o, with long knives,
scour them day and night in eager hopes of securing their prey. Neither
is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of
Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a civilizing influence present
the same difficulty to the runaway with the Peruvian ports, the advanced
natives being quite as mercenary and keen of knife and scent as the
retrograde Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in which all
Europeans lie, in the minds of aboriginal savages who have chanced to
hear aught of them, to desert the ship among primitive Polynesians, is,
in most cases, a hope not unforlorn. Hence the Enchanted Isles become
the voluntary tarrying places of all sorts of refugees; some of whom
too sadly experience the fact, that flight from tyranny does not of
itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

Moreover, it has not seldom happened that hermits have been made upon
the isles by the accidents incident to tortoise-hunting. The interior of
most of them is tangled and difficult of passage beyond description; the
air is sultry and stifling; an intolerable thirst is provoked, for which
no running stream offers its kind relief. In a few hours, under an
equatorial sun, reduced by these causes to entire exhaustion, woe betide
the straggler at the Enchanted Isles! Their extent is such-as to forbid
an adequate search, unless weeks are devoted to it. The impatient ship
waits a day or two; when, the missing man remaining undiscovered, up
goes a stake on the beach, with a letter of regret, and a keg of
crackers and another of water tied to it, and away sails the craft.

Nor have there been wanting instances where the inhumanity of some
captains has led them to wreak a secure revenge upon seamen who have
given their caprice or pride some singular offense. Thrust ashore upon
the scorching marl, such mariners are abandoned to perish outright,
unless by solitary labors they succeed in discovering some precious
dribblets of moisture oozing from a rock or stagnant in a mountain pool.

I was well acquainted with a man, who, lost upon the Isle of Narborough,
was brought to such extremes by thirst, that at last he only saved his
life by taking that of another being. A large hair-seal came upon the
beach. He rushed upon it, stabbed it in the neck, and then throwing
himself upon the panting body quaffed at the living wound; the
palpitations of the creature's dying heart injected life into the
drinker.

Another s