Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/223

] happened to any vessel that had stopped at them, except to Bligh's launch; the affair of which they related without disguise, as I have mentioned above. The indifference with which they told us this story, convinced us, that if these people be not naturally ferocious, they are at least strangers to sentiments of humanity. The blows with clubs, or logs of wood, with which the chiefs usually accompany their orders, are an additional proof of this. They well remembered the different periods at which they had seen Captain Cook; and, to acquaint us with the intervals, they reckoned them by harvests of yams, giving two of these to each year. Several of the natives, particularly those of the royal family, pronounced the name of Cook with enthusiasm: but the great severity of that celebrated navigator had prevented many others from bearing him in memory with equal pleasure; they spoke of him only with complaints of the rigorous treatment they had experienced at his hands. In fact, though in his last voyage he speaks only of one man wounded by a ball in the thigh, we saw another who had been shot through the shoulder; and he assured us