From the Diary of M. Lottin.

6th February—The calm that reigned made it possible for the two boats to advance rapidly towards the bay [Tolaga]. Our passengers looked at each page 214of the things in the whaleboat with keen curiosity, explained their use to each other, and talked eagerly about them. Our long oars were the first thing to attract their attention; they kept time with their heads to their rhythmic motion, shouting out to urge on the sailors, and very soon, taking a hand in the work while indulging in shouts of delight; indeed they plied the oars so violently, that fearing to see them break in pieces I begged the natives to be content to look on quietly. One of them, by means of expressive signs, then undertook to demonstrate the superiority of paddles over oars; the latter seemed to him to be inconveniently long and to make it necessary to have several men to man a boat, whereas one paddle can make a canoe fly, if it is passed alternately from side to side. A second native pointed out that each of the sailors turned his back to the place to which he wanted to go and this made them all roar with laughter; then their attention was attracted to other objects. They were impressed by the rudder; they talked seriously of how it worked, with frequent signs of approval; I had to let the spokesman take the helm for a moment and the ease with which he made the boat change its direction, at the speed at which it was going, filled them with delight and admiration.

I set the course towards the northerly point of the bay. This took us along by the reef that runs out N.E. for a mile and a quarter from Motou Heka; it is a series of rocks close to which the water has a depth of seven to twelve fathoms; we passed along, a few feet away from them. These surface reefs were covered with barnacles of various kinds and I was sorry not to have time to land there. As I hadn't more than a few minutes to spend on shore, I took out of its case Rochon's micrometer^† that I wanted to use. The bright colour of the copper suddenly attracted the attention of the natives. I placed a piece of coloured glass in front of the lens and bringing it near to my neighbour's eye, I succeeded with some difficulty in making him see the face of the sun; immediately he explained to his companions that he had seen the sun turned red and had not been dazzled by it. I then substituted a green glass; another surprise; then I turned the crystal prism, and when the disc appeared double, he shouted with astonishment. Each of them wanted to hold the telescope in his hands, but we were getting close to the shore and their curiosity could not be satisfied.

I wanted to land our passengers in front of a small village; twenty huts page 215and eight canoes pulled up on the beach indicated about a hundred inhabitants. They all came running out to greet us, quite unarmed. Some rocks lying along the shore prevented us from running on to the beach. They offered to pull our boat up and the action probably implies a compliment in this land, for our native guests greeted the suggestion with shouts of joy. But I had no wish to put myself into the hands of fifty or so fine strapping fellows who were already up to their waists in the water. Seeing that they were going to insist, I used a trick to rid myself of them. I crossed a rather shallow cove at a good speed, landed the natives straight away, took the micrometric distances that I wanted and jumped back into the boat, to the intense disappointment of the crowd, who had been forced to run right round the cove and had got there just in time to see us leaving. A few young fellows defied us by chanting their war song, but now we were quite safe; there was not a single loose stone on those rocks that the tide sweeps over every day.

I fired a shot to warn the second boat that our task was completed: they joined me and we made for the corvette. M. Dudemaine, who was in command of it, had been worried by natives. In great numbers and bearing arms, they had surrounded the boat with their canoes, doing all they could to steal anything they could reach and absolutely refusing to give up any of their arms; our guns especially excited their greed. The corvette being at a distance made them more daring and there is no doubt that if there had been only the one boat, they would have resorted to violence.