who is drawn on a wheeled carriage, as described in such dreadful terms by Dr Buchanan, in the account of his travels and researches in India.  The Israelites, it is very probable from a passage in the prophet Amos, v. 26, copied the example of some of their idolatrous neighbours, in bearing a temple of Moloch and Chiun.  See Raphelius on Acts vii. 43. where mention is made of the same offence against the positive commands of God.  It may be distinctly proved, that the gods and goddesses of the heathens were accustomed to have their tabernacula and fana, and that some of them were portable.  Thus the Greeks had their [Greek], and the Romans their thensa.  Virgil, we see in the Eneid, speaks of the Errantesque deos, agitataque numina Trojae, as a great misfortune.  It would be idle to enter here on the question discussed by different men of learning, whether the practice of having temples or places of abode for their gods originated among the Gentiles, and was thence adopted by way of condescension into the Mosaic economy; or was borrowed by the Gentiles from some early revelation corrupted, which had for its object the holding out the great promise, that God himself would one day tabernacle among men upon the earth.  This latter opinion is the more probable one by a great deal.  It is not a little like the sentiment so strongly maintained by some excellent authors, and certainly in a high degree countenanced by scripture, that the sacrifices amongst the heathens were derived from some early but vitiated revelation of that one great sacrifice and atonement, which God himself had provided in behalf of his guilty creatures.  For this opinion, the candid reader will not fail to perceive the strongest evidence produced, in a most important recent publication, Dr Magee’s Discourses, &c. on the Atonement.—­E.]

We had commenced a kind of trade with the natives, but it went on slowly; for when any thing was offered, not one of them would take it upon his own judgment, but collected the opinions of twenty or thirty people, which could not be done without great loss of time.  We got, however, eleven pigs, and determined to try for more the next day.

The next day, therefore, we brought out some hatchets, for which we hoped we should have had no occasion, upon an island which no European had ever visited before.  These procured us three very large hogs; and as we proposed to sail in the afternoon, King Oree and several others came on board to take their leave.  To the King I gave a small plate of pewter, on which was stamped this inscription, “His Britannic Majesty’s ship, Endeavour, Lieutenant Cook Commander, 16th July, 1769, Huaheine.”  I gave him also some medals or counters, resembling the coin of England, struck in the year 1761, with some other presents; and he promised that with none of these, particularly the plate, he would ever part.  I thought it as lasting a testimony of our having first discovered this island, as any we could leave behind; and having dismissed our visitors well satisfied, and in great good humour, we set sail, about half an hour after two in the afternoon.