D'Urville's anxiety about the fate of his sailors, and of Faraquet, who was in command of them, knew no bounds. Nothing was left for him to do but to make an attack upon the sacred village of Mafanga, containing the tombs of several of the principal families. But on the following day a crowd of natives so skilfully surrounded the place with embankments and palisades, that it was impossible to hope to carry it by an attack. The corvette then drew nearer to the shore, and began to cannonade the village, without, however, doing any other damage than killing one of the natives. At length the difficulty of obtaining provisions, the rain, and the continual alarm in which the firing of the Frenchmen kept them, induced the islanders to offer terms of peace. They gave up the sailors, who had all been very well treated, made a present of pigs and bananas; and on the 24th of May the _Astrolabe_ took her final departure from the Friendly Islands. It was quite time indeed that this was done, for D'Urville's situation was untenable, and in a conversation with his boatswain he ascertained that not more than half a dozen of the sailors could be relied on; all the others were ready to go over to the side of the savages. Tonga Tabou is of madreporic formation, with a thick covering of vegetable soil, favourable to an abundant growth of shrubs and trees. The cocoa-tree, the stem of which is slenderer than elsewhere, and the banana-tree here shoot up with wonderful rapidity and vigour. The aspect of the land is flat and monotonous, so that a journey of one or two miles will give as fair an impression of the country as a complete tour of the island. The number of the population who have the true Polynesian cast of countenance may be put down at about 7000. D'Urville says "they combine the most opposite qualities. They are generous, courteous, and hospitable, yet avaricious, insolent, and always thoroughly insincere. The most profuse demonstration of kindness and friendship may at any moment be interrupted by an act of outrage or robbery, should their cupidity or their self-respect be ever so slightly roused." In intelligence the natives of Tonga are clearly far superior to those of Otaheite. The French travellers could not sufficiently admire the astonishing order in which the plantations of yams and bananas were kept, the excessive neatness of their dwellings, and the beauty of the garden-plots. They even knew something of the art of fortification, as D'Urville ascertained by an inspection of the fortified village of Hifo, defended with stout palisades, and surrounded by a trench between fifteen and twenty feet wide, and half filled with water.