164 THE CRUISE OF THE ' CUBAQOA.' 



there, mounting four guns, from wliicli Thakumbau saluted 

 the Commodore on leaving. 



Before we left, news arrived that Thakumbau's warriors 

 had taken eleven villages or towns, which they waited his 

 orders to burn. 



There is a liillock in the centre of the island, on which is 

 the mission house, and below is the dancing-ground, where 

 in the old time were held war and licentious dances, accom- 

 panied by the murder of prisoners and by cannibal feasts. 

 The ground, smooth and hard from the tread of thousands 

 of feet, is overshadowed by a great banyan tree, into the 

 thick trunk of which a slab of stone four or five feet square 

 is sunk, and forms a sort of table. This tree is the Akau- 

 tabu, the sacred tree, or, ' the tree with the forbidden fruit.' 

 Before cooking the victims, sometimes even before their 

 death, certain parts of the bodies of both sexes used to be 

 cut off, and hung in the branches of this tree, which was 

 sometimes perfectly loaded with this singular and i-epulsive 

 fruit. Behind this is a row of slabs of stone erect, with 

 their lower ends embedded in tlie ground, one of which was 

 used for dashing out the brains of the victims. Thakumbau, 

 before his conversion, has been known to amuse himself by 

 catching up by the heels the children of his enemies, and 

 flinging them at the slabs with his own hands. The same 

 sportive old fellow, on one occasion, cut out the tongue of a 

 captive chief, who had used it to beg for a speedy death, 

 and jocosely ate it before his face. Some officers of our 

 ship were shown anotlior braining stone situated in a different 



