some refreshment, we set out on our return to the ship.  In our way, we examined the harbours and coves which lie behind the islands that I had discovered from the hill; and in this route we saw an old village, in which there were many houses that seemed to have been long deserted:  We also saw another village which was inhabited, but the day was too far spent for us to visit it, and we therefore made the best of our way to the ship, which we reached between eight and nine o’clock at night.

The 23d I employed in carrying on a survey of the place; and upon one of the islands where I landed, I saw many houses which seemed to have been long deserted, and no appearance of any inhabitant.

On the 24th, we went to visit our friends at the Hippah or village on the point of the island near the ship’s station, who had come off to us on our first arrival in the bay.  They received us with the utmost confidence and civility, shewing us every part of their habitations, which were commodious and neat.  The island or rock on which this town is situated, is divided from the main by a breach or fissure so narrow, that a man might almost leap from one to the other:  The sides of it are every where so steep as to render the artificial fortification of these people almost unnecessary:  There was, however, one slight pallisade, and one small fighting-stage, towards that part of the rock where access was least difficult.

The people here brought us out several human bones, the flesh of which they had eaten, and offered them to sale; for the curiosity of those among us who had purchased them as memorials of the horrid practice, which many, notwithstanding the reports of travellers, have professed not to believe, had rendered them a kind of article of trade.  In one part of this village we observed, not without some surprise, a cross exactly like that of a crucifix; it was adorned with feathers, and upon our enquiring for what purpose it had been set up, we were told that it was a monument for a man who was dead:  We had before understood that their dead were not buried, but thrown into the sea; but to our enquiry how the body of the man had been disposed of, to whose memory this cross had been erected, they refused to answer.

When we left these people, we went to the other end of the island, and there taking water, crossed over to the main, where we saw several houses but no inhabitants, except a few in some straggling canoes, that seemed to be fishing.  After viewing this place, we returned on board the ship to dinner.

During our visit to the Indians this day, Tupia being always of our party, they had been observed to be continually talking of guns, and shooting people:  For this subject of their conversation we could not at all account; and it had so much engaged our attention, that we talked of it all the way back, and even after we got on board the ship:  We had perplexed ourselves with various conjectures, which were all given up in