ich Islands been discovered at an early period by
the Spaniards, there is little doubt that they would have taken
advantage of so excellent a situation, and have made use of Atooi,
or some other of the islands, as a refreshing place to the ships,
that sail annually from Acapulco for Manilla. They lie almost midway
between the first place and Guam, one of the Ladrones, which is at
present their only port in traversing this vast ocean; and it would not
have been a week's sail out of their common route to have touched at
them; which could have been done without running the least hazard of
losing the passage, as they are sufficiently within the verge of the
easterly trade wind. An acquaintance with the Sandwich Islands would
have been equally favorable to our Buccaneers, who used sometimes to
pass from the coast of America to the Ladrones, with a stock of food
and water scarcely sufficient to preserve life. Here they might always
have found plenty, and have been within a month's sure sail of the
very part of California which the Manilla ship is obliged to make,
or else have returned to the coast of America, thoroughly refitted,
after an absence of two months. How happy would Lord Anson have been,
and what hardships he would have avoided, if he had known that there
was a group of islands half way between America and Tinian, where
all his wants could have been effectually supplied; and in describing
which the elegant historian of that voyage would have presented his
reader with a more agreeable picture than I have been able to draw
in this chapter."

And yet there seems to be reason for believing that there was a
Spanish ship cast away on one of the Hawaiian group, and that their
descendants are distinctly marked men yet: There was also a white man
and woman saved from the sea at some unknown period, of course since
Noah, and they multiplied and replenished, and the islanders picked
up somewhere a knack for doing things in construction of boats and
the weaving of mats that hint at a crude civilization surviving in
a mass of barbarianism.

Captain George Dixon names the islands discovered by Captain Cook on
his last voyage:

"Owhyhee (Hawaii), the principal, is the first to the southward and
eastward, the rest run in a direction nearly northwest. The names of
the principals are Mowee (Maui), Morotoy (Molokai), Ranai (Lanai),
Whahoo (Oahu), Attooi (Kauai), and Oneehow (Niihau)."

This account Dixon gives of two curious and