It may easily be guessed with what mutual surprise and satisfaction Omai and his countrymen engaged in conversation.  Their story, as related by them, is an affecting one.  About twenty persons in number, of both sexes, had embarked on board a canoe at Otaheite, to cross over to the neighbouring island Ulietea.  A violent contrary wind arising, they could neither reach the latter nor get back to the former.  Their intended passage being a very short one, their stock of provisions was scanty, and soon exhausted.  The hardships they suffered, while driven along by the storm they knew not whither, are not to be conceived.  They passed many days without having any thing to eat or drink.  Their numbers gradually diminished, worn out by famine and fatigue.  Four men only survived when the canoe overset, and then the perdition of this small remnant seemed inevitable.  However, they kept hanging by the side of their vessel during some of the last days, till Providence brought them in sight of the people of this island, who immediately sent out canoes, took them off their wreck, and brought them ashore.  Of the four who were thus saved, one was since dead.  The other three, who lived to have this opportunity of giving an account of their almost miraculous transplantation, spoke highly of the kind treatment they here met with.  And so well satisfied were they with their situation, that they refused the offer made to them by our gentlemen, at Omai’s request, of giving them a passage on board our ships, to restore them to their native islands.  The similarity of manners and language had more than naturalized them to this spot; and the fresh connexions which they had here formed, and which it would have been painful to have broken off after such a length of time, sufficiently account for their declining to revisit the places of their birth.  They had arrived upon this island at least twelve years ago.  For I learnt from Mr Anderson, that he found they knew nothing of Captain Wallis’s visit to Otaheite in 1765, nor of several other memorable occurrences, such as the conquest of Ulietea by those of Bolabola, which had preceded the arrival of the Europeans.  To Mr Anderson I am also indebted for their names, Orououte, Otirreroa, and Tavee; the first born at Matavai in Otaheite, the second at Ulietea, and the third at Huaheine.

The landing of our gentlemen on this island, though they failed in the object of it, cannot but be considered as a very fortunate circumstance.  It has proved, as we have seen, the means of bringing to our knowledge a matter of fact, not only very curious, but very instructive.  The application of the above narrative is obvious.  It will serve to explain, better than a thousand conjectures of speculative reasoners, how the detached parts of the earth, and, in particular, how the islands of the South Sea, may have been first peopled, especially those that lie remote from any inhabited continent, or from each other.[154]