Soon after we re-embarked in our boats, and having rowed to another cove in the same island, climbed a neighbouring hill, which commanded the country to a considerable distance.  The prospect was very uncommon and romantic, consisting of innumerable islands, which formed as many harbours, where the water was as smooth as a mill-pool:  We saw also many towns, scattered houses, and plantations, the country being much more populous than any we had seen.  One of the towns was very near us, from which many of the Indians advanced, taking great pains to shew us that they were unarmed, and in their gestures and countenances, expressing great meekness and humility.  In the mean time, some of our people, who, when the Indians were to be punished for a fraud, assumed the inexorable justice of a Lycurgus, thought fit to break into one of their plantations, and dig up some potatoes:  For this offence I ordered each of them to be punished with twelve lashes, after which two of them were discharged; but the third, insisting that it was no crime in an Englishman to plunder an Indian plantation, though it was a crime in an Indian to defraud an Englishman of a nail, I ordered him back into his confinement, from which I would not release him till he had received six lashes more.

On the 30th, there being a dead calm, and no probability of our getting to sea, I sent the master, with two boats; to sound the harbour; and all the forenoon had several canoes about the ship, who traded in a very fair and friendly manner.  In the evening we went ashore upon the main, where the people received us very cordially; but we found nothing worthy of notice.

In this bay we were detained by contrary winds and calms several days, during which time our intercourse with the natives was continued in the most peaceable and friendly manner, they being frequently about the ship; and we ashore, both upon the islands and the main.  In one of our visits to the continent, an old man shewed us the instrument they use in staining their bodies, which exactly resembled those that were employed for the same purpose at Otaheite.  We saw also the man who was wounded in attempting to steal our buoy:  The ball had passed through the fleshy part of his arm, and grazed his breast; but the wound, under the care of nature, the best surgeon, and a simple diet, the best nurse, was in a good state, and seemed to give the patient neither pain nor apprehension.[65] We saw also the brother of our old chief, who had been wounded with small shot in our skirmish:  They had struck his thigh obliquely, and though several of them were still in the flesh, the wound seemed to be attended with neither danger nor pain.  We found among their plantations the morus papyrifera, of which these people, as well as those of Otaheite, make cloth; but here the plant seems to be rare, and we saw no pieces of the cloth large enough for any use but to wear by way of ornament in their ears.