The great accommodation which those islands proved to ships trading on
the north-west coast of America rendered it absolutely necessary, that
the inhabitants should be made to understand that we never would nor
could pass unnoticed an act of such atrocity. With this view Captain
Vancouver had demanded of the chief of Whahoo the murderers of Mr. Hergest
and his unfortunate companions. It was not supposed that the people
sacrificed were the actual perpetrators of these murders; but that
an equal number of the natives had been given up as an atonement for the
Europeans we had lost.
The native of this country who accompanied Lieutenant Hanson we had the
satisfaction of seeing return safe in the _Daedalus_. He had conducted
himself with the greatest propriety during the voyage, readily complying
with whatever was required of him, and not incurring, in any one
instance, the dislike or ill-will of any person on board the ship.
Wherever he went he readily adopted the manners of those about him; and
when at Owhyhee, having discovered that favours from the females were to
be procured at the easy exchange of a looking-glass, a nail, or a knife,
he was not backward in presenting his little offering, and was as well
received as any of the white people in the ship.
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