Anxious to know something satisfactory about my poor ship, on the Friday following I went to Avarua, and was both astonished and rejoiced, at finding that she had sustained no injury whatever. She had, however, worked herself into a hole about four feet deep, and when lifted by the sea, had broken off large branches from the trees, twelve and fifteen feet high. The whole of her stores, masts, rigging, blocks, pitch, and copper, were strewed over the low land. Some of these were buried under the ruins of the houses, and others beneath a mass of fallen trees. I much feared whether I should be able to recover enough to refit the vessel again; but by great perseverance, in digging away the sand, in repeatedly traversing the settlement, in turning over the rubbish thrown up by the sea, and the ruins of the houses, we succeeded beyond our most sanguine expectations. My most serious loss was seventy sheets of copper; for one of the boxes was rent to pieces by the violence of the waves, and of the hundred sheets which it contained, only thirty were ever recovered; some of which were crumpled and battered in the most singular manner.

As soon as the consternation produced by the hurricane had subsided, a large meeting was convened, when it was agreed to commence immediately a temporary house of worship, to build a dwelling for Mr. Buzacott, and to repair that of the chief.