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Kane remarked it among the Esquimaux, D'Azara among the Indians of South America, and many travellers in the South-Sea Islands and even in Africa, though the black man apparently takes more readily to civilization than any other race, and then develops a terrible vitality, as American politicians find to their cost.
By another act, relating to the South-Sea company, the two millions of stock which had been annihilated were revived, added to the capital, and divided among the proprietors. A third law passed, for the more effectual execution of justice in a part of Southwark called the Mint, where a great number of debtors had taken sanctuary, on the supposition that it was a privileged place.
Sandy Cove was a small settlement, inhabited partly by native converts to Christianity, and partly by a few European traders, who, having found that the place was in the usual track of South-Sea whalers, and frequently visited by that class of vessels as well as by other ships, had established several stores or trading-houses, and had taken up their permanent abode there.
Whales and storm-birds showed themselves in great numbers, reminding us that we were hastening to the North, and were already far from the luxuriant groves of the South-Sea islands. The wind continued so favourable, that on the 7th of June we could already see the high mountains of Kamtschatka in their winter clothing.
He accordingly took cognizance of his most minute affairs, and, after an exact scrutiny, gave his patron to understand, that, exclusive of his furniture, his fortune was reduced to fourteen thousand three hundred and thirty pounds, in Bank and South-sea annuities, over and above the garrison and its appendages, which he reckoned at sixty pounds a year.
"A country-girl, and from Scotland!" said the Duke; "what can have brought the silly fool to London? Some lover pressed and sent to sea, or some stock sank in the South-Sea funds, or some such hopeful concern, I suppose, and then nobody to manage the matter but MacCallummore, Well, this same popularity has its inconveniences.
In his reading and travel it is by no means to the ostensible monuments and trophies of the past that his observation and inquiry are confined: the Letters of Madame de Sévigné give him authentic hints for the social tendencies of France and their influence upon politics, as the blood-stains at Holyrood identify the place of Rizzio's murder; the "Edinburgh Review" reveals the spirit of the Reform movement as clearly as the Parliamentary records its letter; the South-Sea House and the Temple are as suggestive as Whitehall and the Abbey, for trade and jurisprudence, in the retrospect, are as much a part of the by-gone life and present character of a nation, as the fate and the fame of her dead kings; and a Spanish ballad is as valuable an illustration as a Madrid state-paper; while the life of Harry Vane vindicates the Puritan nature as clearly as the letter of a Venetian ambassador exhibits the domestic life of a Pope.
The great support of the inferior territories of the South-sea consists of the bread-fruit and the plantain; both which flourish there spontaneously; and although the inhabitants have likewise plantations of yams, and other excellent roots, yet the cultivation of none of them appears to be as extensive as was that of the maize in the West Indies, or to display equal skill with the preparation of the Cassavi-bread from the maniock.
At a thousand yards the traveller falls wounded by the well-aimed bullet of a breech-loading rifle. His assailant, approaching, hacks him to death with the ferocity of a South-Sea Islander. The weapons of the nineteenth century are in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age.
What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.
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