royal, and curiosity to see the trial led us into the presence of his
majesty, who having caused the quarrel to be explained to him, and heard
the witnesses on both sides, condemned the native to work four days in
the garden of the Portuguese and to give him a hog. A young Frenchman
from Bordeaux, preceptor of the king's sons, whom he taught to read, and
who understood the language, acted as interpreter to the Portuguese, and
explained to us the sentence. I can not say whether our presence
influenced the decision, or whether, under other circumstances, the
Portuguese would have been less favorably treated. We were given to
understand that Tamehameha was pleased to see whites establish
themselves in his dominions, but that he esteemed only people with some
useful trade, and despised idlers, and especially drunkards. We saw at
Wahoo about thirty of these white inhabitants, for the most part, people
of no character, and who had remained on the islands either from
indolence, or from drunkenness and licentiousness. Some had taken wives
in the country, in which case the king gave them a portion of land to
cultivate for themselves. But two of the worst sort had found means to
procure a small still, wherewith they manufactured rum and supplied it
to the natives.

The first navigators found only four sorts of quadrupeds on the Sandwich
islands:--dogs, swine, lizards, and rats. Since then sheep have been
carried there, goats, horned cattle, and even horses, and these animals
have multiplied.

The chief vegetable productions of these isles are the sugar cane, the
bread-fruit tree, the banana, the water-melon, the musk-melon, the
_taro_, the _ava_, the _pandanus_, the mulberry, &c. The bread-fruit
tree is about the size of a large apple-tree; the fruit resembles an
apple and is about twelve or fourteen inches in circumference; the rind