earth; they are done in a corner, and there are none to reveal
them. But there is, nevertheless, many a petty trader that has
navigated the Pacific whose course from island to island might be
traced by a series of cold-blooded robberies, kidnappings, and
murders, the iniquity of which might be considered almost
sufficient to sink her guilty timbers to the bottom of the sea.

Sometimes vague accounts of such thing's reach our firesides, and
we coolly censure them as wrong, impolitic, needlessly severe,
and dangerous to the crews of other vessels. How different is
our tone when we read the highly-wrought description of the
massacre of the crew of the Hobomak by the Feejees; how we
sympathize for the unhappy victims, and with what horror do we
regard the diabolical heathens, who, after all, have but avenged
the unprovoked injuries which they have received. We breathe
nothing but vengeance, and equip armed vessels to traverse
thousands of miles of ocean in order to execute summary
punishment upon the offenders. On arriving at their destination,
they burn, slaughter, and destroy, according to the tenor of
written instructions, and sailing away from the scene of
devastation, call upon all Christendom to applaud their courage
and their justice.

How often is the term 'savages' incorrectly applied! None really
deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by
travellers. They have discovered heathens and barbarians whom by
horrible cruelties they have exasperated into savages. It may be
asserted without fear of contradictions that in all the cases of
outrages committed by Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or
other been the aggressors, and that the cruel and bloodthirsty