Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 83 



divinations, probably pronounces the patient given over to the 

 anger of the god, and then tabooes or excommunicates him ; after 

 which he is removed to a solitary house in the neighbourhood 

 and left to die, like the aged or sick Hindoo on the banks of the 

 Granges ; no person being permitted to hold further communica- 

 tion with him, or to supply him with provisions. It is singular, 

 indeed, that a similar idea, and a somewhat similar practice, in 

 regard to the treatment of diseases, should have obtained even 

 among the ancient Greeks. We learn from Homer that when 

 the Grecian army under the walls of Troy was afflicted with an 

 epidemical disease, Machaon and Podalirius, the surgeons-general 

 of the forces, were not asked their opinion in the council of the 

 chiefs, either as to its cause or to the treatment to be adopted 

 for its cure. Chalcas, the soothsayer, was the only person con- 

 sulted respecting it ; and, like a genuine New Zealand ariki, that 

 very sensible person ascribed the disease to the vengeance of the 

 far-darting Apollo. 



In the Fiji Islands, the principal wife must be strangled at the 

 husband's death, and buried along with him — a practice evidently 

 borrowed from the suttees of Hindostan. The same practice 

 obtained also in the Friendly Islands, in regard to the principal 

 wife of Tooi Tonga, or chief priest of these islands. 



It is observed by Mr Marsden in his History of Sumatra (page 

 43), " That the original clothing of the Sumatrans is the same 

 with that found by navigators in the South Sea Islands, and in 

 Europe generally called Otaheitan cloth." And in the account 

 of his voyage from Port Jackson to Batavia, in the year 1791, 

 Captain Hunter observes, in regard to the Duke of York's Island, 

 situated to the eastward of New Ireland, "that most of the 

 natives chew the beetle (betel), and with it used the chenam and 

 a leaf us practised in the East ladies, by. which the mouth appeared 

 very red, and their teeth, after a time, became black." - 'It may 

 be allowed me to remark," says Mr. Marsden, when speaking of 

 the inhabitants of the Pelew Islands, " that these are the mast 

 eastern people of whom the practice of chewing betel has been 

 mentioned ; nor indeed does it appear that either the nut (areca) 

 or the leaf (piper betel) is the produce of the South Sea Islands."* 

 The island, however, in which the practice has been observed by 

 Captain Hunter, the highly competent observer, I have just 

 cited, is situated 20 degrees of longitude, or about 1400 miles to 

 the eastward of the Pelew Islands — a most remarkable and in- 

 structive fact, as it shows us, beyond the possibility of doubt, 

 from whence those peculiar customs and observances of the 

 South Sea Islanders, which they practice in common with the 

 inhabitants of Eastern Asia and the Eastern Archipelago, have 



* Marsden's Miscellaneous Works. London, 1834. 



