For besides those who had come off to the English in their canoes, all the shore of the bay was covered with spectators, and many hundreds were swimming round the ships like shoals of fish.

Our navigators could not avoid being greatly impressed with the singularity of this scene; and perhaps there were few on board that now lamented the want of success which had attended the endeavours of getting homeward, the last summer, by a northern passage.

'To this disappointment,' says the captain, 'we owed our having it in our power to revisit the Sandwich Islands, and to enrich our voyage with a discovery, which, though the last, seemed, in many respects, to be the most important that had hitherto been made by Europeans, throughout the extent of the Pacific Ocean.' Such is the sentence that concludes our commander's journal: and the satisfaction with which this sentence appears to have been written, cannot fail of striking the mind of every reader.

Little did Captain Cook then imagine, that a discovery which promised to add no small honour to his name, and to be productive of very agreeable consequences, should be so fatal in the result.

Little did he think, that the island of Owhyhee was destined to be the last scene of his exploits, and the cause of his destruction.
The reception which the captain met with from the natives, on his proceeding to anchor in Karakakooa Bay, was flattering in the highest degree.