Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/236

 Note the last line, "Celestial made" — from dogs and cats raised for the purpose.

There were two weekly newspapers printed here, called The Polynesian. One was in English, the other in the Hawaiian language. Eleven thousand copies of the Bible had also been printed in the native language, and  distributed among the islands.

Some sixty or seventy Kanakas, or natives, were shipped to take the place of the crew who had left. The two whale-ships sailed for the United States. How I longed to be with them. The ships of the squadron had been thoroughly overhauled, smoked, and repainted. The ships had been overrun with rats and cockroaches. Some of the latter were three inches long. On the berth deck at night swarms of them might be seen flying  about. They were so ravenous that they even ate the horn buttons off our clothes, and attacked our toe-nails  while we were asleep in our hammocks.

Early in the morning, on the 3d of December, we weighed anchor and put to sea, with the American consul, Mr. Brinsmade, and a missionary by the name of  Judd.

The Sandwich Islands were discovered by Captain Cook in 1778. They are eleven in number, situated in the tropics between 19° and 23° north latitude. We headed for the island of Hawaii, formerly called Owhyhee. It is nearly ninety miles long and seventy broad, being the largest of the group. It blew pretty fresh, the sea was somewhat rough, and our Kanaka shipmates were quite indisposed. They lay about on deck like so many landlubbers, as willing to die as to live.