Or, believing what is usually understood, by that event, on the authority of scripture, how clearly can reason deduce from present appearances certain minor, but nevertheless immense, changes, which it may undergo previous to this final dissolution!  But the reader, it is probable, will not chuse to venture on so terrific an excursion, and there is a motive for caution with respect to it, with which it may not be amiss to apprise the too zealous enquirer.  The fact is, that none of the causes which we know to be now operating on our globe, seem at all adequate to account for all the changes it has already undergone.  We may, therefore, very fairly infer, that an indefinite allowance must be granted to exterior interference of some sort or other, the agency of which may altogether subvert whatever is now known to exist.—­See Cuvier’s Essay, lately published at Edinburgh.—­E.]

There were no traces of inhabitants having ever been here, if we except a small piece of a canoe that was found upon the beach, which, probably, may have drifted from some other island.  But, what is pretty extraordinary, we saw several small brown rats on this spot, a circumstance, perhaps, difficult to account for, unless we allow that they were imported in the canoe of which we saw the remains.

After the boats were laden I returned on board, leaving Mr Gore, with a party, to pass the night on shore, in order to be ready to go to work early the next morning.

That day, being the 15th, was accordingly spent as the preceding one had been, in collecting and bringing on board food for the cattle, consisting chiefly of palm-cabbage, young cocoa-nut trees, and the tender branches of the wharra tree.  Having got a sufficient supply of these by sun-set, I ordered every body on board.  But having little or no wind, I determined to wait, and to employ the next day by endeavouring to get some cocoa-nuts for our people from the next island to leeward, where we could observe that those trees were in much greater abundance than upon that where we had already landed, and where only the wants of our cattle had been relieved.

With this view I kept standing off and on all night, and in the morning, between eight and nine o’clock, I went with the boats to the W. side of the island, and landed with little difficulty.  I immediately set the people with me to work to gather cocoa-nuts, which we found in great abundance.  But to get them to our boats was a tedious operation, for we were obliged to carry them at least half a mile over the reef up to the middle in water.  Omai, who was with me, caught, with a scoop net, in a very short time, as much fish as served the whole party on shore for dinner, besides sending some to both ships.  Here were also great abundance of birds, particularly men-of-war and tropic birds, so that we fared sumptuously.  And it is but doing justice to Omai to say, that in these excursions to the uninhabited islands he was of the greatest use; for he not only caught the fish, but dressed these, and the birds we killed, in an oven with heated stones, after the fashion of his country, with a dexterity and good-humour that did him great credit.  The boats made two trips before night, well laden:  With the last I returned on board, leaving Mr Williamson, my third lieutenant, with a party of men, to prepare another lading for the boats, which I proposed to send next morning.