their axes were sent on shore, with directions to destroy every canoe
they could find; and we are told this service was effectually performed,
and that more than fifty canoes, many of which were sixty feet long, and
three broad, and lashed together, were cut to pieces.

This act of severity must have been cruelly felt by these poor people,
who, without iron or any kind of tools, but such as stones, shells,
teeth, and bones supplied them with, must have spent months and probably
years in the construction of one of these extraordinary double boats.

Such was the inauspicious commencement of our acquaintance with the
natives of Otaheite. Their determined hostility and perseverance in an
unequal combat could only have arisen from one of two motives--either
from an opinion that a ship of such magnitude, as they had never before
beheld, could only be come to their coast to take their country from
them; or an irresistible temptation to endeavour, at all hazards, to
possess themselves of so valuable a prize. Be that as it may, the dread
inspired by the effects of the cannon, and perhaps a conviction of the
truth of what had been explained to them, that the 'strangers wanted
only provisions and water,' had the effect of allaying all jealousy; for
from the day of the last action, the most friendly and uninterrupted
intercourse was established, and continued to the day of the _Dolphin's_
departure; and provisions of all kinds, hogs, dogs, fruit, and
vegetables, were supplied in the greatest abundance, in exchange for
pieces of iron, nails, and trinkets.

As a proof of the readiness of these simple people to forgive injuries,
a poor woman, accompanied by a young man bearing a branch of the
plantain tree, and another man with two hogs, approached the gunner,
whom Captain Wallis had appointed to regulate the market, and looking