six-penny nail,
so that we again found ourselves in a land of plenty. The natives
were gentle and polite, asking whether they might sit down, whether
they might spit on the deck, and the like. An order restricting the
men going ashore was issued that I might do everything in my power
to prevent the importation of a fatal disease into the island,
which I knew some of our men now labored under." Female visitors
were ordered to be excluded from the ships. Captain Cook's journal
is very explicit, and he states the particulars of the failure of
his precautions. This is a subject that has been much discussed,
and there is still animosity in the controversy. The discovery of
the islands that he called the Sandwich, after his patron the Earl
of Sandwich, happened in the midst of our Revolutionary war. After
Cook's explorations for the time, he sailed in search of the supposed
Northwest passage, and that enterprise appearing hopeless, returned to
the summer islands, and met his fate in the following December. Captain
George Vancouver, a friend and follower of Cook, says, in his "Voyage
of Discovery and Around the World." from 1790 to 1795:

"It should seem that the reign of George the Third had been
reserved by the Great Disposer of all things for the glorious task
of establishing the grand keystone to that expansive arch over which
the arts and sciences should pass to the furthermost corners of the
earth, for the instruction and happiness of the most lowly children of
nature. Advantages so highly beneficial to the untutored parts of the
human race, and so extremely important to that large proportion of the
subjects of this empire who are brought up to the sea service deserve
to be justly appreciated; and it becomes of very little importance to
the bulk of our society, whose enlightened humanity teaches them to
entertain a lively regard for the welfare and interest of those who
engage in such adventurous undertakings for the advancement of science,
or for the extension of commerce, what may be the animadversions or
sarcasms of those few unenlightened minds that may peevishly demand,
"what beneficial consequences, if any, have followed, or are likely
to follow to the discoverers, or to the discovered, to the common
interests of humanity, or to the increase of useful knowledge, from
all our boasted attempts to explore the distant recesses of the
globe?" The learned editor (Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury)
who has so justly a