Just before the evening closed in, our boats landed, and got a few cocoa-nuts which they brought off, but saw none of the inhabitants. In the night, during which we had rain and hard squalls, I stood off and on with the ships, and at seven o’clock in the morning brought to off the inlet. I immediately sent the boats on shore in search of refreshments, and made all the men who were not so ill of the scurvy as to be laid up, go in them; I also went on shore myself, and continued there the whole day. We saw many houses or wigwams of the natives, but they were totally deserted, except by the dogs, who kept an incessant howling from the time we came on shore till we returned to the ship: they were low mean hovels, thatched with cocoa-nut branches; but they were most delightfully situated in a fine grove of stately trees, many of which were the cocoa-nut, and many such as we were utterly unacquainted with. The cocoa-nut trees seem to furnish them with almost all the necessaries of life; particularly food, sails, cordage, timber, and vessels to hold water; so that probably these people always fix their habitations where the trees abound. We observed the shore to be covered with coral, and the shells of very large pearl oysters; so that I make no doubt but that as profitable a pearl fishery might be established here as any in the world. We saw but little of the people, except at a distance; we could however perceive that the women had a piece of cloth of some kind, probably fabricated of the same stuff as their sail, hanging from the waist as low as the knee; the men were naked.

Voyaging Accounts