The story of the wreck of the _Leonora_ in Utwe Harbour has been told by the writer in another work, so I will now merely describe some incidents of our stay on the island. First of all, however, let me make some brief mention of the island and its people. Kusaie is about thirty-five miles in circumference and of basaltic formation, and from the coast to the lofty summit of Mount Buache, 2,200 feet high, is clothed with the richest verdure imaginable. The northern part of the island rises precipitously from the sea, and has no outlying barrier reef, but from the centre the land trends westward and southward in a graceful slope towards the beautiful shores of Coquille Harbour. The southern portion is enclosed by a chain of palm-clad coral islets, connected at low water by reefs, forming a long, deep lagoon, the waters of which teem with fish and turtle. This lagoon was used as a means of communication between the village of Utwe Harbour, where the _Leonora_ was wrecked, and the village at Coquille, and all day long one might see the red-painted canoes of the natives passing to and fro over its glassy waters, which were, from their enclosed position, seldom raffled by any wind, except daring the rainy or westerly wind season. There were but three villages of any size on the island--that at Lele, where the King and his principal chiefs lived, Utwe or Port Lottin, and Mout or Leasee, on the shores of Coquille Harbour. At this latter place I lived most of the time during my stay on the island. We were enabled to save a considerable amount of stores from the wreck, as well as some arms and ammunition. There were also a bull and two cows, which formed the remainder of a herd of cattle that Hayes had running on the island of Ponape; the rest--some forty head or so--had been stolen from there by his one-time bosom friend and colleague, the notorious Captain Ben Peese. The natives of Strong's Island were but few in number--about four hundred all told--and although a very handsome race and possessed of the very greatest intelligence, were dying out rapidly. In 1825, when Duperrey, the French navigator, visited the island he estimated the population at eleven thousand, and Don Felipe Tompson, an Englishman in the Spanish Navy, who was there long before Duperrey, relates that the houses of the people formed an almost continuous line around the southern and western coasts. The introduction of European diseases made terrible ravages among them in 1828, and then about the year 1856, when the whole of the population were converted by American missionaries and adopted European clothing, pulmonary disease made its appearance and swept them away literally in hundreds.