ISLAND OF TAHITI!. 70 



I understand that yesterday Captain Wilkes had an inter- 

 view with the principal chiefs, and succeeded in forming a 

 commercial treaty with them, which promised to be highly 

 advantageous to both nations. 



October 3d. During these past four or five days nothing 

 remarkable has transpired. This evening some dozen natives 

 came on board, and gave us one of their old dances. After 

 they had seated themselves round in a ring, they commenced 

 making a kind of grunt, or noise, made by the throat and 

 nostrils, accompanied with motions of the arms and fingers, by 

 throwing them about in all directions. This they continued 

 for some minutes, when the noise gradually became louder and 

 louder, and the gestures more violent, until at last they wrought 

 themselves to the highest pitch of excitement, and looked as if 

 it was the greatest effort to keep it up ; every blood-vessel was 

 much swollen, and the perspiration ran in streams down their 

 faces. At this time two of the party sprung up into the 

 middle of the ring and began dancing, and making all sorts of 

 grimaces and most violent licentious motions of the body; 

 the noise still increasing, all the others rose up in the same 

 manner. It now appeared to have attained its highest pitch ; 

 it became by degrees less and less, until it almost died away, 

 when they kicked up their heels and fell on deck, which was 

 the signal that they had finished. 



October 6th. This afternoon Pomare Taire, or the king 

 consort, arrived from Eimeo, where he has been residing for 

 some time past. He came in a small fore-and-aft schooner. 



When Pomare III., only surviving son of Pomare II., died, 

 he was succeeded, in the supreme authority of the islands of 

 Tahiti, Eimeo, &c, &c, by the present queen, under the style 

 of Pomare Vahina IV. of Tahiti.* She is about 28 years of 



* The Crown is hereditary — descending either to males or females. 



