xo6 OTAHITE CHAP, v 



having met with a much larger supply of hogs, fowls, etc., 

 than we have done, I can most readily account for that, as 

 we have found by constant experience that these people 

 may be frightened into anything. They have often described 

 to us the terror which the Dolphin's gun caused them, and 

 when we ask how many people were killed, they number 

 names upon their fingers, some ten, some twenty, some 

 thirty, and then say worrow worrow, the same word as is 

 used for a flock of birds or a shoal of fish. The Dolphin's 

 journals often serve to confirm this opinion. " When," say 

 they, " towards the latter end of our time provisions were 

 scarce, a party of men were sent towards Eparre to get 

 hogs, etc., an office which they had not the smallest diffi- 

 culty in performing, for the people, as we went along the 

 shore, drove out their hogs to meet us, and would not 

 allow us to pay anything for them." 



About a mile farther on we found houses fairly plentiful 

 on each side of the river, the valley being all this way three 

 or four hundred yards across. "We were now shown a house 

 which proved the last we saw ; the master offered us cocoa- 

 nuts, and we refreshed ourselves. Beyond this we went 

 maybe six miles (it is difficult to guess distances when roads 

 are bad as this was, for we were generally obliged to travel 

 along the course of the river). We passed by several hollow 

 places under stones where, we were told, that people who 

 were benighted slept. At length we arrived at a place 

 where the river was banked on each side with steep rocks ; 

 and a cascade which fell from them made a pool so deep, 

 that the Indians said we could not go beyond it they never 

 did. Their business lay below the rocks, on each side of the 

 plains, above which grew great plenty of vae. The avenues 

 to these were truly dreadful, the rocks were nearly perpen- 

 dicular, one being nearly a hundred feet in height, with its 

 face constantly wet and slippery from the water of number- 

 less springs. Directly up the face of even this was a road, 

 or rather a succession of long pieces of bark of Hibiscus 

 tiliaceus, which served as a rope to take hold of and scramble 

 up from ledge to ledge, though upon these very ledges none 



