Note (return) — Chapter III · TRANSACTIONS AT OTAHEITE, AND THE SOCIETY ISLANDS; AND PROSECUTION OF THE VOYAGE TO THE COAST OF NORTH AMERICA. (continued 3)

These low isles are, doubtless, the farthest navigation which those of Otaheite and the Society Islands perform at present. It seems to be a groundless supposition, made by Mons. de Bougainville, that they made voyages of the prodigious extent5 he mentions; for I found, that it is reckoned a sort of a prodigy, that a canoe, once driven by a storm from Otaheite, should have fallen in with Mopeeha, or Howe's Island, though so near, and directly to leeward. The knowledge they have of other distant islands is, no doubt, traditional; and has been communicated to them by the natives of those islands, driven accidentally upon their coasts, who, besides giving them the names, could easily inform them of the direction in which the places lie from whence they came, and of the number of days they had been upon the sea. In this manner, it may be supposed, that the natives of Wateeoo have increased their catalogue by the addition of Otaheite and its neighbouring isles, from the people we met with there, and also of the other islands these had heard of. We may thus account for that extensive knowledge attributed by the gentlemen of the Endeavour to Tupia in such matters. And, with all due deference to his veracity, I presume that it was, by the same means of information, that he was able to direct the ship to Oheteroa, without having ever been there himself, as he pretended; which, on many accounts, is very improbable.6