“Tobi, or Lord North’s Island, is situated in about lat. 3° 2´ N., and long. 131° 4´ E. It is a small low islet, about three miles in circumference, with a population of between three and four hundred souls. Our information concerning it is derived from an American, by name Horace Holden, who, with eleven companions, after suffering shipwreck, reached the island in a boat, and was taken captive by the natives. He was detained by them two years, from December 6th, 1832, to November 27th, 1834, when he made his escape and returned to America, where he published in a small volume [which is in the British Museum], an interesting narrative of his adventures and sufferings, with a description of the island and its inhabitants. “The complexion of the natives, says Holden in his narrative, is _a light copper colour_, much lighter than that of the Malays or Pelew Islanders, which last, however, they resemble in the breadth of their faces, high cheek bones, and broad flattened noses. Here we observe what has been before remarked of the Polynesian tribes, that the lightest complexion is found among those who are nearest the equator. “According to the native traditions a personage, by name Pita-Ka’t (or Peeter Kart),[6] of copper colour like themselves, ‘_Came, many years ago, from the Island of Ternate, one of the Moluccas, and gave them their religion and such simple arts as they possessed_. It is probably to him that we are to attribute some peculiarities in their mode of worship, such as their temple, with rude images to represent their divinity. The natives wear the Polynesian girdle of barb cloth. “The houses of the natives are built with small trees and rods, and thatched with leaves. They have two stories, a ground floor and a loft, which is entered by a hole or scuttle through the horizontal partition or upper floor. “For ornament they sometimes wear in their ears, which are always bored, a folded leaf, and around their necks a necklace made of the shell of the cocoa-nut and a small white sea shell.” With reference to the cruelties detailed in Holden’s narrative, Mr. Hale goes on to say: “It should be mentioned that the release of the four Americans who survived (two of whom got free a short time after their capture), was voluntary on the part of the natives, a fact which shows that the feelings of humanity were not altogether extinct in their hearts. Indeed, although the sufferings of the captives were very great, it did not appear that they were worse, relatively to the condition in which the natives themselves lived, than they would have been on any other island of the Pacific. Men who were actually dying of starvation, like the people of Tobi, could not be expected to exercise that kindness towards others which nature refused to them.”