their stern to the sea; the admiral’s vessel being nearly in the centre.  Besides the vessels of war, there were an hundred and seventy sail of smaller double canoes, all with a little house upon them, and rigged with mast and sail, which the war canoes had not.  These, we judged, were designed for transports, victuallers, &c.; for in the war-canoes was no sort of provisions whatever.  In these three hundred and thirty vessels, I guessed there were no less than seven thousand seven hundred and sixty men; a number which appears incredible, especially as we were told they all belonged to the districts of Attahourou and Ahopatea.  In this computation I allow to each war canoe forty men, troops and rowers, and to each of the small canoes eight.  Most of the gentlemen who were with me, thought the number of men belonging to the war canoes exceeded this.  It is certain that the most of them were fitted to row with more paddles than I have allowed them men; but, at this time, I think they were not complete.  Tupia informed us, when I was first here, that the whole island raised only between six and seven thousand men; but we now saw two districts only raise that number; so that he must have taken his account from some old establishment; or else he only meant Tatatous, that is warriors, or men trained from their infancy to arms, and did not include the rowers, and those necessary to navigate the other vessels.  I should think he only spoke of this number as the standing troops or militia of the island, and not their whole force.  This point I shall leave to be discussed in another place, and return to the subject.

After we had well viewed this fleet, I wanted much to have seen the admiral, to have gone with him on board the war-canoes.  We enquired for him as we rowed past the fleet to no purpose.  We put ashore and enquired; but the noise and crowd was so great that no one attended to what we said.  At last Tee came and whispered us in the ear, that Otoo was gone to Matavai, advising us to return thither, and not to land where we were.  We accordingly proceeded for the ship; and this intelligence and advice received from Tee, gave rise to new conjectures.  In short, we concluded that this Towha was some powerful disaffected chief, who was upon the point of making war against his sovereign; for we could not imagine Otoo had any other reason for leaving Oparree in the manner he did.

We had not been long gone from Oparree, before the whole fleet was in motion to the westward, from whence it came.  When we got to Matavai, our friends there told us, that this fleet was part of the armament intended to go against Eimea, whose chief had thrown off the yoke of Otaheite, and assumed an independency.  We were likewise informed that Otoo neither was nor had been at Matavai; so that we were still at a loss to know why he fled from Oparree.  This occasioned another trip thither in the afternoon, where we found him, and now understood that the reason of his not