Their attention was strongly attracted to the ship. They examined her closely from the hold to the mast-head, and made many animated remarks to each other on what they saw. If they observed any manoeuvres with the sails or tackle, they pointed with their fingers towards the spot, and appeared to watch with the most eager curiosity the effect produced. It was evident that this people, sailors by birth, took a lively interest in whatever related to navigation. Their modest behaviour contrasted so strikingly with the impudent importunity of the inhabitants of Maouna, that we should have been inclined to consider them of a different race, but for their exact resemblance in every other particular, even in the dressing of their hair, though this was even more elaborately performed--an attention to appearance which is curious enough, when compared with the dirty, uncombed locks of European fishermen; but among the South Sea Islanders fishing is no miserable drudgery of the lowest classes, but the pride and pleasure of the most distinguished, as hunting is with us. Tameamea, the mighty King of the Sandwich Islands, was a very clever fisherman, and as great an enthusiast in the sport as any of our European princes in the stag chase. As soon as the increasing darkness veiled the land from our sight, our visitors departed, and we could hear their regular measured song long after they were lost from view. The little island they inhabit not being marked on any map, it is probably a new discovery. By what name the natives called it I could not learn; and therefore, to distinguish it from three other small islands lying to the north, mentioned by La Pérouse, I gave it the name of Fisher's Island. It rises almost perpendicularly from the sea to a considerable height, and is overgrown with thick wood. On the following day we sailed with a brisk wind to the island of Olajava, for the purpose of surveying the coast. A number of canoes put off from the land, but could not overtake the ship; and I would not lie to, on account of the hinderance it occasioned to our work. In the afternoon we found ourselves near the little island lying off the north-west point of Olajava, called by La Pérouse the Flat Island. A hill situated in its centre has, in fact, a flat surface, which La Pérouse, at a distance of thirty miles, mistook for the whole island, because the low land which surrounds it was not within the compass of his horizon. For the same reason he could not observe that the eastern part of this island is connected with the western coast of Olajava by two reefs forming a basin, in the middle of which is a small rock. If these be indeed coral reefs, which they certainly resemble, they are the only ones I have remarked in the Navigators' Islands.