80 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



extremity of this region. The men, on Tobi, perform much of the 

 domestic labour which is elsewhere left to the women. 



The bodies of the dead, except of very young children, are laid in 

 a canoe, and committed to the ocean. The reason of this custom 

 Holden did not know. It seems likely, from what will be stated in 

 another place, that the canoe is intended to convey the deceased to 

 the land of spirits, and that young children are not sent because they 

 are esteemed incapable of guiding it. 



It should be mentioned that the release of the four Americans who 

 survived (two of whom got free a short time after their capture) was 

 voluntary on the part of the natives, a fact which shows that the feel- 

 ings of humanity were not altogether extinct in their hearts. Indeed, 

 although the sufferings of the captives were very great, it does not 

 appear that they were worse relatively to the condition in which the 

 natives themselves lived, than they would have been on any other 

 island of the Pacific. Men who were actually dying of starvation, 

 like the people of Tobi, could not be expected to exercise that kind- 

 ness towards others which nature refused to them. 



BANABE OR ASCENSION ISLAND, OR THE SENIAVINE GROUP. 



This island, one of the largest of the Carolines, is situated in lati- 

 tude 7 N., longitude 159 E. Admiral Liitke, though not, properly 

 speaking, the discoverer, was the first to make known its existence to 

 the world, so late as the year 1828. He did not land, and the only 

 communication which he had with the natives was through two or 

 three canoes which came off to the ship. The men, in appearance 

 no less than in language, seemed to him quite distinct from the other 

 natives of Micronesia, and he compares them to the Papuans. But 

 he observes that those whom he saw seemed to be all of the lower 

 classes. 



Had the Russian navigator been able to land, he would probably 

 have had an opportunity of rescuing from captivity seven English 

 seamen, who had shortly before reached the island in a boat, after 

 their shipwreck on a reef near Ualau. One of these, by name James 

 O'Connell, after living five years on the island, escaped in November, 

 1833, and two years afterwards reached the United States. He pub- 

 lished, at Boston, an account of his adventures, written for him by a 

 gentleman of that city, and containing much valuable information. 



