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This vessel, after having touched at various other places, on her return from Owhyhee, approached the east coast of New Zealand, intending to put in for refreshments at the Bay of Islands. Rutherford states in his journal that this event, which was to him of such importance, occurred on March 6th, 1816.
As the captain was pursuing his examination of the coast of Owhyhee, it having fallen calm at one o'clock in the morning of the 19th of December, the Resolution was left to the mercy of a north-easterly swell, which impelled her fast towards the land; so that, long before daybreak, lights were seen from the land, which was not more than a league distant.
Intending to make another attempt to find the long-sought-for passage, Cook returned to the Sandwich Islands. On the 26th of November he discovered Mowee, lying farther west than the islands before visited, and on the evening of the 30th a much larger island to windward, called Owhyhee or Hawaii. Several weeks were passed in sailing round this island in search of a harbour.
From some accounts which have already been received of these voyages, it appears, that they have explored the coast of California; have adjusted the situation of more than fifty places, almost wholly unknown; and have visited Owhyhee, and the rest of the Sandwich Islands. When the expedition shall be completed, the whole result of it will doubtless be laid before the public.
"Take care that the natives don't cook and eat him," said Mr Renshaw, as we shoved off. The little mission-schooner, the Dove, was in readiness to receive us, and in a few minutes, with a fair breeze, we were standing away to the southward, towards the large island of Hawaii, or Owhyhee, on the shores of which the immortal Cook lost his life.
To Englishmen in advanced years, indeed, the murder of Captain Cook at Owhyhee seems like an event that happened in their own childhood. And, in truth, not fifty years ago the natives of Hawaii were ignorant and idolatrous heathens, while it is but as yesterday that a refined, elegant, and well-educated lady, the queen of those islands, was visiting England.
But we are gentlemen, and our private friends must not be thrown overboard, unless, at least, we do it in the civilest manner we can." "Fear not," said the lawyer; "you have only to say the word, and the Cabinet can cook up an embassy to Owhyhee, and send Raffden there with a stipend of five thousand a year."
I once before sustained an attack of a similar nature with a smaller number of Europeans against a multitude of Indians: it was after the death of Captain Cook on the Morai at Owhyhee, where I was left by Lieutenant King.
Hawaii, formerly known as Owhyhee, is very much the largest, being eighty-eight miles in length by sixty-eight in breadth; and it contains two lofty mountains, each upwards of thirteen thousand feet in height one called Mauna Kea, and the other Mauna Loa, which latter is for ever sending forth its volcanic fires, while it casts its vast shadow far and wide over the ocean.
If Carlyle be correct in his declaration that "Truly a thinking man is the worst enemy the prince of darkness can have, and every time such a one announces himself there runs a shudder through the nether empire, where new emissaries are trained with new tactics, to hoodwink and handcuff him," who can doubt that the long dynasty of Eblis will instantly terminate, when every pulpit in Christendom, from the frozen shores of Spitzbergen to the green dells of Owhyhee, from the shining spires of Europe to the rocky battlements that front the Pacific, shall be filled with meek and holy men of ripe scholarship and resistless eloquence, whose scientific erudition keeps pace with their evangelical piety, and whose irreproachable lives attest that their hearts are indeed hallowed temples of that loving charity "that suffereth long and is kind; that vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; thinketh no evil; beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things?"
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