Pleasant Island is a very beautiful island, and well does it deserve its name, if we say nothing of its inhabitants. It is moderately high, and more thickly covered with verdure than any island of the group. The natives are the most finely-built of any we have yet seen—large, athletic, and ferocious-appearing, presenting quite a contrast to some of the diminutive natives of the Windward Islands. They speak a different language, also, from that of the natives of the other islands, though but a few degrees apart. They appear far superior to them in shrewdness and cunning, it being much harder to drive a trade with them. The females are very small, very good-looking, and some of them quite handsome, several shades lighter than the men, and much lighter than those of the other islands. We bought quite a number of fowl, and some hogs of the regular _racer_ breed, Berkshires not having been introduced here. A white man came off from this island, and wished the captain to ship him, as he was afraid to remain on shore. He reported that, the day before, five white men had been murdered by the natives. A part of them were from the ill-fated “Flying Fox.” It appears that they had landed at this island perfectly destitute, and some of the white men residing there, fearing the chiefs would take them under their protection and allow them to remain, thereby diminishing their chances of trade with ships, persuaded the leading chiefs that they came there for the purpose of taking the island and poisoning all the Kanakas. They are so superstitions that, no matter how absurd the story, they believe the white man capable of doing any thing. At the instigation of these rascally “beach-combers” residing on the island, the poor fellows were butchered in a manner too horrible to relate. This man informed us that his life had been repeatedly threatened, and, had not he had the influence of one of the highest chiefs on the island, he would have shared the same horrid fate as the others. The captain informed him he could go with us, at which he was greatly rejoiced. We spoke the brig “Inga,” of New Bedford, Captain Barnes, on Sunday, the 24th. We had here an opportunity of sending letters home _via_ Sydney, New South Wales, as she was bound there with a cargo of cocoanut oil. Captain B. reported that, a few days previous, his steward and seven of his crew took a boat in the night-time and deserted. The steward stole about three hundred dollars from the captain’s state-room, a sextant, quadrant, and charts; the crew took provisions and water. He supposed they had gone to some of the Windward Islands.