Accordingly, the next day she again visited the ship twice, bringing each time large presents of hogs, fowls, and fruits. The captain, after expressing his sense of her kindness and bounty, announced his intention of sailing the following morning. This, as usual, threw her into tears, and after recovering herself, she made anxious inquiry when he should return; he said in fifty days, with which she seemed to be satisfied. ‘She stayed on board,’ says Captain Wallis, ’till night, and it was then with the greatest difficulty that she could be prevailed upon to go on shore. When she was told that the boat was ready, she threw herself down upon the arm-chest, and wept a long time, with an excess of passion that could not be pacified; at last, however, with the greatest reluctance, she was prevailed upon to go into the boat, and was followed by her attendants.’
The next day, while the ship was unmooring, the whole beach was covered with the inhabitants. The queen came down, and having ordered a double canoe to be launched, was rowed off by her own people, followed by fifteen or sixteen other canoes. She soon made her appearance on board, but, not being able to speak, she sat down and gave vent to her passion by weeping. Shortly after a breeze springing up, the ship made sail; and finding it now necessary to return into her canoe, ’she embraced us all,’ says Captain Wallis, ’in the most affectionate manner, and with many tears; all her attendants also expressed great sorrow at our departure. In a few minutes she came into the bow of her canoe, where she sat weeping with inconsolable sorrow. I gave her many things which I thought would be of great use to her, and some for ornament; she silently accepted of all, but took little notice of any thing. About ten o’clock we had got without the reef, and a fresh breeze springing up, our Indian friends, and particularly the queen, once more bade us farewell, with such tenderness of affection and grief, as filled both my heart and my eyes.’
The tender passion had certainly caught hold of one or both of these worthies; and if her Majesty’s language had been as well understood by Captain Wallis, as that of Dido was to AEneas, when pressing him to stay with her, there is no doubt it would have been found not less pathetic—
Nec te noster amor,
nec te data dextera quondam,
Nec moritura tenet crudeli
funere Dido?
This lady, however, did not sink, like the ‘miserrima Dido,’ under her griefs; on the contrary, we find her in full activity and animation, and equally generous, to Lieut. Cook and his party, under the name of Oberea, who, it now appeared, was no queen, but whose husband they discovered was uncle to the young king, then a minor, but from whom she was separated. She soon evinced a partiality for Mr. Banks, though not quite so strong as that for Wallis, but it appears to have been mutual, until an unlucky discovery took place, that she had, at her