from shore, were acknowledged to be as much more graceful and beautiful as they were more modest.

Among the profligate class there were absolute children; one that the Captain says could not have been more than eight years old. They were violently mirthful, noisy, and obtrusive, and would swim and sport about the ship for hours, when not allowed to come on deck, though they had to swim as much as five or six miles in merely coming to the ship and returning. They are rendered doubly objects of pity by the fact which these writers confidently assert, that they are authoritatively ordered on the vicious service by their fathers and husbands, who were seen regularly to take from them, before they could even reach the shore, the trifles they had obtained in the way of reward.

At the same time it is to be noticed that the Captain, who maintains more of the tone of a moralist than the Doctor, and the grave plainness of whose manner in descriptions and observations relating to this subject, is advantageously contrasted with the other's offensive prurience, is not disposed to attribute any virtue to the sex in general in the island, any more than to the male population, who are universally their oppressive tyrants, as in all the savage portions of the hu

man race.

It appears that there is among them a kind of marriage relation, the contract of which is celebrated with festive and most degrading ceremonies; but the two writers do not quite agree as to the measure of restraint which it purports to impose, or of severity with which a disregard of the obligation is liable to be visited. But, at all events, a complete separation is said to be easily affected: let either party wish for it, and it is done; and if there are any children, (which are never numerous, rarely more than two,) there never can be any difficulty in disposing of them,-if there is no other expedient, they may be eaten.

As to government, a matter of such unlimited controversy, ambition, and expense of both treasure and blood, the source of so much good and evil, in the civilized and half-civilized parts of the world, our authors say that among these islanders, there is nothing which can strictly be called by that name. It could not be ascertained in what form of a constitution the personage whom the two Europeans denominated the king, would have liked to declare and enforce his prerogatives: but it was evident this his actual authority was very trifling, his person being regarded with indifference, and his orders sometimes with contempt. A certain portion of influence which he did nevertheless enjoy, the voyagers attribute not to any

political principle in the social economy, but simply to his being richer in the possession, probably the hereditary possession, of groves of cocoa-nut trees, and the means of keeping hogs, than any other man of the valley, and therefore able to engage and sustain a greater number of dependents. He did actually feed a considerable band of them, which Roberts himself had been reduced to join the preceding year, by stress of famine.

The only material restraint on the passions of this lawless and savage population is the Taboo, or Tahbu, a ceremony so conspicuous in all the descriptions of the South Sea islands. We need not explain that it is a consecrating interdict, by which certain persons, places, and things, may be secured, as by a mysterious charm, against being touched or approached by other persons and things. Dr. Langsdorff displays the extent of its operation by enumerating about twenty distinct modes or subjects of its application. In explanation of the principle of this charm we quote the following passage from Krusenstern, p. 171.

The only good which they have derived from their religion is the tahbu, originating undoubtedly in some superstitious notion; for since nobody, not even the king, dares venture to break the slightest tahbu, it is a proof that some strange feeling inspires them with a reverence for this word. The priests only can impose a general tahbu, but every individual has a right to pro nounce one on his general property: this is done by declaring, if his wish be to preserve a breadfruit, or cocoa tree, a house or a plantation, from robbery and destruction, that the spirit of his father, or of some king, or indeed of any other person, reposes in this tree or house, which then bears the name of the person, and nobody ventures to attack it. If any one is so irreligious as to break through a tahbu, and should be convicted of it, he is called kikino; and the kikinos are always the first to be devoured by the enemy; at least they believe it to be so, nor is it impossible that the priests should so arrange matters as that this really happens. The persons of the royal family, and of the priests, are tahbu, and the Englishman assured me that he was so likewise; and yet he often expressed his fear of being taken in the next war and devoured. In all probability, he was at first considered, like every other European, as etua*, and only seven years acquaintance with him had worn away the lustre of his divinity.

Besides this greater danger of being devoured, the Doctor says the kikino is exposed to a more certain punishment by

*The term importing whatever conception they have approaching to the idea of deity.

sickness or sudden death, from becoming subject to the influences of an evil spirit which he is pleased to name Atuan. It is stated by what formalities, very costly of course to the poor penitent, the priests, or rather magicians, denominated Tanas, will restore a man from the miserable and dangerous condition into which he falls by this crime. The substantial part of their process is a grand eating of hogs at his expense. Should he be too poor to be able to supply them, we think there is very little hope for him from these gentlemen. They have no notion of doing things in the way of absolute charity, and they will hardly be such fools as to let their powerful interposition ever appear a thing to be commanded by a low price.

The taboo is as efficacious in its mischievous, as in any of its more serviceable applications: under some circumstances a man can taboo the bread-fruit and cocoa trees of another, and thus deprive him of his property and means of subsistence, and consequently drive him an outcast from the country. It is employed in numerous ways of deprivation and degradation against the women; especially in excluding them from all participation in the superior diet in which the men often indulge themselves, and for the purpose of a perfectly undisturbed indulgence in which they very commonly have an additional house, which is tabooed to the females.

The Tanas, or sacerdotal conjurors, have a ceremony of burying enchanted bags, (the contents of which are named,) by means of which, the natives most solemnly believe,—and the Frenchman, and even Roberts, avowed the same faith,they can inflict mortal disease on any one they deem their enemy and here again these miscreants have the power of extorting whatever they please as the price of their interference to avert or remove the supposed malediction, and appease the angry spirits, who are the invisible inflictors of the malady.

Some rude elements of religion are evidently involved in these fancies of etua and spirits. And Roberts described to the captain, as an usual funeral ceremony, a banquet, is which an offering is made, (or rather pretended to be made, for it is secretly devoured by a priest,) to propitiate the gods, and obtain for the deceased a safe and peaceable passage to the lower regions: twelve months after this feast, a second, equally extravagant, is given to thank the gods for having permitted the deceased to arrive safe in the other world. Nevertheless our authors both acknowledge the extreme defectiveness and confusion of whatever information on

these subjects they could obtain from the Europeans, and express the opinion that the notions of the people, if they could be competently reported, would themselves be found vague, and feeble, and futile to the last degree. It would indeed be marvellous if this den of cannibals were the place for either subtile speculations, or sublime aspirings of imagination.

There is often war among the different sections of these islanders, but they seem to have little of the heroic sentiment of that noble game. Notwithstanding the intensity of their rancour, they would greatly prefer eating one another to fighting one another. There is a sort of national dance-feast,' which the Captain, in a most superfine strain of politeness, styles the Olympic games of these savages.' In order to the celebration of this, which custom requires should not be omitted too long, there must be an armistice, which, when demanded by either of the belligerents on the pretence of preparing for the festival, is instantly agreed to by the other. And though any preparations really required or intended would not need to employ more than a few days, they are willing to take advantage of the pretence to prolong the time for many months, during which time the enemies join in the pretended preparations.

'Six months had elapsed since the last truce was proclaimed, and eight months longer were to pass before the feast began.' After the termination of the feast they return home, and the war recommences in all its vigour.'

The truce is announced by planting a branch of a cocoa tree on the top of the mountain, on which the war is instantly suspended. But even during this hallowed and gracious time,' should what the Captain denominates a high priest' happen to die, three persons must be taken, by stratagem or open force, from the opposite tribe, to be sacrificed to him. This, of course, will sometimes instantly rekindle the general war between them.

We have already intimated a grand feature in the moral state of these islanders,-their cannibalism. There was no possibility of a doubt as to the fact. It formed a capital part of the concurring testimony of the two Europeans, which would have been confirmed had that been at all necessary, by the circumstances of human bones being used as decorations of their household furniture, and skulls being repeatedly offered for sale, marked by a perforation apparently adapted to the purpose of sipping out the blood, which was mentioned by the witnesses as a circumstance of their infernal banquets,

If the people of Nukahiwa had been found in the practice of devouring their enemies only, there would have been nothing to excite any unusual sensation in those who have read the more recent accounts, given by former reporters, of the innocence and felicity of the unsophisticated tribes who inhabit the South Sea Islands. But their relish for human flesh is subject to such irrational partiality. By a bold enlargement of taste and liberty in this particular, they are distinguished,' as Krusenstern remarks, from all other cannibals, and are a singular example among the numerous tribes of savages who inhabit the many islands on the north-west coast of this great ocean.' For,

In times of famine the men butcher their wives and children, and their aged parents; they bake and stew their flesh, and devour it with the greatest satisfaction. Even the tender-looking female, whose eyes beam nothing but beauty, will join, if permitted, in this horrid repast.' Krusenstern, p. 181.

Langsdorff, however, says that this luxury is tabooed to women, as too high and enviable an indulgence to comport with their subordinate rank.-As corroborative of this statement of their devouring their relatives and friends, it might be mentioned, that the voyagers saw but very few old people among the natives; and it is as evidence directly to point that they notice the fact of an enormous disproportion of numbers between the males and females, with the additional circumstance that there were extremely few children any where to be seen.-If it were true, according to the testimony of Cabri, that this surpassing perpetration is confined to seasons of very great scarcity, it is not likely to be therefore of rare occurrence, among a people too indolent for agriculture, infinitely too thoughtless and too fond of feasting to lay up stores on a calculation of distant possibilities, and whose whimsical perverseness, (unless indeed it were a contrivance to create a fair occasion for domestic cannibalism) has tabooed fish just at the season when it would be of the greatest service.

But whether it be true or not that the common people are obliged to wait till a season of scarcity, or a war, to obtain this greatest luxury known to them on earth, it is asserted by Langsdorff, that the detestable Tanas, or priests, put themselves under no such restriction, and the following description exhibits, on a small scale, as pure a piece of infernality, in pretending to be moved to their abominations by superior agents, as any to be found in history.

The Tanas often regale themselves with human flesh merely from the delight they take in it. For this purpose they make a