"Spain has another interest, perhaps still greater, against the independence of the Americans, and, consequently, in favor of the treaty in question. The Americans, who will be able to fly with their sails wherever they please, will make establishments in New Zealand, the Islands of Otaheite, or some other Islands in the South Sea, from whence they will torment the Spaniards in that sea, and even the English, the French, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, in the East India Seas. Being independent, no treaty will prevent their making such establishments. They may make them consistent with the laws of nations. Captain Cook in his last printed voyages says, there are fortyseven thousand seafaring people in the Island of Otaheite alone; and Captain Wallis, who discovered those Islands, told me at Lisbon a few days ago, that the inhabitants of Otaheite went to the mast-head of the English ships, and ran on the yard-arms as well in three days' time as the English mariners, and gave me two reasons for it. The first was, that living on fish, they are all seafaring people; and the second, that those who wear no shoes are always the most dexterous in mounting the upper parts of a ship. Captain Cook also in the same voyage gives a description of a port and city in New Zealand, which might in a few weeks be made impregnable, and one needs only look at the shape of the Islands in the South Seas, in the maps we have of them, to be convinced that they have no small number of these impregnable ports.