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- eye. At times, some shapeless monster of the deep, floating on the
surface, would, as we approached, sink slowly into the blue waters, and
fade away from the sight. But the most impressive feature of the
scene was the almost unbroken silence that reigned over sky and water.
Scarcely a sound could be heard but the occasional breathing of the
grampus, and the rippling at the cut-water.
As we drew nearer the land, I hailed with delight the appearance of
innumerable sea-fowl. Screaming and whirling in spiral tracks, they
would accompany the vessel, and at times alight on our yards and
stays. That piratical-looking fellow, appropriately named the
man-of-war’s-hawk, with his blood-red bill and raven plumage, would
come sweeping round us in gradually diminishing circles, till you
could distinctly mark the strange flashings of his eye; and then, as if
satisfied with his observation, would sail up into the air and disappear
from the view. Soon, other evidences of our vicinity to the land were
apparent, and it was not long before the glad announcement of its being
in sight was heard from aloft,--given with that peculiar prolongation of
sound that a sailor loves--‘Land ho!’
The captain, darting on deck from the cabin, bawled lustily for his
spy-glass; the mate in still louder accents hailed the masthead with a
tremendous ‘where-away?’ The black cook thrust his woolly head from the
galley, and Boatswain, the dog, leaped up between the knight-heads, and
barked most furiously. Land ho! Aye, there it was. A hardly perceptible
blue irregular outline, indicating the bold contour of the lofty heights
of Nukuheva.
This island, although generally called one of the Marquesas, is by some
navigators considered as forming one of a distinct cluster, comprising
the islands of Ruhooka, Ropo, and Nukuheva; upon which three the
appellation of the Washington Group has been bestowed. They form a
triangle, and lie within the parallels of 8° 38″ and 9° 32″ South
latitude and 139° 20′ and 140° 10′ West longitude from Greenwich. With
how little propriety they are to be regarded as forming a separate
group will be at once apparent, when it is considered that they lie in
the immediate vicinity of the other islands, that is to say, less than
a degree to the northwest of them; that their inhabitants speak the
Marquesan dialect, and that their laws, religion, and general customs
are identical. The only reason why they were ever thus arbitrarily
distinguished may be attributed to the singular fact, that their
existence was altogether unknown to the world until the year 1791, when
they were discovered by Captain Ingraham, of Boston, Massachusetts,
nearly two centuries after the discovery of the adjacent islands by the
agent of the Spanish Viceroy. Notwithstanding this, I shall follow the
example of most voyagers, and treat of them as forming part and parcel
of Marquesas.
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