4>2 cook's VOYAGE TO JULY 



9 



heeva or liaiva. In the same manner, they vary the 

 music of their flutes, by playing on those of a dif- 

 ferent size; but their dancing is much the same as 

 when they perform publicly. The dancing of the 

 men (if it is to be called dancing), although it does 

 not consist much in moving the feet, as we do, has a 

 thousand different motions with the hands, to which 

 we are entire strangers; and they are performed with 

 an ease and grace which are not to be described, nor 

 even conceived, but by those who have seen them. 

 But I need add nothing to what has been already 

 said on this subject, in the account of the incidents 

 that happened during our stay at the islands.* 



* If, to the copious descriptions that occur in the preceding 

 pages, of the particular entertainments exhibited in Hapaee and 

 Tongataboo, we add the general view of the usual amusements of 

 the inhabitants of these islands, contained in this paragraph, and 

 compare it with the quotations from the Jesuit's Letters, in a 

 former note (p. 255.)? w e shall be still more forcibly struck with 

 the reasonableness of tracing such singularly resembling customs 

 to one common source. The argument, in confirmation of this, 

 drawn from identity of language, has been already illustrated, by 

 observing the remarkable coincidence of the name by which the 

 chiefs at the Caroline Islands, and those at Hamao, one of the 

 Friendly ones, are distinguished. But the argument does not rest 

 on a single instance, though that happens to be a very striking one. 

 Another of the very few specimens of the dialect of the North 

 Pacific islanders, preserved by father Cantova, furnishes an ad- 

 ditional proof. Immediately after the passage above referred to, 

 he proceeds thus : " Ce divertissement s'appelle, en leur langue, 

 tanger ifaifil ; qui veut dire, la plainte des 61^:^.'' Lettres 

 Edifiantcs et Ciirieuses, torn. xv. p. 315. Now, it is very remark- 

 able, that we learn from Mr. Anderson's collection of words, which 

 will appear in this chapter, that la plainte desfemmes, or, in Eng- 

 lish, the mournful song of the "women, which the inhabitants of the 

 Caroline Islands express in their language tanger ifaifil, would, by 

 those of Tongataboo, be expressed tangee vefaine. 



If any one should still doubt, in spite of this evidence, it maybe 

 recommended to his consideration, that long separation and other 

 causes have introduced greater variations in the mode of pro- 

 nouncing these two words, at places confessedly inhabited by the 

 same race, than subsist in the specimen just given. It appears, 

 from Mr. Anderson's vocabulary, printed in Captain Cook's second 

 voyage, that what is pronounced tangee at the Friendly Islands, is 

 taee at Otaheite ; and the vefaine of the former, is the tvaheine of 

 the latter 



