1770. ROUND THE WORLD. 59 



to instruct them, which he sometimes did in a long 

 discourse, he was sure of a numerous audience, who 

 listened in profound silence, with such reverence and 

 attention, that we could not but wish them a better 

 teacher. 



What homage they pay to the deities they ac- 

 knowledge we could not learn ; but we saw no place 

 of public worship, like the Morais of the South Sea 

 islands : yet we saw, near a plantation of sweet po- 

 tatoes, a small area, of a square figure, surrounded 

 with stones, in the middle of which one of the sharp- 

 ened stakes which they use as a spade was set up, 

 and upon it was hung a basket of fern-roots : upon 

 inquiry, the natives told us, that it was an offering 

 to the gods, by which the owner hoped to render them 

 propitious, and obtain a plentiful crop. 



As to their manner of disposing of their dead, we 

 could form no certain opinion of it, for the accounts 

 that we received by no means agreed. In the north- 

 ern parts, they told us that they buried them in the 

 ground ; and in the southern, that they threw them 

 into the sea : it is however certain that we saw no 

 grave in the country, and that they affected to con- 

 ceal every thing relating to their dead with a kind of 

 mysterious secrecy. But whatever may be the se- 

 pulchre, the living are themselves the monuments ; 

 for we saw scarcely a single person of either sex 

 whose body was not marked by the scars of wounds 

 which they had inflicted upon themselves as a testi- 

 mony of their regret for the loss of a relation or 

 friend : some of these wounds we saw in a state so 

 recent that the blood was scarcely staunched, which 

 shows that death had been among them while we 

 were upon the coast ; and makes it more extraordi- 

 nary that no funeral ceremony should have fallen 

 under our notice : some of the scars were very large 

 and deep, and in many instances had greatly disfi- 

 gured the face. One monument indeed we ob- 



