e requisite intelligence for
returning to their own country. Thus Captain Cook found on the island of
Wateoo three inhabitants of Otaheite, who had been drifted thither in a
canoe, although the distance between the two isles is 550 miles. In
1696, two canoes, containing thirty persons, who had left Ancorso, were
thrown by contrary winds and storms on the island of Samar, one of the
Philippines, at a distance of 800 miles. In 1721, two canoes, one of
which contained twenty-four, and the other six persons, men, women, and
children, were drifted from an island called Farroilep to the island of
Guaham, one of the Marians, a distance of 200 miles.[942]

Kotzebue, when investigating the Coral Isles of Radack, at the eastern
extremity of the Caroline Isles, became acquainted with a person of the
name of Kadu, who was a native of Ulea, an isle 1500 miles distant, from
which he had been drifted with a party. Kadu and three of his
countrymen one day left Ulea in a sailing boat, when a violent storm
arose, and drove them out of their course: they drifted about the open
sea for eight months, according to their reckoning by the moon, making a
knot on a cord at every new moon. Being expert fishermen, they subsisted
entirely on the produce of the sea; and when the rain fell, laid in as
much fresh water as they had vessels to contain it. "Kadu," says
Kotzebue, "who was the best diver, frequently went down to the bottom of
the sea, where it is well known that the water is not so salt, with a
cocoa-nut shell, with only a small opening."[943] When these unfortunate
men reached the isles of Radack, every hope and almost every feeling had
died within them; their sail had long been destroyed, their canoe had
long been the sport of winds and waves, and they were picked up by the
inhabitants of Aur in a state of insensibility; but by the hospitable
care of those islanders they soon recovered, and were restored to
perfect health.[944]

Captain Beechey, in his voyage to the Pacific, fell in with some natives
of the Coral Islands, who had in a similar manner been carried to a
great distance from their native country. They had embarked, to the
number of 150 souls, in three double canoes, from Anaa, or Chain Island,
situated about three hundred miles to the eastward of Otaheite. They
were overtaken by the monsoon, which dispersed the canoes; and after
driving them about the ocean, left them becalmed, so that a great number
of persons perished. Two