162 



SKETCHES OK A RESIDENCE 



scriplion. This, although usually called " CooWs tomb,'*'' is nothing bui 

 an exceedingly simple monument. Cook's remains have never been 

 found, or the English Government would of course have assigned them 

 an honorable place in Westminster Abbey. 



It is well known that after the death of Cook, the natives themselves, 

 even those engaged in the unpremeditated murder, heartily regretted the 

 hasty stroke which laid him low. They were fully aware that he came 

 among them with the best intentions, and that if they had suffered him 

 to live, he would have proved a benefactor to them. They accor- 

 dingly mourned for him publicly in their usual mode, with loud wait- 

 ings, disfiguring their persons as forgone of the royal family. An old 

 man whom I met on Hawaii, and who was present at the dealli of Cook, 

 informed me that several thousand teeth were struck out on the day fol- 

 lowing his demise. The body was then undoubtedly treated as were 

 the remains of all persons of rank in those barbarous and idolatrous 

 times. It was removed to a Heiau or Temple, where the flesh was 

 stripped from the bones, and the latter inhumed in some cave, the local- 

 ity of which has never transpired. 



I have mentioned that the monument was erected by Lord Byron, a 

 Captain in the Royal Navy. This nobleman is, I believe, a cousin of 

 the poet. The object of his visit, was to take home the bodies of the 

 late King, Rihoriho and his Queen, for interment. This royal couple 

 accepted an invitation from his Majesty William IV., to visit the Court 

 of St. James in the year 1824. A frigate was accordingly sent for them 

 and after a long, but, in other respects, prosperous voyage, they arrived. 

 They of course immediately became Lions ; they were feted and fed in 

 the palaces of all the Royal Dukes, and in those of many others of the 

 higher nobility of the realm. They, no doubt, poor unsophisticated 

 creatures, thought it their duty to devour all that was set before them, 

 and they accordingly both died of a surfeit, within a few days of each 

 other, after a residence of less than three months in Great Britain. I 

 have never heard it suggested, but I think it highly likely, that if a few 

 doses per diem of good Sandwich Island jpoe could have been adminis- 

 tered, they would have recovered. 



On my way home I spent three weeks, very delightfully, at Tahiti, 

 one of the Society Islands. The harbor into which our vessel ran, Pa- 

 paete, is, I think, the most beautiful I have ever seen in the South Seas, 

 The native houses are lighter and more fanciful than those of the Sand- 

 wich Islanders, being built of interlaced canes or bamboos, and, instead 

 of a thatch of grass, they are covered with the long broad leaves of the 

 Pandanus ; the ridge-pole, and cross beams being wound with beautiful, 



