"About a year and a half ago, and just before the time when I was to sail for the United States to complete my preparation for the seminary, I was induced to embark upon a voyage to the Palliser Islands, planned by a young chief of Eimeo, named Rokoa, and a Mr Barton, an American trader residing at the island. The object of the young chief in this expedition, was to ascertain the fate of an elder brother, who had sailed for Anaa, or Chain island, several months before, with the intention of returning immediately, but who had never since been heard from: that of Mr Barton, was to engage a number of Hao-divers, for a pearl-fishing voyage, contemplated by him in connection with another foreign trader. He did not himself embark with us; but his son, a young man, two or three years my senior, accompanied us instead, to make the necessary arrangements for engaging the divers, and also to purchase any mother-of-pearl, pearls, and tortoise-shell, which the natives might have to dispose of, at such places as we should visit. With a view to the latter purpose, he was provided with a supply of trinkets and cheap goods of various kinds, such as are used in this species of traffic. At the Society Islands, the natives had learned the fair value of their commodities, and would no longer exchange even their yams, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nuts, for beads, spangles, and fragments of looking-glasses; but among the smaller groups, lying farther to the eastward, where the intercourse with Europeans was comparatively infrequent, these, and similar articles, were still in great demand, the simple islanders readily giving rich shells, and valuable pearls, in barter for them. I accompanied the expedition, at the request of Rokoa, and with scarcely any other object than to gratify him; though I was made the bearer of letters, and some trifling presents to a Tahitian native missionary, who had recently gone to Hao, to labour there. I had long known both Rokoa and his brother, now supposed to be lost. The former was a remarkable and interesting character. He had accompanied my uncle and myself on a voyage to Hawaii, and visited with us the great volcano of Kilauea, on that island, said to be by far the grandest and most wonderful in the world, not excepting Vesuvius itself. In making the descent into the crater, and while endeavouring to reach what is called the Black Ledge, he saved my life at the imminent hazard of his own. It was upon that voyage, that I first became acquainted with him. We afterwards travelled together, through the most wild and inaccessible parts of the interior of Tahiti and Eimeo; and in the course of this intimacy, I discovered much in him to esteem and admire. There was in his character, such a union of gentleness and courage, such childlike openness of disposition, and such romantic fidelity to what he considered the obligations of friendship, as reminds me of young Edmund, in Johnny's favourite story of Asiauga's Knight.