been upon the fire.  We had but too much reason to suspect, from this circumstance, that the horrid practice of feeding on their enemies is as prevalent here, as we had found it to be at New Zealand and other South Sea Islands.  For the various articles which they brought, they took in exchange knives, chisels, pieces of iron and tin, nails, looking-glasses, buttons, or any kind of metal.  Glass-beads they were not fond of, and cloth of every sort they rejected.

We employed the next day in hauling our ships into the cove, where they were moored head and stern, fastening our hawsers to the trees on shore.  On heaving up the anchor of the Resolution, we found, notwithstanding the great depth of water in which it was let go, that there were rocks at the bottom.  These had done some considerable damage to the cable; and the hawsers that were carried out to warp the ship into the cove also got foul of rocks, from which it appeared that the whole bottom was strewed with them.  The ship being again very leaky in her upper works, I ordered the carpenters to go to work to caulk her, and to repair such other defects as, on examination, we might discover.

The fame of our arrival brought a great concourse of the natives to our ships in the course of this day.  We counted above a hundred canoes at one time, which might be supposed to contain, at an average, five persons each; for few of them had less than three on board; great numbers had seven, eight, or nine, and one was manned with no less than seventeen.  Amongst these visitors, many now favoured us with their company for the first time, which we could guess, from their approaching the ships with their orations and other ceremonies.  If they had any distrust or fear of us at first, they now appeared to have laid it aside; for they came on board the ships, and mixed with our people with the greatest freedom.  We soon discovered, by this nearer intercourse, that they were as light-fingered as any of our friends in the islands we had visited in the course of the voyage.  And they were far more dangerous thieves; for, possessing sharp iron-instruments, they could cut a hook from a tackle, or any other piece of iron from a rope, the instant that our backs were turned.  A large hook, weighing between twenty and thirty pounds, several smaller ones, and other articles of iron, were lost in this manner.  And, as to our boats, they stripped them of every bit of iron that was worth carrying away, though we had always men left in them as a guard.  They were dexterous enough in effecting their purposes; for one fellow would contrive to amuse the boat-keeper, at one end of a boat, while another was pulling out the iron-work at the other.  If we missed a thing immediately after it had been stolen, we found little difficulty in detecting the thief, as they were ready enough to impeach one another.  But the guilty person generally relinquished his prize with reluctance, and sometimes we found it necessary to have recourse to force.