was worth nothing.  As for schooners he had forty of them, of from twenty to thirty tons burthen:  these vessels served to transport the tributes in kind paid by his vassals in the other islands.  Before the Europeans arrived among these savages, the latter had no means of communication between one isle and another, but their canoes, and as some of the islands are not in sight of each other, these voyages must have been dangerous.  Near the palace I found an Indian from Bombay, occupied in making a twelve inch cable, for the use of the ship which I have described.

Tamehameha kept constantly round his house a guard of twenty-four men.  These soldiers wore, by way of uniform, a long blue coat with yellow; and each was armed with a musket.  In front of the house, on an open square, were placed fourteen four-pounders, mounted on their carriages.

The king was absolute, and judged in person the differences between his subjects.  We had an opportunity of witnessing a proof of it, the day after our landing.  A Portuguese having had a quarrel with a native, who was intoxicated, struck him:  immediately the friends of the latter, who had been the aggressor after all, gathered in a crowd to beat down the poor foreigner with stones; he fled as fast as he could to the house of the king, followed by a mob of enraged natives, who nevertheless stopped at some distance from the guards, while the Portuguese, all breathless, crouched in a corner.  We were on the esplanade in front of the palace royal, and curiosity to see the trial led us into the presence of his majesty, who having caused the quarrel to be explained to him, and heard the witnesses on both sides, condemned the native to work four days in the garden of the Portuguese and to give him a hog.  A young Frenchman from Bordeaux, preceptor of the king’s sons, whom he taught to read, and who understood the language, acted as interpreter to the Portuguese, and explained to us the sentence.  I can not say whether our presence influenced the decision, or whether, under other circumstances, the Portuguese would have been less favorably treated.  We were given to understand that Tamehameha was pleased to see whites establish themselves in his dominions, but that he esteemed only people with some useful trade, and despised idlers, and especially drunkards.  We saw at Wahoo about thirty of these white inhabitants, for the most part, people of no character, and who had remained on the islands either from indolence, or from drunkenness and licentiousness.  Some had taken wives in the country, in which case the king gave them a portion of land to cultivate for themselves.  But two of the worst sort had found means to procure a small still, wherewith they manufactured rum and supplied it to the natives.

The first navigators found only four sorts of quadrupeds on the Sandwich islands:—­dogs, swine, lizards, and rats.  Since then sheep have been carried there, goats, horned cattle, and even horses, and these animals have multiplied.