not going to make bitterer enemies of the Typees if the godlike whites could not whip them.  The situation was desperate.

However, Porter chose to go on.  They crossed a river, and in a jungle had to crawl on their hands and knees to make progress.  They thought themselves happy to make their way through this, but immediately found themselves confronted by a high wall of rock, beyond which the enemy took their stand and showered down stones.  The cartridges were almost exhausted.  Porter sent four men to the ship for more, and, with three men knocked senseless by stones, was reduced to sixteen men.