Before he sailed, Captain Cook saw Omai settled in his own house, with an establishment consisting of his brother, and eight or nine other men, (no female—Omai was too volatile to choose a wife), and there the English officers were received with hospitality and excellent cheer. Cook made the new householder, a present of several fire-arms, which he coveted, and had the following inscription cut on the house:
“Georgius Tertius, Rex; 2 Novembris, 1777. Names { Resolution, JAC. COOK, Pr. { Discovery, CAR. CLERKE, Pr.”
At four in the afternoon, of the 2nd of November, the two English vessels sailed. “Many of the Natives remained on board, to hear five guns fired, and then took their leave, but Omai lingered, till we were at sea, and then returned in a boat, sent to recover a hawser that had been broken. He took leave of his English friends, and showed a moody resolution till he approached Captain Cook, to bid him farewell. Then his tears could no longer be suppressed, and he wept the whole time the boat was going ashore.” Captain Cook heard from him when the ships were at Whetea; he sent two men in a canoe to say, that he was prospering and at peace, and that his only misfortune consisted in the loss of a goat, who had died in kidding.
One would gladly have heard something of the latter days of Omai, and can only hope that his state of semi-civilization did not make him discontented, with his life in Otaheite, or obnoxious to its inhabitants. If, as is most probable, the terrible details of his benefactor’s murder ever reached him, the grateful heart of Omai must have been wrung with sorrow.
Born, 1801. Died, 1868.—He was the son of the Emperor Napoleon I., by a Polish lady of rank. When only nineteen he went on a diplomatic mission to London, to plead the cause of Poland, having inherited from his mother, an enthusiastic love for her country. Charles Greville says in his Diary, that “his agreeable manners and remarkable beauty made him welcome in society;” and in 1831, he married Lady Caroline Montagu, sister to the Earl of Sandwich. He served for a time, under the Polish flag; was present at the Battle of Grokow, and was decorated with the National Military Cross. He afterwards obtained a commission in a regiment of French Hussars, but before long he laid down the sword to take up the pen. Among his past publications was “Un mot sur la question d’Afrique, et de l’alliance Anglaise.” He became the editor of the _Messager_, and wrote a five-act comedy, called “L’Ecole du Monde,” which was put on the stage in 1840.