Had he come on deck with Mr.M'Kay and Mr.Lewis, each armed with a musket, and a couple of pistols at the belt, it is plain from the timidity the savages afterward displayed, that he might have cleared the ship, probably without shedding a drop of blood .-- ED.] Captain Smith, of the Albatross, who had seen the wreck of the Tonquin, in mentioning to us its sad fate, attributed the cause of the disaster to the rash conduct of a Captain Ayres, of Boston.

That navigator had taken off, as I have mentioned already, ten or a dozen natives of New-itty, as hunters, with a promise of bringing them back to their country, which promise he inhumanly broke by leaving them on some desert islands in Sir Francis Drake's Bay.

The countrymen of these unfortunates, indignant at the conduct of the American captain, had sworn to avenge themselves on the first white men who appeared among them.

Chance willed it that our vessel was the first to enter that bay, and the natives but too well executed on our people their project of vengeance.
Whatever may, have been the first and principal cause of this misfortune (for doubtless it is necessary to suppose more than one), seventeen white men and twelve Sandwich-Islanders, were massacred: not one escaped from the butchery, to bring us the news of it, but the Indian of _Gray's Harbor_.

The massacre of our people was avenged, it is true, by the destruction of ten times the number of their murderers; but this circumstance, which could perhaps gladden the heart of a savage, was a feeble consolation (if it was any) for civilized men.