They are vigorous, active, and most expert swimmers; leaving their canoes upon the most trifling occasion, diving under them, and swimming to others, though at a great distance.  It was very common to see women with infants at the breast, when the surf was so high, that they could not land in the canoes, leap overboard, and, without endangering their little ones, swim to the shore, through a sea that looked dreadful.

They seem to be blest with a frank cheerful disposition; and were I to draw any comparisons, should say, that they are equally free from the fickle levity which distinguishes the natives of Otaheite, and the sedate east observable amongst many of those of Tongataboo.  They seem to live very sociably in their intercourse with one another; and, except the propensity to thieving, which seems innate in most of the people we have visited in this ocean, they were exceedingly friendly to us.  And it does their sensibility no little credit, without flattering ourselves, that when they saw the various articles of our European manufacture, they could not help expressing their surprise, by a mixture of joy and concern, that seemed to apply the case as a lesson of humility to themselves; and, on all occasions, they appeared deeply impressed with a consciousness of their own inferiority; a behaviour which equally exempts their national character from the preposterous pride of the more polished Japanese, and of the ruder Greenlander.  It was a pleasure to observe with how much affection the women managed their infants, and how readily the men lent their assistance to such a tender office; thus sufficiently distinguishing themselves from those savages, who esteem a wife and child as things rather necessary, than desirable or worthy of their notice.

From the numbers which we saw collected at every village, as we sailed past, it may be supposed, that the inhabitants of this island are pretty numerous.  Any computation, that we make, can be only conjectural.  But, that some notion may be formed, which shall not greatly err on either side, I would suppose, that, including the straggling houses, there might be, upon the whole island, sixty such, villages, as that before which we anchored; and that, allowing five persons to each house, there would be, in every village, five hundred; or thirty thousand upon the island.  This number is certainly not exaggerated; for we had sometimes three thousand persons at least upon the beach; when it could not be supposed that above a tenth part of the inhabitants were present.

The common dress both of the women and of the men has been already described.  The first have often much larger pieces of cloth wrapped round them, reaching from just below the breasts to the hams or lower; and several were seen with pieces thrown loosely about the shoulders, which covered the greatest part of the body; but the children when very young are quite naked.  They wear nothing upon the head; but the