With the consent of the Governor, who received us with much cordiality (no intelligence having as yet reached these waters of the diplomatic misunderstandings which at our antipodes were forming the prologue as it were of the war that broke out somewhat later), we were permitted to use the islet of Motu-Uta, lying in the harbour, for the purpose of carrying on, free from interruption, our astronomical, meteorological, and magnetic observations. A simple wooden hut which we found upon the island served for an observatory, while quantities of slender-stemmed cocoa-palms, waving their rustling green canopies overhead, invited us to welcome repose after the exhaustion of the day's labour. To this smiling islet, which rose in the midst of the bay like a basket of flowers, King Pomáre II. once retired, there to translate the Holy Scriptures into Tahitian. Here, too--probably in the very hut which now served us as an observatory--it was that the same sovereign, when old, spent whole days, and occasionally, according to tradition, indulged so freely in cognac that he was frequently heard, when in that state, to say to himself, "Pomáre, Pomáre! thy _puan_ (pig) were now better fitted to reign than thou!" FOOTNOTES: [29] We are indebted to C. W. Stafford, Esq., Under Secretary of State to the Colonial Government, for copies of the latest statistical documents, from which we learn _inter alia_ that at the end of 1859 the population amounted to 129,392, the aborigines numbering 56,049, and the foreigners 73,343. [30] According to the tradition handed down from the chief Te-he[)u]-he[)u], their forefathers emigrated first from Hawaiki-Tawiti-Nui, to Hawaiki-Patata, where they sojourned some time, and thence went to Hawaiki-Ki-te-Maite[)u], whence they came to New Zealand. [31] According to Dr. Thomson ("The story of New Zealand past and present, savage and civilized." London. John Murray, 1859), who lived eleven years at Auckland prosecuting his duties as a surgeon in the army, the Maori came to New Zealand, passing by Rarotonga, from Sawaii, the largest of the Navigators' Islands, about the year 1419. This opinion, which is not devoid of probability, is not however incompatible with the Sandwich Islands being the original cradle of the New Zealanders, and Sawaii only a sort of intermediate station. (See United States Exploring Expedition 1838-42. Ethnography or Philology, vol. vii., by Horatio Hale, Philadelphia. Lea and Blanchard, 1846.--The Traditionary Migrations of the New Zealanders and the Maori Legends (_Die Wundersagen der Neu-Seeländer und der Maori Mythos_), by C. Schirren. Riga. N. Kymmel, 1856.) [32] The sick were formerly made to drink the fluid contained in the shells of fresh and salt-water _Conchyliæ_.