Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/60

44 at the end of two weeks started for a four hundred mile voyage to Otaheite in the Sultana's launch, with the supercargo, Mr. Curtis Clapp, and four of his best seamen, leaving the six remaining sailors on the reef in charge of George Sweetland, the mate.

Before Captain Lambert left he allowanced the thirty gallons of fresh water remaining after taking a supply for the launch, in the proportion of one-half pint of water to three quarts of Maderia wine daily. A heavy rainfall occurring soon after, sixty gallons of rain water were caught by spreading the ship's studding sail, and saved in casks. A well which was dug in the sand, but which for two or three weeks furnished only brackish water, finally became fresh, and thus one serious discomfort was done away with.

For some time after the wreck of the Sultana no native inhabitants of the island were discovered, but Lemont one morning reported that he had seen two men down the reef, when four sailors were sent to bring them in. They were detained some time, and named Typee and Bobby Sheely. Bobby had a wife and children quite fifteen miles away, whom he was asked to bring to visit the strangers, and who came. Their unblushing nakedness proving disagreeable to the young New Englanders, they hastily converted some of Wyeth's cotton goods into dresses, in which the women were clothed. (This incident raises the question whether the "Mother Hubbardstyle of dress prevailing in the Pacific islands did not originate in the improvised feminine garment manufactured by untutored masculine hands?) The men were also clothed in a manner becoming their sex, which garments, however, they wore in such fashion as the designers had never contemplated. They had intelligence enough to compare the white men curiously with themselves by feeling of their limbs and examining their