- gers, about forty rods, when I saw lights and a number
of huts like those I left in the morning. As we approached one of them, a door opened and discovered a lamp, by which, to my great joy, I discovered that the two men who held me by each arm were Europeans, fair and comely, and concluded from their appearance they were Russians, which I soon after found to be true."
By these Russians, who had established themselves in Onalaska for the purpose of collecting furs for the markets of Moscow and Petersburg, Ledyard was received and entertained in a most hospitable manner; and when he returned to the ships was accompanied by three of the principal persons among them, and several inferior attendants. "The satisfaction this discovery gave Cook," says he, "and the honour that redounded to me, may be easily imagined; and the several conjectures respecting the appearance of a foreign intercourse were rectified and confirmed."
From Onalaska the expedition sailed southward for the Sandwich Islands, and in two months arrived at Hawaii. On entering a commodious bay discovered on the southern coast of the island, they observed on each hand a town of considerable size, from which crowds of people, to whom the appearance offered by the ships was totally new, crowded down to the beach to receive the strangers. Their number was prodigious. No less than three thousand canoes, containing at least fifteen thousand men, women, and children, were crowded in the bay; and, besides these, numbers sustained themselves on floats, or swam about in the water. "The beach, the surrounding rocks, the tops of houses, the branches of trees, and the adjacent hills were all covered; and the shouts of joy and admiration proceeding from the sonorous voices of the men, confused with the shriller exclamations of the women, dancing and clapping their hands, the oversetting of
