Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/158

 on some of her dominions! That is all English, you know.

Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria of England, issued her proclamation, and took possession of these islands a few months before our arrival. The English changed the names of the two largest of these islands, which lie between 35° and 40° south latitude, formerly  known and laid down on the charts as the North and  South Islands. They are now called New Ulster and New Munster. Stewart’s Island is now called Leinster, and that beautiful beach, the residence of numerous run  away English convicts from Hobart Town and Sydney,  is very appropriately named "Blackguard Beach." It is not the runaway sailors, as has been said, but the  escaped English convicts, who have found their way to  many of the islands of the Pacific, that has been the  greatest drawback to the missionary enterprise.

While lying here all hands had liberty on shore, and we had a jolly time. Twenty of us hired a large canoe and went up the Kawa Kawa River about nine miles  with John Sac, to his home. Arriving at the village or pass, as it was called, we found all the natives, men,  women, and children, armed with old guns, spears, or  war-clubs, awaiting the coming of their young chief. They had heard of his arrival on an American man-of- war. As soon as John stepped on shore, they fired off their guns, brandished their war-clubs and spears, and  shouted and yelled like so many demons. Fancy four or five thousand of these natives, many of them tattooed  over the whole face, armed to the teeth, half-naked, some  with a piece of an old mat thrown over the shoulders,