# Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII
GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS
Description of the people—Tattowing—Cleanliness—Clothing—Ornaments and head-dress—Houses—Food—Produce of the sea—Fruits—Animals—Cooking—Mahai-making—Drinking salt-water—Meals—Women eat apart from the men—Pastimes—Music—Attachment to old customs—Making of cloth from bark—Dyes and dyeing—Mats—Manufacture of fishing-nets—Fish-hooks—Carpentry, etc—Boats and boat-building—Fighting, fishing, and travelling ivahahs—Instability of the boats—Paddles, sails, and ornaments—Pahies—Predicting the weather—Astronomy—Measurement of time and space—Language—Its resemblance to other languages—Diseases—Medicine and surgery—Funeral ceremonies—Disposal of the dead—Religion—Origin of mankind—Gods—Priests—Marriage—Marais—Bird-gods—Government—Ranks—Army and battles—Justice.
All the islands I have seen are very populous along the whole length of the coast, where are generally large flats covered with a great many bread-fruit and cocoanut trees. There are houses scarcely fifty yards apart, with their little plantations of plantains, the trees from which they make their cloth, etc. But the inland parts are totally uninhabited, except in the valleys, where there are rivers, and even there there are but a small proportion of people in comparison with the numbers who live upon the flats.
These people are of the larger size of Europeans, all very well made, and some handsome, both men and women; the only bad feature they have is their noses, which are in general flat, but to balance this their teeth are almost without exception even and white to perfection, and the eyes of the women especially are full of expression and fire. In colour they differ very much; those of inferior rank who ​are obliged in the exercise of their profession, fishing especially, to be much exposed to the sun and air, are of a dark brown, while those of superior rank, who spend most of their time in their houses under shelter, are seldom browner (the women particularly) than that kind of brunette which many in Europe prefer to the finest red and white. Complexion, indeed, they seldom have, though some I have seen show a blush very manifestly; this is perhaps owing to the thickness of their skin, but that fault is in my opinion well compensated by their infinite smoothness, much superior to anything I have met with in Europe.
The men, as I have before said, are rather large. I have measured one 6 feet 3½ inches. The superior women are also as tall as Europeans, but the inferior sort are generally small. Their hair is almost universally black and rather coarse, this the women wear always cropped short round their ears; the men, on the other hand, wear it in many various ways, sometimes cropping it short, sometimes allowing it to grow very long, and tying it at the top of their heads or letting it hang loose on their shoulders, etc. Their beards they all wear in many different fashions, always, however, plucking out a large part of them and keeping what is left very clean and neat. Both sexes eradicate every hair from under their armpits, and they looked upon it as a great mark of uncleanliness in us that we did not do the same.
During our stay in these islands I saw some, not more than five or six, who were a total exception to all I have said above. They were whiter even than we, but of a dead colour, like that of the nose of a white horse; their eyes, hair, eyebrows, and beards were also white; they were universally short-sighted, and always looked unwholesome, the skin scurfy and scaly, and the eye often full of rheum. As no two of them had any connection with one another, I conclude that the difference of colour, etc., was totally accidental, and did not at all run in families.
So much for their persons. I shall now mention their methods of painting their bodies, or tattow as it is called in ​their language. This they do by inlaying black under their skins, in such a manner as to be indelible. Every one is thus marked in different parts of his body, according maybe to his humour, or different circumstances of his life. Some have ill-designed figures of men, birds or dogs; but they more generally have a Z, either plain—as is generally the case with the women on every joint of their fingers and toes and often round the outside of their feet—or in different figures such as squares, circles, crescents, etc., which both sexes have on their arms and legs; in short, they have an infinite diversity of figure in which they place this mark. Some of them we were told had significations; but these we never learnt to our satisfaction. Their faces are generally left without any marks; I did not see more than one instance to the contrary. Some few old men had the greater part of their bodies covered with large patches of black, which ended in deep indentations, like coarse imitations of flame; these we were told were not natives of Otahite, but came from a low island called Noonoora. Although they vary so much in the application of the figures—I have mentioned that both the quantity and situation seem to depend entirely upon the humour of each individual—yet all the islanders I have seen (except those of Oheteroa) agree in having their buttocks covered with a deep black. Over this most have arches, which are often a quarter of an inch broad, drawn one above the other as high as their short ribs, and neatly worked on their edges with indentations, etc. These arches are their great pride: both men and women show them with great pleasure, whether as a mark of beauty, or a proof of their perseverance and resolution in bearing pain I cannot tell. The pain in doing this is almost intolerable, especially the arches upon the loins, which are so much more susceptible to pain than the fleshy buttocks.
The colour they use is lamp black prepared from the smoke of a kind of oily nut, used by them instead of candles. This is kept in cocoanut shells, and occasionally mixed with water for use. Their instruments for pricking this under the skin are made of flat bone or shell; the lower part of ​which is cut into sharp teeth, numbering from three to twenty, according to the purposes it is to be used for; the upper end is fastened to a handle. The teeth are dipped into the black liquor, and then driven by quick sharp blows, struck upon the handle with a stick used for that purpose, into the skin, so deeply that every stroke is followed by a small quantity of blood, or serum at least, and the part so marked remains sore for many days before it heals.
I saw this operation performed on the 5th of July on the buttocks of a girl about fourteen years of age; for some time she bore it with great resolution, but afterwards began to complain; and in a little time grew so outrageous that all the threats and force her friends could use could hardly oblige her to endure it. I had occasion to remain in an adjoining house an hour at least after this operation began, and yet went away before it was finished, in which time only one side was blacked, the other having been done some weeks before.
It is performed between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and so essential is it that I have never seen one single person of years of maturity without it. What can be a sufficient inducement to suffer so much pain is difficult to say; not one Indian (though I have asked hundreds) would ever give me the least reason for it. Possibly superstition may have something to do with it, nothing else in my opinion could be a sufficient cause for so apparently absurd a custom. As for the smaller marks upon the fingers, arms, etc., they may be intended only for beauty; our European ladies have found the convenience of patches, and something of that kind is more useful here where the best complexions are much inferior to theirs in England; and yet whiteness is esteemed the first essential in beauty.
They are certainly as cleanly a people as any under the sun; they all wash their whole bodies in running water as soon as they rise in the morning, at noon, and before they sleep at night. If they have not such water near their houses, as often happens, they will go a good way to it. As for their lice, had they the means only they would certainly ​be as free from them as any inhabitants of so warm a climate could be. Those to whom combs were given proved this, for those with whom I was best acquainted kept themselves very clean during our stay by the use of them. Eating lice is a custom which none but children, and those of the inferior people, can be charged with. Their clothes also, as well as their persons, are kept almost without spot or stain; the superior people spend much of their time in repairing, dyeing, etc., the cloth, which seems to be a genteel amusement for the ladies here as it is in Europe.
Their clothes are either of a kind of cloth made of the bark of a tree, or mats of several different sorts; of all these and of their manner of making them I shall speak in another place; here I shall only mention their method of covering and adorning their persons, which is most diverse, as they never form dresses, or sew any two pieces together. A piece of cloth, generally two yards wide and eleven long, is sufficient clothing for any one, and this is put on in a thousand different ways, often very genteelly. Their formal dress however is, among the women, a kind of petticoat, parou, wrapped round their hips, and reaching to about the middle of their legs; and one, two, or three pieces of thick cloth, about two and a half yards long and one wide, called tebuta, through a hole in the middle of which they put their heads, and suffer the sides to hang before and behind, the open edges serving to give their arms liberty of movement. Round the ends of this, about as high as their waists, are tied two or three large pieces of thin cloth, and sometimes one or two more thrown loosely over their shoulders, for the rich seem to take the greatest pride in wearing a large quantity of cloth. The dress of the men differs but little from this, their bodies are rather more bare, and instead of the petticoat they have a piece of cloth (maro) passed between their legs and round their waists, which gives them rather more liberty to use their limbs than the women’s dress will allow. Thus much of the richer people; the poorer sort have only a smaller allowance of cloth given them from the tribes or families to which they belong, and must use that to the best advantage.
​It is no uncommon thing for the richest men to come to see us with a large quantity of cloth rolled round the loins, and all the rest of the body naked; though the cloth wrapped round them was sufficient to have clothed a dozen people. The women at sunset always bared their bodies down to the waist, which seemed to be a kind of easy undress to them; as it is to our ladies to pull off any finery that has been used during the course of the day, and change it for a loose gown or capuchin.
Both sexes shade their faces from the sun with little bonnets of cocoanut leaves, which they make occasionally in a very few minutes; some have these made of fine matting, but that is less common. Of matting they have several sorts; some very fine, which is used in exactly the same manner as cloth for their dresses, chiefly in rainy weather, as the cloth will not bear the least wet.
Ornaments they have very few. They are very fond of earrings, but wear them only in one ear. When we arrived they had their own earrings made of shell, stone, berries, red peas, and some small pearls, of which they wore three tied together; but our beads very quickly supplied their place. They are also very fond of flowers, especially of the Cape jasmine, of which they have great plenty planted near their houses. These they stick into the holes of their ears and into their hair, if they have enough of them, which is but seldom. The men wear feathers, often the tails of tropic birds stuck upright in their hair. They have also a kind of wig made upon one string, of the hair of men or dogs, or of cocoanut, which they tie under their hair at the back of the head. I have seen them also wear whimsical garlands made of a variety of flowers stuck into a piece of the rind of plantain, or of scarlet peas stuck upon a piece of wood with gum, but these are not common. But their great pride in dress seems to be centred in what they call tamou, which is human hair plaited scarcely thicker than common thread; of this I may easily affirm that I have seen pieces above a mile ​in length, worked on end without a single knot; and I have seen five or six of such pieces wound round the head of one woman, the effect of which, if done with taste, was most becoming. Their dancing dresses I have described in the island of Ulhietea; and that of the Heiva I shall when I come to their mourning ceremonies. They have also several others suited to particular ceremonies which I had not an opportunity of seeing, although I was desirous of doing so, as the singular taste of those I did see promised much novelty, at least, if not something worth imitation, in whatever they take pains with.
I had almost forgotten the oil (monoe it is called in their language) with which they anoint their heads, a custom more disagreeable to Europeans than any other among them. This is made of cocoanut oil, in which some sweet woods or flowers are infused. It is most commonly very rancid, and consequently the wearers of it smell most disagreeably; at first we found it so, but very little custom reconciled me, at least, completely to it.
The houses, or rather dwellings, of these people are admirably adapted to the continual warmth of the climate. They do not build them in villages or towns, but separate each from the other, according to the size of the estate the owner of the house possesses. They are always in the woods; and no more ground is cleared for each house than is just sufficient to hinder the dropping off the branches from rotting the thatch with which they are covered, so that you step from the house immediately under shade, and that the most beautiful imaginable. No country can boast such delightful walks as this; for the whole plains where the people live are covered with groves of bread-fruit and cocoanut trees without underwood. These are intersected in all directions by the paths which go from one house to the other, so that the whole country is one shade, than which nothing can be more grateful in a climate where the sun has so powerful an influence. The houses are built without walls, so that the air, cooled by the shade of the trees, has free access in whatever direction it happens to blow. I ​shall describe one of the middle size, which will give an idea of all the rest, as they differ scarcely at all in fashion.
Its length was 24 feet, breadth 11 feet, extreme height 8½ feet, height of the eaves 3½ feet; it consisted of nothing more than a thatched roof of the same form as in England, supported by three rows of posts or pillars, one on each side, and one in the middle. The floor was covered some inches deep with soft hay, upon which here and there were laid mats for the convenience of sitting down. This is almost the only furniture, as few houses have more than one stool, the property of the master of the family, and constantly used by him; most are entirely without the stool. These houses serve them chiefly to sleep in, and make their cloth, etc.; they generally eat in the open air under the shade of the nearest tree, if the weather is not rainy. The mats which serve them to sit upon in the daytime are also their beds at night; the cloth which they wear in the day serves for covering; and a little wooden stool, a block of wood, or bundle of cloth, for a pillow. Their order is generally this: near the middle of the room sleep the master of the house and his wife, and with them the rest of the married people; next to them the unmarried women; next to them again, at some small distance, the unmarried men; the servants (toutous) generally lie in the open air, or if it rains, come just within shelter.
Besides these, there is another much larger kind of house. One in our neighbourhood measured in length 162 feet, breadth 28½ feet, height of one of the middle row of pillars 18 feet. These are conjectured to be common to all the inhabitants of a district, raised and kept up by their joint labour. They serve, maybe, for any meetings or consultations, or for the reception of any visitors of consequence, etc. Such we have also seen used as dwelling-houses by the most important people. Some of them were much larger than this which I have here described.
In the article of food these happy people may almost be said to be exempt from the curse of our forefathers; scarcely can it be said that they earn their bread by the sweat of ​their brow, when their chief sustenance, bread-fruit, is procured with no more trouble than that of climbing a tree and pulling it down. Not that the trees grew here spontaneously, but, if a man in the course of his life planted ten such trees (which, if well done, might take the labour of an hour or thereabouts), he would as completely fulfil his duty to his own as well as future generations, as we, natives of less temperate climates, can do by toiling in the cold of winter to sow, and in the heat of summer to reap, the annual produce of our soil; which, when once gathered into the barn, must again be re-sowed and re-reaped as often as the colds of winter or the heats of summer return to make such labour disagreeable.
O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint
may most truly be applied to these people; benevolent nature has not only provided them with necessaries, but with an abundance of superfluities. The sea, in the neighbourhood of which they always live, supplies them with vast variety of fish, better than is generally met with between the tropics, but these they get not without some trouble. Every one desires to have them, and there is not enough for all, though while we remained in these seas we saw more species perhaps than our island can boast of. I speak now only of what is more properly called fish, but almost everything which comes out of the sea is eaten and esteemed by these people. Shell-fish, lobsters, crabs, even sea insects, and what the seamen call blubbers of many kinds, conduce to their support; some of the latter, indeed, which are of a tough nature, are prepared by suffering them to stink. Custom will make almost any meat palatable, and the women, especially, are fond of this, though after they had eaten it, I confess I was not extremely fond of their company.
Besides the bread-fruit the earth almost spontaneously produces cocoanuts; bananas of thirteen sorts, the best I have ever eaten; plantains, but indifferent; a fruit not unlike an apple, which, when ripe, is very pleasant; sweet potatoes; ​yams; cocos, a kind of arum, known in the East Indies by the name of Habava; a fruit known there by the name of eng. mallow, and considered most delicious; sugar-cane, which the inhabitants eat raw; a root of the salop kind, called by the inhabitants pea; the root also of a plant called ethee; and a fruit in a pod like a large hull of a kidney bean, which, when roasted, eats much like a chestnut, and is called ahee. Besides these there is the fruit of a tree called wharra, in appearance like a pine-apple; the fruit of a tree called nono; the roots, and perhaps leaves of a fern; and the roots of a plant called theve: which four are eaten only by the poorer sort of people in times of scarcity.
Of tame animals they have hogs, fowls, and dogs, which latter we learned to eat from them; and few were there of the nicest of us but allowed that a South Sea dog was next to an English lamb. This indeed must be said in their favour, that they live entirely upon vegetables; probably our dogs in England would not eat half as well. Their pork certainly is most excellent, though sometimes too fat; their fowls are not a bit better, rather worse maybe, than ours at home, and often very tough. Though they seem to esteem flesh very highly, yet in all the islands I have seen, the quantity they have of it is very unequal to the number of their people; it is therefore seldom used among them, even the principal chiefs do not have it every day or even every week, though some of them had pigs that we saw quartered upon different estates, as we send cocks to walk in England. When any of these chiefs kills a hog, it seems to be divided almost equally among all his dependents, he himself taking little more than the rest. Vegetables are their chief food, and of these they eat a large quantity.
Cookery seems to have been but little studied here; they have only two methods of applying fire. Broiling ​or baking, as we called it, is done thus: a hole is dug, the depth and size varying according to what is to be prepared, but seldom exceeding a foot in depth; in this is made a heap of wood and stones laid alternately, fire is then put to it, which, by the time it has consumed the wood, has heated the stones just sufficiently to discolour anything which touches them. The heap is then divided, half is left in the hole, the bottom being paved with them, and on them any kind of provisions are laid, always neatly wrapped up in leaves. Above these again are laid the remaining hot stones, then leaves again to the thickness of three or four inches, and over them any ashes, rubbish or dirt that is at hand. In this situation the food remains about two hours, in which time I have seen a middling-sized hog very well done; indeed, I am of opinion that victuals dressed in this way are more juicy, if not more equally done, than when cooked by any of our European methods, large fish more especially. Bread-fruit cooked in this manner becomes soft, and something like a boiled potato, though not quite so farinaceous as a good one. Of this two or three dishes are made by beating it with a stone pestle till it becomes a paste, mixing water or cocoanut liquor with it, and adding ripe plantains, bananas, sour paste, etc.
As I have mentioned sour paste, I will proceed to describe what it is. Bread-fruit, by what I can find, remains in season during only nine or ten of their thirteen months, so that a reserve of food must be made for those months when they are without it. For this purpose, the fruit is gathered when just upon the point of ripening, and laid in heaps, where it undergoes a fermentation, and becomes disagreeably sweet. The core is then taken out, which is easily done, as a slight pull at the stalk draws it out entire, and the rest of the fruit is thrown into a hole dug for that purpose, generally in their houses. The sides and bottom of this hole are neatly lined with grass, the whole is covered with leaves, and heavy stones laid upon them. Here it undergoes a second fermentation and becomes sourish, in which condition it will keep, as they told me, many months. ​Custom has, I suppose, made this agreeable to their palates, though we disliked it extremely; we seldom saw them make a meal without some of it in some shape or form.
As the whole making of this mahie, as they call it, depends upon fermentation, I suppose it does not always succeed; it is always done by the old women, who make a kind of superstitious mystery of it, no one except the people employed by them being allowed to come even into that part of the house where it is. I myself spoiled a large heap of it only by inadvertently touching some leaves that lay upon it as I walked by the outside of the house where it was; the old directress of it told me that from that circumstance it would most certainly fail, and immediately pulled it down before my face, who did less regret the mischief I had done, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing the preparation, which, perhaps, I should not otherwise have been allowed to do.
To this plain diet, prepared with so much simplicity, salt water is the universal sauce; those who live at the greatest distance from the sea are never without it, keeping it in large bamboos set up against the sides of their houses. When they eat, a cocoanut-shell full of it always stands near them, into which they dip every morsel, especially of fish, and often leave the whole soaking in it, drinking at intervals large sups of it out of their hands, so that a man may use half a pint of it at a meal. They have also a sauce made of the kernels of cocoanuts fermented until they dissolve into a buttery paste, and beaten up with salt water; the taste of this is very strong, and at first was to me most abominably nauseous. A very little use, however, reconciled me to it, so much so that I should almost prefer it to our own sauces with fish. It is not common among them, possibly it is thought ill-management among them to use cocoanuts so lavishly, or we were on the islands at a time when they were scarcely ripe enough for this purpose.
Small fish they often eat raw, and sometimes large ones. I myself, by being constantly with them, learnt to do the same, insomuch that I have often made meals of raw fish ​and bread-fruit, by which I learnt that with my stomach at least it agreed as well as if dressed, and, if anything, was still easier of digestion, however contrary this may appear to the common opinion of the people at home.
Drink they have none except water and cocoanut juice, nor do they seem to have any method of intoxication among them. Some there were who drank pretty freely of our liquors, and in a few instances became very drunk, but seemed far from pleased with their intoxication, the individuals afterwards shunning a repetition of it, instead of greedily desiring it, as most Indians are said to do.
Their tables, or at least their apparatus for eating, are set out with great neatness, though the small quantity of their furniture will not admit of much elegance. I will describe the manner in which that of their principal people is served. They commonly eat alone, unless some stranger makes a second in their mess. The man usually sits under the shade of the nearest tree, or on the shady side of the house. A large quantity of leaves, either of bread-fruit or banana, are neatly spread before him, and serve instead of a table-cloth. A basket containing his provisions is then set by him, and two cocoanut-shells, one full of fresh, the other of salt, water. He begins by washing his hands and mouth thoroughly with the fresh water, a process which he repeats almost continually throughout the whole meal. Suppose that his provisions consist (as they often did) of two or three bread-fruits, one or two small fish about as big as an English perch, fourteen or fifteen ripe bananas or half as many apples. He takes half a bread-fruit, peels off the rind, and picks out the core with his nails; he then crams his mouth as full with it as it can possibly hold, and while he chews that, unwraps the fish from the leaves in which they have remained tied up since they were dressed, and breaks one of them into the salt water. The rest, as well as the remains of the bread-fruit, lie before him upon the leaves. He generally gives a fish, or part of one, to some one of his dependents, many of whom sit round him, and then takes up a very small piece of that which he has ​broken into the salt water in the ends of all the fingers in one hand, and sucks it into his mouth to get as much salt water as possible, every now and then taking a small sup of it, either out of the palm of his hand or out of the cocoanut-shell.
In the meanwhile one of the attendants has prepared a young cocoanut by peeling off the outer rind with his teeth, an operation which at first appears very surprising to Europeans, but depends so much upon a knack, that before we left the island, many of us were ourselves able to do it, even myself, who can scarce crack a nut. When he chooses to drink, the master takes this from him, and, boring a hole through the shell with his finger, or breaking the nut with a stone, drinks or sucks out the water. When he has eaten his bread-fruit and fish, he begins with his plantains, one of which makes no more than a mouthful, if they are as big as black puddings. If he has apples a shell is necessary to peel them; one is picked off the ground, where there are always plenty, and tossed to him; with this he scrapes or cuts off the skin, rather awkwardly, as he wastes almost half the apple in doing it. If he has any tough kind of meat instead of fish, he must have a knife, for which purpose a piece of bamboo is tossed to him, of which he in a moment makes one, by splitting it transversely with his nail. With this he can cut tough meat or tendons at least as readily as we can with a common knife. All this time one of his people has been employed in beating bread-fruit with a stone pestle and a block of wood; by much beating and sprinkling with water, it is reduced to the consistence of soft paste; he then takes a vessel like a butcher’s tray, and in it lays his paste, mixing it with either bananas, sour paste, or making it up alone, according to the taste of his master; to this he adds water, pouring it on by degrees, and squeezing it often through his hand till it comes to the consistence of a thick custard. A large cocoanut-shell full of this he then sets before his master, who sups it down as we should a custard, if we had not a spoon to eat it with. His dinner is then finished by ​washing his hands and mouth, cleaning the cocoanut-shells and putting anything that may be left into the basket again.
It may be thought that I have given rather too large a quantity of provision to my eater, when I say that he has eaten three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists, two or three fish, fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each, if they are large, six or nine inches long and four or five round, and concluded his dinner with about a quart of a food as substantial as the thickest unbaked custard. But this I do affirm, that it is but few of the many I was acquainted with that eat less, while many eat a good deal more. However, I shall not insist that any man who may read this should believe it as an article of faith; I shall be content if politeness makes him think, as Joe Miller’s friend said: "Well, sir, as you say so, I believe it, but by God, had I seen it myself, I should have doubted it exceedingly."
I have said that they seldom eat together; the better sort hardly ever do so. Even two brothers or two sisters have each their respective baskets, one of which contains victuals, the other cocoanut-shells, etc., for the furniture of their separate tables. These were brought every day to our tents to those of our friends who, having come from a distance, chose to spend the whole day, or sometimes two or three days in our company. These two relations would go out, and sitting down upon the ground within a few yards of each other, turn their faces different ways, and make their meals without saying a word to each other.
The women carefully abstain from eating with the men, or even any of the victuals that have been prepared for them; all their food is prepared separately by boys, and kept in a shed by itself, where it is looked after by the same boys who attend them at their meals. Notwithstanding this, when we visited them at their houses, the women with whom we had any particular acquaintance or friendship would constantly ask us to partake of their meals, which we often did, eating out of the same basket and drinking out of the same cup. The old women, however, would by no ​means allow the same liberty, but would esteem their victuals polluted if we touched them; in some instances I have seen them throw them away when we had inadvertently defiled them by handling the vessels which contained them.
What can be the motive for so unsocial a custom I cannot in any shape guess, especially as they are a people in every other instance fond of society, and very much so of their women. I have often asked them the reason, but they have as often evaded the question, or answered merely that they did it because it was right, and expressed much disgust when I told them that in England men and women ate together, and the same victuals. They, however, constantly affirm that it does not proceed from any superstitious motive: Eatua, they say, has nothing to do with it. Whatever the motive may be, it certainly affects their outward manners more than their principles; in the tents, for example, we never saw an instance of the women partaking of our victuals at our table, but we have several times seen five or six of them go together into the servants' apartment and there eat very heartily of whatever they could find. Nor were they at all disturbed if we came in while they were doing so, though we had before used all the entreaties we were masters of to invite them to partake with us. When a woman was alone with us, she would often eat even in our company, but always extorted a strong promise that we should not let her country-people know what she had done.
After their meals, and in the heat of the day, they often sleep; middle-aged people especially, the better sort of whom seem to spend most of their time in eating or sleeping. The young boys and girls are uncommonly lively and active, and the old people generally more so than the middle-aged, which perhaps is owing to their excessively dissolute manners.
Diversions they have but few: shooting with the bow is the most usual I have seen at Otahite. It is confined almost entirely to the chiefs; they shoot for distance only, ​with arrows unfledged, kneeling upon one knee, and dropping the bow from their hands the instant the arrow parts from it. I measured a shot made by Tubourai Tamaide; it was 274 yards, yet he complained that as the bow and arrows were bad he could not shoot as far as he ought to have done. At Ulhietea bows were less common, but the people amused themselves by throwing a kind of javelin eight or nine feet long at a mark, which they did with a good deal of dexterity, often striking the trunk of a plantain tree, their mark, in the very centre. I could never observe that either these or the Otahite people staked anything; they seemed to contend merely for the honour of victory.
Music is very little known to them, and this is the more wonderful as they seem very fond of it. They have only two instruments, the flute and the drum. The former is made of a hollow bamboo, about a foot long, in which are three holes: into one of these they blow with one nostril, stopping the other nostril with the thumb of the left hand; the other two they stop and unstop with the forefinger of the left, and middle finger of the right hand. By this means they produce four notes, and no more, of which they have made one tune that serves them for all occasions. To it they sing a number of songs, pehay as they call them, generally consisting of two lines, affecting a coarse metre, and generally in rhyme. Maybe these lines would appear more musical if we well understood the accent of their language, but they are as downright prose as can be written. I give two or three specimens of songs made upon our arrival.
Te de pahai de parow-a Ha maru no mina.
E pahah tayo malama tai ya No tabane tonatou whannomi ya.
E turai eattu terara patee whennua toai Ino o maio pretane to whennuaia no tute.
At any time of the day when they are lazy they amuse themselves by singing the couplets, but especially after dark; ​their candles—made of the kernel of a nut abounding much in oil—are then lighted. Many of these are stuck upon a skewer of wood, one below the other, and give a very tolerable light, which they often keep burning an hour after dark, and if they have any strangers in the house it is sometimes kept up all night.
Their drums they manage rather better: they are made of a hollow block of wood, covered with shark's skin; with these they make out five or six tunes, and accompany the flute not disagreeably. They know also how to tune two drums of different notes into concord, which they do nicely enough. They also tune their flutes; if two persons play upon flutes which are not in unison, the shorter is lengthened by adding a small roll of leaf tied round the end of it, and moved up and down till their ears (which are certainly very nice) are satisfied. The drums are used chiefly in their heivas, which are at Otahite no more than a set of musicians, two drums for instance, two flutes and two singers, who go about from house to house and play. They are always received and rewarded by the master of the family, who gives them a piece of cloth or whatever else he can spare; and during their stay of maybe three or four hours, receives all his neighbours, who crowd his house full. This diversion the people are extravagantly fond of, most likely because, like concerts, assemblies, etc., in Europe, they serve to bring the sexes easily together at a time when the very thought of meeting has opened the heart and made way for pleasing ideas. The grand dramatic heiva which we saw at Ulhietea is, I believe, occasionally performed in all the islands, but that I have so fully described in the journal (3rd, 7th, and 8th August) that I need say no more about it.
Besides this they dance, especially the young girls, whenever they can collect eight or ten together, and setting their mouths askew in a most extraordinary manner, in the practice of which they are brought up from their earliest childhood. In doing this they keep time to a surprising nicety; I might almost say as truly as any dancers I have ​seen in Europe, though their time is certainly much more simple. This exercise is, however, left off as they arrive at years of maturity.
The great facility with which these people have always procured the necessaries of life may very reasonably be thought to have originally sunk them into a kind of indolence, which has, as it were, benumbed their inventions, and prevented their producing such a variety of arts as might reasonably be expected from the approaches they have made in their manners to the politeness of the Europeans. To this may also be added a fault which is too frequent even among the most civilised nations, I mean an invincible attachment to the customs which they have learnt from their forefathers. These people are in so far excusable, as they derive their origin, not from creation, but from an inferior divinity, who was herself, with others of equal rank, descended from the god, causer of earthquakes. They therefore look upon it as a kind of sacrilege to attempt to mend customs which they suppose had their origin either among their deities or their ancestors, whom they hold as little inferior to the divinities themselves.
They show their greatest ingenuity in marking and dyeing cloth; in the description of these operations, especially the latter, I shall be rather diffuse, as I am not without hopes that my countrymen may receive some advantage, either from the articles themselves, or at least by hints derived from them.
The material of which it is made is the internal bark or liber of three sorts of trees, the Chinese paper mulberry (Morus papyrifera), the bread-fruit tree (Sitodium utile), and a tree much resembling the wild fig-tree of the West Indies (Ficus prolixa). Of the first, which they name aouta, they make the finest and whitest cloth, which is worn chiefly by the principal people; it is likewise the most suitable for dyeing, especially with red. Of the second, which they call ooroo, is made a cloth inferior to the former in whiteness and softness, worn chiefly by people of inferior degree. Of the ​third, which is by far the rarest, is made a coarse, harsh cloth of the colour of the deepest brown paper: it is the only one they have that at all resists water, and is much valued; most of it is perfumed and used by the very great people as a morning dress. These three trees are cultivated with much care, especially the former, which covers the largest part of their cultivated land. Young plants of one or two years' growth only are used; their great merit is that they are thin, straight, tall, and without branches; to prevent the growth of these last they pluck off with great care all the lower leaves and their germs, as often as there is any appearance of a tendency to produce branches.
Their method of manufacturing the bark is the same for all the sorts: one description of it will therefore be sufficient. The thin cloth they make thus: when the trees have grown to a sufficient size they are drawn up, and the roots and tops cut off and stripped of their leaves; the best of the aouta are in this state about three or four feet long and as thick as a man's finger, but the ooroo are considerably larger. The bark of these rods is then slit up longitudinally, and in this manner drawn off the stick; when all are stripped, the bark is carried to some brook or running water, into which it is laid to soak with stones upon it, and in this situation it remains some days. When sufficiently soaked the women servants go down to the river, and stripping themselves, sit down in the water and scrape the pieces of bark, holding them against a flat smooth board, with the shell called by the English shell merchants Tiger's tongue (Tellina gargadia), dipping it continually in the water until all the outer green bark is rubbed and washed away, and nothing remains but the very fine fibres of the inner bark. This work is generally finished in the afternoon: in the evening the pieces are spread out upon plantain leaves, and in doing this I suppose there is some difficulty, as the mistress of the family generally presides over the operation. All that I could observe was that they laid them in two or three layers, and seemed very careful to make them every​where of equal thickness, so that if any part of a piece of bark had been scraped too thin, another thin piece was laid over it, in order to render it of the same thickness as the rest. When laid out in this manner, a piece of cloth is eleven or twelve yards long, and not more than a foot broad, for as the longitudinal fibres are all laid lengthwise, they do not expect it to stretch in that direction, though they well know how considerably it will in the other.
In this state they suffer it to remain till morning, by which time a large proportion of the water with which it was thoroughly soaked has either drained off or evaporated, and the fibres begin to adhere together, so that the whole may be lifted from the ground without dropping in pieces. It is then taken away by the women servants, who beat it in the following manner. They lay it upon a long piece of wood, one side of which is very even and flat, this side being put under the cloth: as many women then as they can muster, or as can work at the board together, begin to beat it. Each is furnished with a baton made of the hard wood, etoa (Casuarina equisetifolia): it is about a foot long and square with a handle; on each of the four faces of the square are many small furrows, whose width differs on each face, and which cover the whole face. They begin with the coarsest side, keeping time with their strokes in the same manner as smiths, and continue until the cloth, which extends rapidly under these strokes, shows by the too great thinness of the groves which are made in it that a finer side of the beater is requisite. In this manner they proceed to the finest side, with which they finish; unless the cloth is to be of that very fine sort hoboo, which is almost as thin as muslin. In making this last they double the piece several times, and beat it out again and afterwards bleach it in the sun and air, which in these climates produce whiteness in a very ​short time. But I believe that the finest of their hoboo does not attain either its whiteness or softness until it has been worn some time, then washed and beaten over again with the very finest beaters.
Of this thin cloth they have almost as many different sorts as we have of linen, distinguishing it according to its fineness and the material of which it is made. Each piece is from nine to fifteen yards in length, and about two and a half broad. It serves them for clothes in the day and bedding at night. When, by use, it is sufficiently worn and becomes dirty, it is carried to the river and washed, chiefly by letting it soak in a gentle stream, fastened to the bottom by a stone, or, if it is very dirty, by wringing it and squeezing it gently. Several of the pieces of cloth so washed are then laid on each other, and being beaten with the coarsest side of the beater, adhere together, and become a cloth as thick as coarse broad-cloth, than which nothing can be more soft or delicious to the touch. This softness, however, is not produced immediately after the beating: it is at first stiff as if newly starched, and some parts not adhering together as well as others it looks ragged, and also varies in thickness according to any faults in the cloth from which it was made.
To remedy this is the business of the mistress and the principal women of the family, who seem to amuse themselves with this, and with dyeing it, as our English women do with making caps, ruffles, etc. In this way they spend the greater part of their time. Each woman is furnished with a knife made of a piece of bamboo cane, to which they give an edge by splitting it diagonally with their nails. This is sufficient to cut any kind of cloth or soft substance with great ease. A certain quantity of a paste made of the root of a plant which serves them also for food, and is called by them Pea (Chaitæa tacca), is also required. With the knife they cut off any ragged edges or ends which may not have been sufficiently fixed down by the beating, and with the paste they fasten down others which are less ragged, and ​also put patches on any part which may be thinner than the rest, generally finishing their work, if intended to be of the best kind, by pasting a complete covering of the finest thin cloth or hoboo over the whole. They sometimes make a thick cloth also of only half-worn cloth, which, having been worn by cleanly people, is not soiled enough to require washing: of this it is sufficient to paste the edges together. The thick cloth made in either of these ways is used either for the garment called maro, which is a long piece passed between the legs and round the waist, and which serves instead of breeches, or as the tebuta, a garment used equally by both sexes instead of a coat or gown, which exactly resembles that worn by the inhabitants of Peru and Chili, and is called by the Spaniards poncho.
The cloth itself, both thick and thin, resembles the finest cottons, in softness especially, in which property it even exceeds them; its delicacy (for it tears by the smallest accident) makes it impossible that it can ever be used in Europe, indeed it is properly adapted to a hot climate. I used it to sleep in very often in the islands, and always found it far cooler than any English cloth.
Having thus described their manner of making the cloth, I shall proceed to their method of dyeing. They use principally two colours, red and yellow. The first of these is most beautiful, I might venture to say a more delicate colour than any we have in Europe, approaching, however, most nearly to scarlet. The second is a good bright colour, but of no particular excellence. They also on some occasions dye the cloth brown and black, but so seldom that I had no opportunity during my stay of seeing the method, or of learning the materials which they make use of. I shall therefore say no more of these colours than that they were so indifferent in their qualities that they did not much raise my curiosity to inquire concerning them.
To begin then with the red, in favour of which I shall premise that I believe no voyager has passed through these seas but that he has said something in praise of this colour, the brightness and elegance of which is so great that it ​cannot avoid being taken notice of by the most superficial observer. This colour is made by the admixture of the juices of two vegetables, neither of which in their separate state have the least tendency to the colour of red, nor, so far at least as I have been able to observe, are there any circumstances relating to them from whence any one would be led to conclude that the red colour was at all latent in them. The plants are Ficus tinctoria, called by them matte (the same name as the colour), and Cordia Sebestena, called etou: of these, the fruits of the first, and the leaves of the second, are used in the following manner.
The fruit, which is about as large as a rounceval pea, or very small gooseberry, produces, by breaking off the stalk close to it, one drop of a milky liquor resembling the juice of a fig-tree in Europe. Indeed, the tree itself is a kind of wild fig. This liquor the women collect, breaking off the foot-stalk, and shaking the drop which hangs to the little fig into a small quantity of cocoanut water. To sufficiently prepare a gill of cocoanut water will require three or four quarts of the little figs, though I never could observe that they had any rule in deciding the proportion, except by observing the cocoanut water, which should be of the colour of whey, when a sufficient quantity of the juice of the little figs was mixed with it. When this liquor is ready, the leaves of the etou are brought and well wetted in it; they are then laid upon a plantain leaf, and the women begin, at first gently, to turn and shake them about; afterwards, as they grow more and more flaccid by this operation, to squeeze them a little, increasing the pressure gradually. All this is done merely to prevent the leaves from breaking. As they become more flaccid and spongy, they supply them with more of the juice, and in about five minutes the colour begins to appear on the veins of the etou leaves, and in ten, or a little more, all is finished and ready for straining, when they press and squeeze the leaves as hard as they possibly can. For straining they have a large quantity of the fibres of a kind of Cyperus grass (Cyperus stupeus) called by them mooo, which the boys prepare very nimbly by drawing the ​stalks of it through their teeth, or between two little sticks until all the green bark and the bran-like substance which lies between them is gone. In a covering of these fibres, then, they envelop the leaves, and squeezing or wringing them strongly, express the dye, which turns out very little more in quantity than the liquor employed; this operation they repeat several times, as often soaking the leaves in the dye and squeezing them dry again, until they have sufficiently extracted all their virtue. They throw away the remaining leaves, keeping however the mooo, which serves them instead of a brush to lay the colour on the cloth. The receptacle used for the liquid dye is always a plantain leaf, whether from any property it may have suitable to the colour, or the great ease with which it is always obtained, and the facility of dividing it, and making of it many small cups, in which the dye may be distributed to every one in the company, I do not know. In laying the dye upon the cloth, they take it up in the fibres of the mooo, and rubbing it gently over the cloth, spread the outside of it with a thin coat of dye. This applies to the thick cloth: of the thin they very seldom dye more than the edges; some indeed I have seen dyed through, as if it had been soaked in the dye, but it had not nearly so elegant a colour as that on which a thin coat only was laid on the outside.
Though the etou leaf is the most generally used, and I believe produces the finest colour, yet there are several more, which by being mixed with the juice of the little figs produce a red colour. Such are Tournefortia sericea (which they call taheino), Convolvulus brasiliensis, Solanum latifolium (ebooa). By the use of these different plants or of different proportions of the materials many varieties of the colour are observable among their cloths, some of which are very conspicuously superior to others.
When the women have been employed in dyeing cloth, they industriously preserve the colour upon their fingers and nails, upon which it shows with its greatest beauty; they look upon this as no small ornament, and I have been ​sometimes inclined to believe that they even borrow the dye of each other, merely for the purpose of colouring their fingers. Whether it is esteemed as a beauty, or a mark of their housewifery in being able to dye, or of their riches in having cloth to dye, I know not.
Of what use this preparation may be to my countrymen, either in itself, or in any tints which may be drawn from an admixture of vegetable substances so totally different from anything of the kind that is practised in Europe, I am not enough versed in chemistry to be able to guess. I must, however, hope that it will be of some value. The latent qualities of vegetables have already furnished our most valuable dyes. No one from an inspection of the plants could guess that any colour was hidden in the herbs of indigo, woad, dyer's weed, or indeed most of the plants whose leaves are used in dyeing: and yet those latent qualities have, when discovered, produced colours without which our dyers could hardly maintain their trade.
The painter whom I have with me tells me that the nearest imitation of the colour that he could make would be by mixing together verniilion and carmine, but even thus he could not equal the delicacy, though his would be a body colour, and the Indian's only a stain. In the way that the Indians use it, I cannot say much for its lasting; they commonly keep their cloth white up to the very time it is to be used, and then dye it, as if conscious that it would soon fade. I have, however, used cloth dyed with it myself for a fortnight or three weeks, in which time it has very little altered, and by that time the cloth itself was pretty well worn out. I have now some also in chests, which a month ago when I looked into them had very little changed their colour: the admixture of fixing drugs would, however, certainly not a little conduce to its keeping.
Their yellow, though a good colour, has certainly no particular excellence to recommend it in which it is superior to our known yellows. It is made of the bark of a root of a shrub called nono (Morinda umbellata). This they scrape into water, and after it has soaked a sufficient time, strain ​the water, and dip the cloth into it. The wood of the root is no doubt furnished in some degree with the same property as the bark, but not having any vessels in which they can boil it, it is useless to the inhabitants. The genus of Morinda seems worthy of being examined as to its properties for dyeing. Browne, in his History of Jamaica, mentions three species whose roots, he says, are used to dye a brown colour; and Rumphius says of his Bancudus angustifolia, which is very nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands as a fixing drug for the colour of red, with which he says it particularly agrees.
They also dye yellow with the fruit of a tree called tamanu (Calophyllum inophyllum), but their method I never had the fortune to see. It seems, however, to be chiefly esteemed by them for the smell, more agreeable to an Indian than an European nose, which it gives to the cloth.
Besides their cloth, the women make several kinds of matting, which serves them to sleep upon, the finest being also used for clothes. With this last they take great pains, especially with that sort which is made of the bark of the poorou (Hibiscus tiliaceus), of which I have seen matting almost as fine as coarse cloth. But the most beautiful sort, vanne, which is white and extremely glossy and shining, is made of the leaves of the wharra, a sort of Pandanus, of which we had not an opportunity of seeing either flowers or fruit. The rest of their moeas, which are used to sit down or sleep upon, are made of a variety of sorts of rushes, grasses, etc.; these they are extremely nimble in making, as indeed they are of everything which is plaited, including baskets of a thousand different patterns, some being very neat. As for occasional baskets or panniers made of a cocoanut leaf, or the little bonnets of the same material which they wear to shade their eyes from the sun, every one knows how to make them at once. As soon as the sun was pretty high, the women who had been with us since morning, generally sent out for cocoanut leaves, of which they made such ​bonnets in a few minutes, and threw away as soon as the sun became again low in the afternoon. These, however, serve merely for a shade: coverings for their heads they have none except their hair, for these bonnets or shades only fit round their heads, not upon them.
Besides these things, they are very neat in making fishing-nets in the same manner as we do, ropes of about an inch thick, and lines from the poorou, threads with which they sew together their canoes, and also belts from the fibres of the cocoanut, plaited either round or flat. All their twisting work they do upon their thighs in a manner very difficult to describe, and, indeed, unnecessary, as no European can want to learn how to perform an operation which his instruments will do for him so much faster than it can possibly be done by hand. But of all the strings that they make none are so excellent as the fishing-lines, etc., made of the bark of the erowa, a kind of frutescent nettle (Urtica argentea) which grows in the mountains, and is consequently rather scarce. Of this they make the lines which are employed to take the briskest and most active fish, bonitos, albecores, etc. As I never made experiments with it, I can only describe its strength by saying that it was infinitely stronger than the silk lines which I had on board made in the best fishing shops in London, though scarcely more than half as thick.
In every expedient for taking fish they are vastly ingenious; their seine nets for fish to mesh themselves in, etc., are exactly like ours. They strike fish with harpoons made of cane and pointed with hard wood more dexterously than we can do with ours that are headed with iron, for we who fasten lines to ours need only lodge them in the fish to secure it, while they, on the other hand, throwing theirs quite from them, must either mortally wound the fish or lose him. Their hooks, indeed, as they are not made of iron, are necessarily very different from ours in construction. They are of two sorts; the first, witte-witte, is used for towing. Fig. 1 represents this in profile, and Fig. 2 the view of the bottom part. The shank (a) is made of mother-of-pearl, ​the most glossy that can be got, the inner or naturally bright side being put undermost. In Fig. 2, b is a tuft of white dog's or hog's hair, which serves, maybe, to imitate the tail of a fish. These hooks require no bait: they are used with a fishing-rod of bamboo. The people having found by the flight of birds, which constantly attend shoals of bonitos, where the fish are, paddle their canoes as swiftly as they can across them, and seldom fail to take some. This Indian invention seems far to exceed anything of the kind that I have seen among Europeans, and is certainly more successful than any artificial flying fish or other thing which is generally used for taking bonitos. So far, it deserves imitation at any time when taking bonitos is at all desirable.
The other sort of hook which they have is made likewise of mother-of-pearl, or some hard shell, and as they cannot make them bearded as our own, they supply that fault by making the points turn much inwards, as in the annexed figure. They have them of all sizes, and catch with them all kinds of fish very successfully, I believe. The manner of making them is very simple; every fisherman makes them for himself. ​The shell is first cut by the edge of another shell into square pieces. These are shaped with files of coral, with which they work in a manner surprising to any one who does not know how sharp corals are. A hole is then bored in the middle by a drill, which is simply any stone that may chance to have a sharp corner in it tied to the handle of a cane. This is turned in the hand like a chocolate mill until the hole is made; the file then comes into the hole and completes the hook. This is made, in such a one as the figure shows, in less than a quarter of an hour.
In their carpentry, joinery, and stone-cutting, etc., they are scarcely more indebted to the use of tools than in making these hooks. A stone axe in the shape of an adze, a chisel or gouge made of a human bone, a file or rasp of coral, the skin of sting-rays and coral sand to polish with, are a sufficient set of tools for building a house and furnishing it with boats, as well as for quarrying and squaring stones for the pavement of anything which may require it in the neighbourhood. Their axes are made of a black stone, not very hard, but tolerably tough: they are of different sizes, some, intended for felling, weigh three or four pounds; others, which are used only for carving, not as many ounces. Whatever quality is lacking in these tools, is made up by the industry of the people who use them. Felling a tree is their greatest labour; a large one requires many hands to assist, and some days before it can be finished, but when once it is down they manage it with far greater dexterity than is credible to a European. If it is to be made into boards they put wedges into it, and drive them with such dexterity (as they have told me, for I never saw it) that they divide it into slabs of three or four inches in thickness, seldom meeting with an accident if the tree is good. These slabs they very soon dubb down with their axes to any given thinness, and in this work they certainly excel; indeed, their tools are better adapted for this than for any other labour. I have seen them dubb off the first rough coat of a plank at least as fast as one of our carpenters could have done it; and in hollowing, where they are able to raise ​large slabs of the wood, they certainly work more quickly, owing to the weight of their tools. Those who are masters of this business will take off a surprisingly thin coat from a whole plank without missing a stroke. They can also work upon wood of any shape as well as upon a flat piece, for in making a canoe every piece, bulging or flat, is properly shaped at once, as they never bend a plank; all the bulging pieces must be shaped by hand, and this is done entirely with axes. They have also small axes for carving; but all this latter kind of work was so bad, and in so very mean a taste, that it scarcely deserved that name. Yet they are very fond of having carvings and figures stuck about their canoes, the great ones especially, which generally have a figure of a man at the head and another at the stern. Their marais also are ornamented with different kinds of figures, one device representing many men standing on each other's heads. They have also figures of animals, and planks of which the faces are carved in patterns of squares and circles, etc. All their work, however, in spite of its bad taste, acquires a certain neatness in finish, for they polish everything, even the side of a canoe or the post of a house, with coral-sand rubbed on in the outer husk of a cocoanut and ray's skin, which makes it very smooth and neat.
Their boats, all at least that I have seen of them, may be divided into two general classes. The first, or ivahah, are the only sort used at Otahite; they serve for fishing and for short trips to sea, but do not seem at all calculated for long voyages; the others, or pahie, are used by the inhabitants of the Society Isles, viz. Ulhietea, Bola Bola, Huahine, etc., and are rather too clumsy for fishing, for which reason the inhabitants of those islands have also ivahahs. The pahie are much better adapted for long voyages. The figures below (p. 158) give a section of both kinds: Fig. 1 is the ivahah and Fig. 2 the pahie.
To begin, then, with the ivahah. These differ very much in length: I have measured them from 10 feet to 72 feet, but by no means proportional in breadth, for while that of 10 feet was about 1 foot in breadth, that of 72 feet was scarce 2 feet, ​nor is their height increased in much greater proportion. They may be subdivided into three sorts, the fighting ivahah, the common sailing or fishing ivahah, and the travelling ivahah. The fighting ivahah is by far the longest; the head and stern of these are considerably raised above the body in a semicircular form, 17 or 18 feet in height when the centre is scarcely 3 feet. These boats never go to sea singly; two are always fastened together side by side at the distance of about two feet by strong poles of wood extending across both, and upon them is built a stage in the fore-part about ten or twelve feet long, and a little broader than the two boats: this is supported by pillars about six feet high, and
The sailing and fishing ivahahs vary in size from about 40 feet in length to the smallest I have mentioned, but those which are under 25 feet in length seldom or never carry sail: their sterns only are raised, and those not above four or five feet: their prows are quite flat, and have a flat board projecting forwards about four feet beyond them.
Those which I have called travelling ivahahs differ from these in nothing except that two are constantly ​joined together in the same manner as the war-boats, and that they have a small neat house five or six feet broad by seven or eight long fastened upon the fore-part of them, in which the principal people, who use them very much, sit while they are carried from place to place. The sailing ivahahs have also this house upon them when two are joined together, which is, however, but seldom. Indeed, the difference between these two consists almost entirely in the rigging, and I have divided them into two more because they are generally seen employed in very different occupations than from any real difference in their build.
All ivahahs agree in the sides built like walls and the bottoms flat. In this they differ from the pahie (Fig. 2), of which the sides bulge out and the bottom is sharp, answering, in some measure, instead of a keel.
These pahies differ very much in size: I have seen them from 30 to 60 feet in length, but, like the ivahahs, they are very narrow in proportion to their length. One that I measured was 51 feet in length, but only 1½ feet in breadth at the top (a) and 3 feet in the bilge (b, see Fig. 2). This is about the general proportion. Their round sides, however, make them capable of carrying much greater burthens and being much safer sea-boats, in consequence of which they are used merely for fighting and making long voyages. For purposes of fishing and travelling along shore the natives of the islands where they are chiefly used have ivahahs. The fighting pahies, which are the longest, are fitted in the same manner as the fighting ivahahs, only as they carry far greater burthens, the stages are proportionately larger. Two sailing boats are most generally fastened together for this purpose; those of a middling size are said to be best, and least liable to accident in stormy weather. In these, if we may credit the reports of the inhabitants, they make very long voyages, often remaining several months from home, visiting in that time many different islands, of which they reported to us the names of nearly a hundred; they cannot, however, remain at sea above a fortnight or twenty days, although they live as sparingly as possible, for want of proper pro​visions and place to store them in, as well as water, of which they carry a tolerable stock in bamboos.
All the boats are disproportionately narrow in respect to their length, which causes them to be very easily overset, so that not even the Indians dare venture in them till they are fitted with a contrivance to prevent this inconvenience, which is done, either by fastening two together side by side, as has been before described, in which case one supports the other and they become as steady a vehicle as can be imagined; or, if one of them is going out alone, by fastening a log of wood to two poles laid across the boat: this serves to balance it tolerably, though not so securely, but that I have seen the Indians overturn them very often. This is the same principle as that adopted in the flying proa of the Ladrone Islands described in Lord Anson's voyage, where it is called an outrigger; indeed, the vessels themselves as much resemble the flying proa as to make appear at least possible that either the latter is a very artful improvement of these, or these a very awkward imitation of the proa.
These boats are propelled with large paddles, which have a long handle and a flat blade resembling, more than anything I can recollect, a baker's peel; of these every person in the boat generally has one, except those who sit under the houses; and with these they push themselves on fairly fast through the water. The boats are so leaky, however, that one person at least is employed almost constantly in throwing out the water. The only thing in which they excel is landing in a surf, for by reason of their great length and high sterns they land dry when our boats could scarcely land at all, and in the same manner they put off from the shore, as I have often experienced.
When sailing, they have either one or two masts fitted to a frame which is above the canoe: they are made of a single stick; in one that I measured of 32 feet in length, the mast was 25 feet high, which seems to be about the common proportion. To this is fastened a sail about one-third longer, but narrow and of a triangular shape, pointed at the top, and the outside curved; it is bordered ​all round with a frame of wood, and has no contrivance either for reefing or furling, so that in case of bad weather it must be entirely cut away; but I fancy that in these moderate climates they are seldom brought to this necessity. The material of which it is made is universally matting. With these sails their canoes go at a very good rate, and lie very near the wind, probably on account of their sail being bordered with wood, which makes them stand better than any bow-lines could possibly do. On the top of this sail they carry an ornament which, in taste, resembles much our pennants; it is made of feathers, and reaches down to the very water, so that when blown out by the wind it makes no inconsiderable show. They are fond of ornaments in all parts of their boats; in the good ones they commonly have a figure at the stern, and in the pahies they have a figure at both ends, and the smaller ivahahs have usually a small carved pillar upon the stern.
Considering that these people are so entirely destitute of iron, they build these canoes very well. Of the ivahahs the foundation is always the trunks of one or more trees hollowed out: the ends of these are sloped off, and sewed together with the fibres of the husk of the cocoanut; the sides are then raised with planks sewed together in the same manner.
The pahies, as they are much better embarkations, so they are built in a more ingenious manner. Like the others they are laid upon a long keel, which, however, is not more than four or five inches deep. Upon this they raise two ranges of planks, each of which is about eighteen inches high, and about four or five feet in length: such a number of pieces must necessarily be framed and fitted together before they are sewed; and this they do very dexterously, supporting the keel by ropes made fast to the top of the house under which they work, and each plank by a stanchion; so that the canoe is completely put together before any one part is fastened to the next, and in this manner it is supported till the sewing is completed. This, however, soon rots in the salt water; it must be renewed ​once a year at least; in doing so the canoe is entirely taken to pieces and every plank examined. By this means they are always in good repair; the best of them are, however, very leaky, for as they use no caulking the water must run in at every hole made by the sewing. This is no great inconvenience to them, who live in a climate where the water is always warm, and who go barefoot.
For the convenience of keeping these pahies dry, we saw in the islands where they are used a peculiar sort of house built for their reception and put to no other use. It was built of poles stuck upright in the ground and tied together at the top, so that they make a kind of Gothic arch: the sides of these are completely covered with thatch down to the ground, but the ends are left open. One of these I measured was fifty paces in length, ten in breadth, and twenty-four feet in height, and this was of an average size.
The people excel much in predicting the weather, a circumstance of great use to them in their short voyages from island to island. They have various ways of doing this, but one only that I know of which I never heard of being practised by Europeans, and that is foretelling the quarter of the heavens from whence the wind will blow by observing the Milky Way, which is generally bent in an arch either one way or the other: this arch they conceive as already acted upon by the wind, which is the cause of its curving, and say that if the same curve continues a whole night the wind predicted by it seldom fails to come some time in the next day, and in this as well as their other predictions we found them indeed not infallible, but far more clever than Europeans.
In their longer voyages they steer in the day by the sun, and in the night by the stars: of these they know a very large number by name, and the cleverest among them will tell in what part of the heavens they are to be seen in any month when they are above their horizon: they know also the time of their annual appearance and disappearance to a great nicety, far greater than would be easily believed by an European astronomer.
​I was not able to get a complete idea of their method of dividing time. I shall, however, set down what little I know. In speaking of time either past or to come, they never use any term but moons, of which they count thirteen, and then begin again: this of itself sufficiently shows that they have some idea of the solar year, but how they manage to make their thirteen months agree with it I never could find out. That they do, however, I believe, because in mentioning the names of months they very frequently told us the fruits that would be in season in each of them, etc. They also have a name for the thirteen months collectively, but they never use it in speaking of time; it is employed only in explaining the mysteries of their religion. In their metaphorical year they say that the year Tettowma ta tayo was the daughter of the chief divinity Taroataihetoomoo, and that she in time brought forth the months, who in their turn produced the days, of which they count twenty-nine in every month, including one in which the moon is invisible. Every one of these has its respective name, and is again subdivided into twelve parts, containing about two hours each, six for the day and six for the night, each of which has likewise its respective name. In the day-time they guess the divisions of these parts very well, but in the night, though they have the same number of divisions as in the day, seem very little able to tell at any time which hour it is, except the cleverest among them who know the stars.
In counting they proceed from one to ten, having a different name for each number; from thence they say one more, two more, etc., up to twenty, which after being called in the general count ten more, acquires a new name as we say a score: by these scores they count till they have got ten of them, which again acquires a new name, 200; these again are counted till they get ten of them, 2000; which is the largest denomination I have ever heard them make use of, and I suppose is as large as they can ever have occasion for, as they can count ten of these (i.e. up to 20,000) without any new term.
In measures of space they are very poor indeed: one ​fathom and ten fathoms are the only terms I have heard among them. By these they convey the size of anything, as a house, a boat, depth of the sea, etc., but when they speak of distances from one place to another they have no way of making themselves understood but by the number of days it takes them in their canoes to go the distance.
Their language appeared to me to be very soft and tuneful; it abounds in vowels, and was easily pronounced by us, while ours was to them absolutely impracticable. I instance particularly my own name, which I took much pains to teach them and they to learn; after three days' fruitless trial I was forced to select from their many attempts Tapane, the only one I had been able to get from them that had the least similitude to it. Spanish or Italian words they pronounced with ease, provided they ended with a vowel, for few or none of theirs end with a consonant.
I cannot say that I am sufficiently acquainted with it to pronounce whether it is copious or not; in one respect, however, it is beyond measure inferior to all European languages, and that is in its almost total want of inflection both of nouns and verbs, few or none of the former having more than one case or the latter one tense. Notwithstanding this want, however, we found it very easy to make ourselves understood in matters of common necessaries, however paradoxical it may appear to an European.
They have certain suffixes and make very frequent use of them. This puzzled us at first very much, though they are but few in number. An instance or two may be necessary to make myself understood, as they do not exist in any modern European language. One asks another "Harre nea?" "Where are you going?" The other answers "Ivahinera," "To my wives," on which the first questioning him still further "Ivahinera?" "To your wives?" is answered "Ivahinereiaa," "Yes, I am going to my wives." Here the suffixes era and eiaa save several words to both parties.
From the vocabularies given in Le Maire's voyage (see Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, tom. i. p. 410) ​it appears clearly that the languages given there as those of the Isles of Solomon and the Isle of Cocos are radically the identical language we met with, most words differing in little, but the greater number of consonants. The languages of New Guinea and Moyse Isle have also many words radically the same, particularly their numbers, although they are so obscured by a multitude of consonants that it is scarcely possible that they should be detected but by those who are in some measure acquainted with one of the languages. For instance the New Guinea hisson (fish) is found to be the same as the Otahite eia by the medium of ica of the Isle of Solomon; talingan (ears) is in Otahite terrea; limang (a hand) becomes lima or rima; paring (cheeks) is paperea; mattanga (eyes) mata; "they called us," says the author, "tata," which in Otahite signifies men in general.
That the people who inhabit this numerous range of islands should have originally come from one and the same place, and brought with them the same numbers and language, which latter especially have remained not materially altered to this day, is in my opinion not at all beyond belief; but that the numbers of Madagascar should be the same as all these is almost if not quite incredible. I shall give them from a book called a Collection of Voyages by the Dutch East Company, Lond. 1703, p. 116, where, supposing the author who speaks of ten numbers and gives only nine to have lost the fifth, their similarity is beyond dispute.
| Madagascar. | Otahite. | Cocos Isle. | New Guinea. |
| 1. Issa  2. Rove  3. Tello  4. Effat  6. Enning  7. Fruto  8. Wedo  9. Sidai 10. Scula | Tahie Rua Torou Hea Whene Hetu Waru Heva Ahourou | Taci Loua Tolou Fa Houno Fitou Walou Ywore Ongefoula | Tika Roa Tola Fatta Wamma Fita Walla Siwa Sangafoula |
The language of all the islands I was upon was the same, so far as I could understand it; the people of Ulhietea only changed the t of the Otahiteans to k, calling tata, which signifies a man or woman, kaka, a peculiarity which made the language much less soft. The people of Oheteroa, so far as I could understand their words, which were only shouted out to us, seemed to do the same thing, and add many more consonants, which made their language much less musical. I shall give a few of the words, from whence an idea may be got of their language.
| Eupo | the head |
| Ahewh | the nose |
| Roourou | the hair |
| Outou | the mouth |
| Nihëo | the teeth |
| Arrero | the tongue |
| Meu-Eumi | the beard |
| Tiarraboa | the throat |
| Tuamo | the shoulders |
| Tuah | the back |
| Aoai | the legs |
| Tapoa | the feet |
| Booa | a hog |
| Moa | a fowl |
| Eurèe | a dog |
| Eurè-eure | iron |
| Ooroo | bread-fruit |
| Hearee | cocoanuts |
| Mia | bananas |
| Vaè | wild plantains |
| Ooma | the breast |
| Eu | the nipples |
| Oboo | the belly |
| Rema | the arm |
| Aporema | the hand |
| Manneow | the fingers |
| Mieu | the nails |
| Touhe | the buttocks |
| Hoouhah | the thighs |
| Mae | fat |
| Huru-puru | hair |
| Eraou | a tree |
| Ama | a branch |
| Tiale | a flower |
| Huero | fruit |
| Etummoo | the stem |
| Aāā | the root |
| Eiherre | herbaceous plants |
| Oboopa | a pigeon |
| Avigne | a parroquet |
| Aa | another species |
| Mannu | a bird |
| Mora | a duck |
| Mattow | a fish-hook ​ |
| Toura | a rope |
| Mow | a shark |
| Mattera | a fishing-rod |
| Eupea | a net |
| Mahanna | the sun |
| Malama | the moon |
| Whettu | a star |
| Whettu-euphe | a comet |
| Erai | the sky |
| Eatta | a cloud |
| Mahi mahi | a dolphin |
| Poe | beads |
| Poe Matawewwe | pearl |
| Ahow | a garment |
| Avee | a fruit like an apple |
| Ahee | another like a chestnut |
| Ewharre | a house |
| Whennua | a high island |
| Motu | a low island |
| Toto | blood |
| Aeve | bone |
| Aeo | flesh |
| Miti | good |
| Eno | bad |
| A | yes |
| Ima | no |
| Paree | ugly |
| Pororee | hungry |
| Pia | full |
| Tuhea | lean |
| Timahah | heavy |
| Mama | light |
| Poto | short |
| Roa | tall |
| Neuenne | sweet |
| Mala | bitter |
| Whanno | to go far |
| Harre | to go |
| Arrea | to stay |
| Enoho | to remain or tarry |
| Rohe-rohe | to be tired |
| Maa | to eat |
| Inoo | to drink |
| Ete | to understand |
| Warriddo | to steal |
| Woridde | to be angry |
| Teparahie | to beat |
Among people whose diet is so simple and plain distempers cannot be expected to be as frequent as among us Europeans; we observed but few, and those chiefly cutaneous, as erysipelas and scaly eruptions on the skin. This last was almost, if not quite, advanced to leprosy; the people who were in that state were secluded from society, living by themselves each in a small house built in some unfrequented place, where they were daily supplied with provisions. Whether these had any hope of relief, or were doomed in this manner to languish out a life of solitude, we did not learn. Some, but very few, had ulcers on different parts of their bodies, most of which looked very virulent; the people who were afflicted with them did not, however, seem much to regard them, leaving them entirely without any application, even to keep off the flies. Acute distempers no doubt they have, but while we stayed upon the island they were very uncommon; possibly in the rainy season they are more frequent. Among the numerous acquaintances I had upon the island only one was taken ill during our stay. I visited her and found her, as is their custom, left by everybody but her three children, who sat by her; her ​complaint was colic, which did not appear to me to be at all violent. I asked her what medicine she took, she told me none, and that she depended entirely upon the priest, who had been trying to free her from her distemper by his prayers and ceremonies, which, she said, he would repeat till she was well, showing me at the same time branches of the Thespesia populnea, which he had left with her. After this I left her, and whether through the priest's ceremonies or her own constitution, she came down to our tents completely recovered in three days' time.
I never happened to be present when the priests performed their ceremonies for the cure of sick people; but one of our gentlemen who was informed me that they consisted of nothing but the repetition of certain fixed sentences, during which time the priest plaited leaves of the cocoanut tree into different figures, neatly enough; some of which he fastened to the fingers and toes of the sick man, who was at the time uncovered, out of respect to the prayers. The whole ceremony almost exactly resembled their method of praying at the marais, which I shall by and by describe. They appear, however, to have some knowledge of medicine, besides these operations of priestcraft. That they have skilful surgeons among them we easily gathered from the dreadful scars of wounds which we frequently saw cured, some of which were far greater than any I have seen anywhere else; and these were made by stones which these people throw with slings with great dexterity and force. One man I particularly recollect whose face was almost entirely destroyed; yet this dreadful wound had healed cleanly without any ulcer remaining. Tupia, who has had several wounds, had one made by a spear headed with the bone of a sting-ray's tail which had pierced right through his body, entering at his back and coming out just under his breast; yet this has been so well cured that the remaining scar is as smooth and as small as any I have seen from the cures by our best European surgeons.
Vulnerary herbs they have many, nor do they seem at all nice in the choice of them. They have plenty of such ​herbaceous plants as yield mild juices devoid of all acridity, similar to the English chickweed, groundsel, etc.; with these they make fomentations, which they frequently apply to the wound, taking care to cleanse it as often as possible; the patient all the time observing great abstinence. By this method, if they have told me truly, their wounds are cured in a very short time. As for their medicines we learned but little concerning them; they told us, and indeed freely, that such and such plants were good for such and such distempers, but it required a much better knowledge of the language than we were able to obtain during our short stay to understand the method of application.
Their manner of disposing of their dead as well as the ceremonies relating to their mourning are so remarkable that they deserve a very particular description. As soon as any one is dead the house is immediately filled with his relations, who bewail their loss with loud lamentations, especially those who are the farthest removed in blood from, or who profess the least grief for, the deceased. The nearer relations and those who are really affected spend their time in more silent sorrow, while the rest join in a chorus of grief at certain intervals, between which they laugh, talk, and gossip as if totally unconcerned. This lasts till daylight of the next day, when the body, being shrouded in cloth, is laid upon a kind of bier on which it can conveniently be carried on men's shoulders. The priest's office now begins; he prays over the body, repeating his sentences, and orders it to be carried down to the sea-side. Here his prayers are renewed; the corpse is brought down near the water's edge, and he sprinkles water towards but not upon it; it is then removed forty or fifty yards from the sea, and soon after brought back. This ceremony is repeated several times. In the meantime a house has been built and a small space of ground round it railed in; in the centre of this house are posts, upon which the bier, as soon as the ceremonies are finished, is set. On these the corpse is to remain and putrefy in state, to the no small disgust of every one whose business requires him to pass near it.
​These houses of corruption, tu papow, are of a size proportionate to the rank of the person contained in them. If he is poor it merely covers the bier, and generally has no railing round it. The largest I ever saw was eleven yards in length. These houses are ornamented according to the ability and inclination of the surviving relations, who never fail to lay a profusion of good cloth about the body, and often almost cover the outside of the house; the two ends, which are open, are also hung with garlands of the fruits of the palm-nut (Pandanus), cocoanut leaves knotted by the priests, mystic roots, and a plant called by them ethee nota marai (Terminalia), which is particularly consecrated to funerals. Near the house is also laid fish, fruits, and cocoanuts, or common water, or such provisions as can well be spared; not that they suppose the dead in any way capable of eating this provision, but they think that if any of their gods should descend upon that place, and being hungry find that these preparations had been neglected, he would infallibly satisfy his appetite with the flesh of the corpse.
No sooner is the corpse fixed up within the house, or ewhatta, as they call it, than the ceremony of mourning begins again. The women (for the men seem to think lamentations beneath their dignity) assemble, led on by the nearest relative, who, walking up to the door of the house, swimming almost in tears, strikes a shark's tooth several times into the crown of her head; the blood which results from these wounds is carefully caught in their linen, and thrown under the bier. Her example is imitated by the rest of the women; and this ceremony is repeated at intervals of two or three days, as long as the women are willing or able to keep it up; the nearest relation thinking it her duty to continue it longer than any one else. Besides this blood—which they believe to be an acceptable present to the deceased, whose soul they believe to exist, and hover about the place where the body lays, observing the action of the survivors—they throw in cloths wet with tears, of which all that are shed are carefully preserved for that purpose; and ​the younger people cut off all or a part of their hair, and throw that also under the bier.
When the ceremonies have been performed for two or three days, the men, who till now seemed to be entirely insensible of their loss, begin their part. They have a peculiar dress for this occasion, and patrol the woods early in the morning and late at night, preceded by two or three boys, who have nothing upon them but a small piece of cloth round their waists, and who are smutted all over with charcoal. These sable emissaries run about their principal in all directions, as if in pursuit of people on whom he may vent the rage inspired by his sorrow, which he does most unmercifully if he catches any one, cutting them with his stick, the edge of which is set with shark’s teeth. But this rarely or never happens, for no sooner does this figure appear than every one who sees either him or his emissaries, inspired with a sort of religious awe, flies with the utmost speed, hiding wherever he thinks himself safest, but by all means quitting his house if it lies even near the path of this dreadful apparition.
These ceremonies continue for five moons, decreasing, however, in frequency very much towards the latter part of that time. The body is then taken down from the ewhatta, the bones washed and scraped very clean, and buried according to the rank of the person, either within or without some one of their marais or places of public worship; and if it is one of their earees, or chiefs, his skull is preserved, and, wrapped up in fine cloth, is placed in a kind of case made for the purpose, which stands in the marai. The mourning then ceases, unless some of the women, who find themselves more than commonly afflicted by their loss, repeat the ceremony of poopooing, or bleeding themselves in the head, which they do at any time or in any place they happen to be when the whim takes them.
The ceremonies, however, are far from ceasing at this stage; frequent prayers must be said by the priest, and frequent offerings made for the benefit of the deceased, or more properly for that of the priests, who are well paid ​for their prayers by the surviving relations. During the ceremony emblematical devices are made use of; a young plantain tree signifies the deceased, and a bundle of feathers the deity invoked. Opposite to this the priest places himself, often attended by relations of the deceased, and always furnished with a small offering of some kind of eatables intended for the god. He begins by addressing the god by a set form of sentences, and during the time he repeats them employs himself in weaving cocoanut leaves into different forms, all which he disposes upon the grave where the bones have been deposited; the deity is then addressed by a shrill screech, used only on that occasion, and the offering presented to his representative (the little tuft of feathers), which after this is removed, and everything else left in statu quo, to the no small emolument of the rats, who quietly devour the offering.
Religion has been in all ages, and is still in all countries, clothed in mysteries inexplicable to human understanding. In the South Sea Islands it has still another disadvantage to any one who desires to investigate it: the language in which it is conveyed, or at least many words of it, is different from that of common conversation; so that although Tupia often showed the greatest desire to instruct us in it, he found it almost impossible. It is only necessary to remember how difficult it would be to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of our own religion to the faith of an infidel, and to recollect how many excellent discourses are daily read to instruct even us in the faith which we profess, to excuse me when I declare that I know less of the religion of these people than of any other part of their policy. What I do know, however, I shall here write down, hoping that inconsistencies may not appear to the eye of the candid reader as absurdities.
This universe and its marvellous parts must strike the most stupid with a desire of knowing from whence they themselves and it were produced; their priests, however, have not ideas sufficiently enlarged to adopt that of creation. That this world should have been originally created from ​nothing far surpasses their comprehension. They observed, however, that every animal and every plant produced others, and adopted the idea; hence it is necessary to suppose two original beings, one of whom they called Ettoomoo, and the other, which they say was a rock, Tepapa. These, at some very remote period of time, produced men and women, and from their children is derived all that is seen or known to us. Some things, however, they imagine, increased among themselves, as the stars, the different species of plants, and even the different divisions of time—the year, say they, produced the months, who in their turn produced the days.
Their gods are numerous, and are divided into two classes, the greater and the lesser gods, and in each class some are of both sexes. The chief of all is Tarroatiettoomoo, the father of all things, whom they emphatically style the "Causer of Earthquakes"; his son, Tane, is, however, much more generally invoked, as he is supposed to be the more active deity. The men worship the male gods, and the women the females; the men, however, supply the office of priest for both sexes.
They believe in a heaven and a hell: the first they call Tavirua l'orai, the other tiahoboo. Heaven they describe as a place of great happiness, while hell is only a place enjoying less of the luxuries of life: to this, they say, the souls of the inferior people go after death, and those of the chiefs and rich men go to heaven. This is one of the strongest instances to show that their religion is totally independent of morality, no actions regarding their neighbours are supposed to come at all under the cognisance of the diety: a humble regard only is to be shown him, and his assistance asked on all occasions with much ceremony and some sacrifice, from whence are derived the perquisites of the priests.
The Tahowa, or priest, is here a hereditary dignity. These priests are numerous: the chief of them is generally the younger brother of some very good family, and ranks next to the king. All priests are commonly more learned than the laity: their learning consists chiefly in knowing well ​the names and rank of the different Eatuas, or divinities, the origin of the universe and all its parts, etc. This knowledge has been handed down to them in set sentences, of which those who are clever can repeat an almost infinite number.
Besides religion, the practice of physic and the knowledge of navigation and astronomy is in the possession of the priests: the name indeed, Tahowa, signifies a man of knowledge, so that even here the priests monopolise the greater part of the learning of the country in much the same manner as they formerly did in Europe. From their learning they gain profit as well as respect, each in his particular order; for each order has priests of its own; nor would those of the manahounis do anything for a toutou who is below them.
Marriage in these islands is no more than an agreement between man and woman, totally independent of the priest; it is in general, I believe, well kept, unless the parties agree to separate, which is done with as little trouble as they came together. Few people, however, enter this state, but rather choose freedom, though bought at the inhuman expense of murdering their children, whose fate is in that case entirely dependent on the father, who if he does not choose to acknowledge both them and the woman, and engage to contribute his part towards their support, orders the child to be strangled, which is instantly put in execution.
If our priests have excelled theirs in persuading us that marriage cannot be lawful without their benediction having been bought, they have done it by intermingling it so far with religion that the fear of punishment from above secures their power over us; but these untaught persons have secured to themselves the profit of two operations without being driven to the necessity of so severe a penalty on the refusal, viz. tattowing and circumcision; neither of these can be performed by any but priests, and as the highest degree of shame attaches to the neglect of either, the people are as much obliged to make use of them as if bound by the highest ties of religion, of which both customs are totally independent. They give no reason for the tattowing but ​that their ancestors did the same: for both these operations the priests are paid by every one according to his ability, in the same manner as weddings, christenings, etc., etc., are paid for in Europe. Their places of public worship, or marais, are square enclosures of very different sizes, from ten to a hundred yards in length. At one end a heap or pile of stones is built up, near which the bones of the principal people are interred, those of their dependents lying all round on the outside of the wall. Near or in these enclosures are often placed planks carved into different figures, and very frequently images of many men standing on each other's heads; these, however, are in no degree the objects of adoration, every prayer and sacrifice being offered to invisible deities.
Near, or even within the marai, are one or more large altars, raised on high posts ten or twelve feet above the ground, which are called ewhattas; on these are laid the offerings, hogs, dogs, fowls, fruits, or whatever else the piety or superfluity of the owner thinks proper to dedicate to the gods.
Both these places are reverenced in the highest degree: no man approaches them without taking his clothes from off his shoulders, and no woman is on any account permitted to enter them. The women, however, have marais of their own, where they worship and sacrifice to their goddesses.
Of these marais each family of consequence has one, which serves for himself and his dependents. As each family values itself on its antiquity, so are the marais esteemed: in the Society Isles, especially Ulhietea, were some of great antiquity, particularly that of Tapo de boatea. The material of these is rough and coarse, but the stones of which they are composed are immensely large. At Otahite again, where from frequent wars or other accidents many of the most ancient families are extinct, they have tried to make them as elegant and expensive as possible, of which sort is that of Oamo (described on pp. 102–4).
Besides their gods, each island has a bird, to which the title of Eatua or god is given: for instance Ulhietea has the ​heron, and Bola-Bola a kind of kingfisher: these birds are held in high respect, and are never killed or molested: they are thought to be givers of good or bad fortune, but no sort of worship is offered to them.
Though I dare not assert that these people, to whom the art of writing, and consequently of recording laws, etc., is totally unknown, live under a regular form of government, yet the subordination which takes place among them very much resembles the early state of the feudal laws, by which our ancestors were so long governed, a system evidently formed to secure the licentious liberty of a few, while the greater part of the society are unalterably immersed in the most abject slavery.
Their orders are Earee ra hie, which answers to king; earee, baron; manahouni, vassal; and toutou, villain. The earee ra hie is always the head of the best family in the country: to him great respect is paid by all ranks, but in power he seemed to be inferior to several of the principal earees, nor indeed did he once appear in the transaction of any part of our business. Next to him in rank are the earees, each of whom holds one or more of the districts into which the island is divided: in Otahite there may be about a hundred such districts, which are by the earees parcelled out to the manahounis, each of whom cultivates his part, and for the use of it owes his chief service and provisions when called upon, especially when the latter travels, which he constantly does, accompanied by many of his friends and their families, often amounting to nearly a hundred principals, besides their attendants. Inferior to the manahounis are the toutous, who are almost upon the same footing as the slaves in the East Indian Islands, only that they never appeared transferable from one to the other. These do all kinds of laborious work: till the land, fetch wood and water, dress the victuals, under the direction, however, of the mistress of the family, catch fish, etc. Besides these are the two classes of erata and towha, who seem to answer to yeomen and gentlemen, as they came between the earee and manahouni: but as I was not acquainted with the existence ​of these classes during our stay in the island, I know little of their real situation.
Each of the earees keeps a kind of court, and has a large attendance, chiefly of the younger brothers of his own family and of other earees. Among these were different officers of the court, as Heewa no t' Earee, Whanno no t' Earee, who were sometimes sent to us on business. Of all these courts Dootahah's was the most splendid, indeed we were almost inclined to believe that he acted as locum tenens for Otow, the Earee ra hie being his nephew, as he lived upon an estate belonging to him, and we never could hear that he had any other public place of residence.
The earees, or rather the districts which they possess, are obliged in time of a general attack to furnish each their quota of soldiers for the public service; those of the principal districts which Tupia recollected, when added together, amounted to 6680 men, to which army it is probable that the small quotas of the rest would not make any great addition.
Besides these public wars, which must be headed by the Earee ra hie, any private difference between two earees is decided by their own people without in the least disturbing the tranquillity of the public. Their weapons are slings, which they use with great dexterity, pikes headed with the stings of sting-rays, and clubs six or seven feet long, made of a very heavy and hard wood; with these they fight by their own account very obstinately, which appears the more probable as the conquerors give no quarter to any man, woman, or child who is unfortunate enough to fall into their hands during or for some time after the battle, that is, until their passion has subsided.
Otahite at the time of our stay there was divided into two kingdoms, Oporenoo, the larger, and Tiarrebo; each had its separate king, etc. etc., who were at peace with each other; the king of Oporenoo, however, called himself king of both, in just the same manner as European monarchs usurp the title of king over kingdoms in which they have not the least influence.
​It is not to be expected that in a government of this kind justice can be properly administered, we saw indeed no signs of punishment during our stay. Tupia, however, always insisted upon it that theft was punished with death, and smaller crimes in proportion. All punishments, however, were the business of the injured party, who, if superior to him who committed the crime, easily executed them by means of his more numerous attendants; equals seldom chose to molest each other, unless countenanced by their superiors, who assisted them to defend their unjust acquisitions. The chiefs, however, to whom in reality all kinds of property belong, punish their dependents for crimes committed against each other, and the dependents of others, if caught doing wrong within their districts.
* ↑ 21st January 1772, measured one 6144 feet, another 7294 feet. (Note by Banks.)
* ↑ Colocasia antiquorum, Schott., better known by its New Zealand name taro (see p. 253).
* ↑ Hibiscus esculentus, Linn. ?.
* ↑ Tacca pinnatifida, Forst.
* ↑ Lablab vulgaris, Savi.
* ↑ Pandanus odoratissimus, Linn. f.
* ↑ Artocarpus incisor, Linn. f.
* ↑ The instrument is apparently something like a razor strop, of which the cross section is square, having longitudinal furrows, a varying number on each face. By the "coarsest side" is to be understood the face with the fewest furrows, which are larger and more deeply indented.
* ↑ Tacca pinnatifida, Forst.
* ↑ Bancudus angustifolia, Rumph. = Morinda angustifolia, Roxb.
* ↑ By C. de Brosse, 1756.
* ↑ Probably one of the Samoa group, not the Keeling Islands.
* ↑ An island off the N.E. coast of New Guinea, so named by Le Maire.