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There seems no doubt that the interior of this group offers the best anchorage; and should any navigator wish to put into Radack, I recommend this harbour to him as the most commodious. At noon the north-west point of the Ligiep group lay about a mile off us due east, and we found by a close observation the latitude to be 10° 3' 40" North, and the longitude 190° 58' 3".
It was therefore with great interest that I found Chamisso, the justly distinguished naturalist who accompanied Kotzebue, stating that the inhabitants of the Radack Archipelago, a group of lagoon islands in the midst of the Pacific, obtained stones for sharpening their instruments by searching the roots of trees which are cast upon the beach.
Thus Radack group of atolls is an irregular square, 520 miles long and 240 broad; the Low Archipelago is elliptic-formed, 840 miles in its longer, and 420 in its shorter axis: there are other small groups and single low islands between these two archipelagoes, making a linear space of ocean actually more than 4000 miles in length, in which not one single island rises above the specified height.
He left nothing untried to procure my acquiescence in this wish: love, ambition, glory, were successively held out as lures: I should have the most beautiful woman of the islands for my wife, should kill the tyrant and usurper Lamari, as he had killed his predecessor, and should reign in his stead Tamon of Radack.
To those who are yet unacquainted with these islands, and cannot or will not have recourse to my former voyage, I must be excused giving a few particulars concerning them. In the year 1816, in the ship Rurik, I discovered the chain of islands called by their inhabitants, Radack.
Chamisso, when describing the Radack Archipelago, situated in the western part of the Pacific, states that "the sea brings to these islands the seeds and fruits of many trees, most of which have yet not grown here. The greater part of these seeds appear to have not yet lost the capability of growing."
I therefore commissioned Lagediak, in the presence of a great number of islanders, to inform Lamari, from me, that if he should ever presume to plunder the possessor of the smallest article presented by us, whenever white men should again visit Radack, they would, without fail, take signal and severe vengeance upon him. He understood me, and promised to execute my commission.
As this was one of the best representations I have seen in Radack, I will describe it, in the hope that my readers also will not be uninterested in it. The number of the dramatis personæ was twenty-six, thirteen men and thirteen women, who seated themselves in the following order on a spot of smooth turf.
Upon the dishes were laid wooden spoons, with which the guests helped themselves, an improvement since my former visit to Radack, when their mode was to help themselves from the dish with their hands. I rejoiced in the increased civilization denoted by this more becoming mode of eating; probably introduced by Kadu, who had seen it during his stay among us.
Hence we gave up any further search in this quarter, and directed our course to the north, for the shortest way to cut the Equator, and then, by the help of the north-east trade-wind, to reach Radack, where we intended to stop and make observations on the pendulum, the results of which, in the neighbourhood of the Equator, would be important to us.
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