I own I cannot avoid expressing it as my real opinion, that it would have been far better for these poor people, never to have known our superiority in the accommodations and arts that make life comfortable, than, after once knowing it, to be again left and abandoned to their original incapacity of improvement.  Indeed, they cannot be restored to that happy mediocrity in which they lived before we discovered them, if the intercourse between us should be discontinued.  It seems to me that it has become in a manner incumbent on the Europeans to visit them once in three or four years, in order to supply them with those conveniences which we have introduced among them, and have given them a predilection for.  The want of such occasional supplies will probably be felt very heavily by them, when it may be too late to go back to their old less perfect contrivances, which they now despise, and have discontinued since the introduction of ours.  For by the time that the iron tools, of which they are now possessed, are worn out, they will have almost lost the knowledge of their own.  A stone-hatchet is, at present, as rare a thing amongst them, as an iron one was eight years ago; and a chisel of bone or stone is not to be seen.  Spike-nails have supplied the place of these last, and they are weak enough to fancy that they have got an inexhaustible store of them; for these were not now at all sought after.  Sometimes, however, nails much smaller than a spike would still be taken in exchange for fruit.  Knives happened, at present, to be in great esteem at Ulietea, and axes and hatchets remained unrivalled by any other of our commodities at all the islands.  With respect to articles of mere ornament, these people are as changeable as any of the polished nations of Europe; so that what pleases their fancy, while a fashion is in vogue, may be rejected, when another whim has supplanted it.  But our iron tools are so strikingly useful, that they will, we may confidently pronounce, continue to prize them highly; and be completely miserable, if, neither possessing the materials, nor trained up to the art of fabricating them, they should cease to receive supplies of what may now be considered as having become necessary to their comfortable existence.[3]

[Footnote 3:  Captain Cook’s reasoning here is irresistibly convincing; yet it is very remarkable that no practical benefit resulted from it, in favour of the people whose cause he pleads.  One can scarcely account, far less apologize, for the extraordinary fact, that nearly eleven years, from the date of this voyage, had elapsed, before any British vessel touched at Otaheite, and that even then the visit was an accidental one.  Soon afterwards, however, Lieutenant Bligh was ordered to visit it, for the purpose, not of conferring benefits on it, but of procuring the bread-fruit tree, for our West India possessions.  Of the changes which had happened in that interval, it would be improper to make any mention in this place.  The reader nevertheless may be informed, that much of the evil, which Captain Cook had foreseen, really occurred.  The want of iron tools especially was most severely felt.—­E.]