Note (return) — Chapter III · TRANSACTIONS AT OTAHEITE, AND THE SOCIETY ISLANDS; AND PROSECUTION OF THE VOYAGE TO THE COAST OF NORTH AMERICA. (continued 5)
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How shall we account for this nation's having spread itself, in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other, in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean! We find it, from New Zealand, in the south, as far as the Sandwich Islands to the north! And, in another direction, from Easter Island to the Hebrides! that is, over an extent of sixty degrees of latitude, or twelve hundred leagues, north and south! and eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen hundred and sixty leagues east and west! How much farther, in either direction, its colonies reach is not known; but what we know already, in consequence of this and our former voyage, warrants us in pronouncing it to be, though perhaps not the most numerous, certainly, by far, the most extensive nation upon the earth.4