On the 12th of March, a beautiful bright morning, we had the pleasure to perceive Tahaiti before us, like a light cloud in the clear horizon. All that we had read of its loveliness now rose to our remembrance, heightened by the vivid colouring of the imagination; but seventy miles were yet to be traversed ere we could tread the land of expectation, and a very slow progress, occasioned by a flagging wind, tried our patience. We continued, however, to advance, and the light cloud became larger, and denser, and higher, soon assuming the appearance of three separate hills belonging to different islands; the highest point, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, is the summit of a mountain, distinguished from the others by its conical form. We next recognized the large rugged masses of rock of the interior, which have a most romantic appearance. The country gradually unfolded all its charms; the luxuriant growth of the trees, even to the mountains' tops, reminded us of the scenery of Brazil, and the picturesque valleys, with their thickets of bread-fruit, orange, and cocoa-trees, their cultivated fields, and plantations of bananas, became at length distinctly visible. It was not till the 14th that we reached the Cape, called by Cook Cape Venus, because he there observed the transit of this planet over the sun; and from its beauty, it deserves to be named after the charming goddess herself. It is a low narrow tongue of land, running out northward from the island, thickly shadowed by cocoa-trees, and forming, by its curve, the harbour of Matarai, not a very secure one, but generally preferred by sailors on account of the celebrity bestowed on it by Cook. When we were still a few miles distant from Cape Venus, we fired a gun to draw attention to the flag hoisted at the fore-mast, as a signal for a pilot. We soon saw a European boat steering towards us; it brought us a pilot, who, to our great surprise, addressed us in the Russian language, having recognized our flag as belonging to that nation: he was an Englishman of the name of Williams, who had first been a sailor on board a merchant ship, afterwards entered the service of the Russian American Company on the north-west coast of America, and was at length settled for life in Tahaiti. His wife was a native of the island; he was the father of a family, and carried on the occupation of a pilot in the Bay of Matarai. Wanderers of this kind often settle in the islands of the South Sea; but while they bring with them many vices peculiar to the lower classes in civilized life, are generally too ignorant and rough to produce any favourable influence on the natives. They are not all liable to this censure; and of about twenty English and Americans whom I found so naturalized in Tahaiti, some assuredly do not deserve it.