-commander, by Lamari;
and having freely made over the half of his treasures to this personage,
(a step which I had myself advised,) had been permitted to retain
peaceable possession of the remainder. It was also by his own desire
that Lamari had removed him to Aur, where he continued his
superintendence of the plants and animals. Kadu had commissioned
Lagediak to relate all these circumstances to me, with a request that I
would visit him at Aur; an invitation which with regret I was prevented
accepting by the large size of my ship.

I was glad however that Kadu had settled in Aur, as I hoped that the
animals and plants with which I had enriched these islands would
flourish under his care; and I learnt from Rarik that when he was a
short time before in Aur, on a visit to his father, they had propagated,
and were doing well. Swine and goats already formed part of their
festival provisions, and Rarik had himself partaken of such a feast. I
rejoiced in this information, and in the promise it afforded, that
through my means the time may be approaching when the barbarous custom
of sacrificing the third or fourth child of every marriage, from fear of
famine, may wholly cease.

The cat was the only animal of those I had left at Otdia which remained
there; and it was no longer of the domestic species; it had become very
numerous and entirely wild, but as yet had occasioned no sensible
diminution in the number of rats. It may be hoped, however, that as the
cats have no other food, those voracious pests of the gardens may at
length be exterminated. These cats, under the influence of a strange
climate, and in an undomesticated state, may perhaps undergo some change
of properties and habits, by which naturalists, always well pleased to
enlarge their zoological lists, may be led to consider them as an
unknown species of tiger. To obviate this error, I advertise such gentry
beforehand, that the animal in question is absolutely nothing more than
the ordinary European household cat.

Of the plants which we had introduced to the Radackers, the vine alone
had failed. Lagediak pointed out to me the spot on which we had planted
it. It had withered, but not till, from the extreme fruitfulness of the
soil, its tendrils had reached the tops of the highest trees.

I was not surprised that Kadu should have married soon after our
departure a native of the island of Ormed. The girls there are
particularly handsome, and we had some suspicion o