"Lanai is situated twenty miles northwest from Kahulawe, and ten or twelve miles directly west from the northern peninsula of Maui. It is seventeen miles long and nine broad, covering about 110 square miles, with a population of 2000 or 3000. "Molokai lies west-north-west from Maui, and is separated from it by a channel ten miles wide. A passage of about the same width divides it on the south from Lanai. Molokai is forty miles long and seven broad, covering 170 square miles, and containing three or four thousand inhabitants. "Oahu lies twenty-seven miles northwest from Molokai; is forty-six miles in length, and twenty-three in breadth, with a surface of 520 square miles, and a population of 20,000. It affords the best harbor in the group, and is the most fertile and beautiful of the islands. "Kauai is seventy-five miles northwest from Oahu. It is thirty-three miles long, and twenty-eight broad, covering 520 square miles, and has about 10,000 inhabitants. "Nihan lies southwest from Kauai fifteen miles, and is twenty miles long and seven broad. The number of its[61] inhabitants is small. Kaula, situated seventeen miles southwest of Nihan, like Molokini, is an uninhabited rock, visited only for the eggs of sea fowl which frequent it in great numbers, and there hatch their young. "These islands were discovered in the year 1778, by Captain James Cook, of the British Navy, and from him in honor of Earl Sandwich, the first lord of the admiralty, received the name by which they are at present designated. The tragical and lamented death of this celebrated navigator at Hawaii, in the succeeding year, caused their existence to be made known to the civilized world, with an excitement of feeling that deeply stamped the event on the public mind. No foreign ship visited the group again until the year 1786, when the ill-fated La Perouse touched at Maui; and about the same time two vessels, engaged in the trade of the North-west Coast, procured refreshments at the island of Oahu. These were early succeeded by several others; and in 1792 and 1794, by the expedition under the command of Vancouver." After having secured a sufficient quantity of provision, we were allowed liberty on shore; this liberty to one who had been shut up within the confines of a ship, was indeed exhilarating.