186 VOYAGE TO THE 



which attracts their fancy — an indulgence which 

 brings them into many quarrels, and often costs 

 them their lives. If respect for the deceased be con- 

 sidered a mark of civilization and humanity, they 

 cannot be called a barbarous people ; but they pos- 

 sess no other claims to a worthier designation. In 

 features, language, and customs, they resemble the 

 Society, Friendly, Marquesa, and Sandwich Island- 

 ers ; but they differ from those tribes in one very 

 important point— an exemption from those sensual 

 habits and indecent exhibitions which there pervade 

 all ranks. It may be said of the Gambier Islanders 

 what few can assert of any people inhabiting the 

 same part of the globe — that during the whole of 

 our intercourse with them we did not witness an 

 indecent act or gesture. There is a great mixture 

 of feature and of colour among them ; and we 

 should probably have found a difference of dialect 

 also, could we have made ourselves masters of their 

 language. It seems as if several tribes from remote 

 parts of the Pacific had here met and mingled their 

 peculiarities. In complexion and feature we could 

 trace a resemblance even to the widely separated 

 tribes of New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Ma- 

 lacca. Their mode of salutation is the same as that 

 which existed at the Friendly, Society, and Sand- 

 wich Islands : they resemble the inhabitants of the 

 latter almost exclusively in tattooing the face, and 

 the inhabitants of the former in staining their skin 

 from the hips to the knees. Their huts, coral tables, 

 and pavements, are nearly the same as at the Friend- 

 ly Islands and the Marquesas ; but they are more 

 nearly allied to the latter by a custom which other- 

 wise, I believe, is at present confined to them, and 



