Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/18

x most information prior to the publication of the work was Mr. T. Woodman, a very respectable and intelligent farmer, residing at Stone, near Aylesbury. As this gentleman had also read the book, I wrote to him to request the favour of his sentiments, with regard to the two unconnected sources of information, which had fallen in his way. From the answer which he obligingly sent me, dated Stone, 4th December, 1817. I beg leave to extract the following paragraph, as bearing immediately upon the subject.

"I most certainly have many times, before your publication appeared in the world, asked Jeremiah Higgins many questions respecting the inhabitants of the Tonga islands; but as he is a young man of a reserved disposition, the communications he made were always desultory, unconnected, and confined. Yet I cannot have the least doubt, or the least hesitation in saying, that in the accounts he gave, he spoke of the very same people, and of the very same incidents, which are related by Mr. Mariner, in the work you have recently