unavoidable, and in stating them the author has been influenced
by no feeling of animosity, either to the individuals themselves,
or to that glorious cause which has not always been served by the
proceedings of some of its advocates.

The great interest with which the important events lately
occurring at the Sandwich, Marquesas, and Society Islands, have
been regarded in America and England, and indeed throughout the
world, will, he trusts, justify a few otherwise unwarrantable
digressions.

There are some things related in the narrative which will be
sure to appear strange, or perhaps entirely incomprehensible, to
the reader; but they cannot appear more so to him than they did
to the author at the time. He has stated such matters just as
they occurred, and leaves every one to form his own opinion
concerning them; trusting that his anxious desire to speak the
unvarnished truth will gain for him the confidence of his
readers. 1846.



INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1892.

BY ARTHUR STEDMAN.

OF the trinity of American authors whose births made the year
1819 a notable one in our literary history,--Lowell, Whitman, and
Melville,--it is interesting to observe that the two latter were
both descended, on the fathers' and mothers' sides respectively,