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248 I thought it prudent to follow the captain's advice, and when I found out my friends in Hobart Town, I said nothing about the extraordinary habits of the people among whom I had been living, but merely mentioned the circumstances of my shipwreck, the marvellous escape I had made, and my residence for three years among the inhabitants of one of the Pacific islands, by whom I had been kindly treated until taken off by Captain Hans Wurst, and brought by him to Hobart Town.

My friends—who were the son of a small landed proprietor in the neighbourhood of my home and his wife—were deeply interested in the account I gave of my shipwreck, but had fortunately little curiosity respecting the locality where it took place, and did not even inquire the name of the island on which I said I had lived for so long. They were good sort of people, friendly but dull. They were much more taken up about the affairs of all our neighbours at home, and though it was upwards of three years since I left England, I could still tell them a great deal that they wished to know respecting the changes that had occurred since they had left some ten years previously. Who was dead, who married, what births had taken place, what farms had changed hands, how this or the other boy had turned out, and a hundred such matters, were far more exciting for them than any adventures that I might have gone through. Like many other good but uninquiring people, I believe they knew very little about the islands of the Pacific and cared less. They probably thought they were all peopled by uninteresting savages, and governed by a Wesleyan or Baptist missionary, who would see that any stranger was well taken care of, and shipped off as speedily as possible.