in t}k€ Pacific Ocmn. IIS 



iTork, and from their desire to eat it one would suppose that it 

 ;was an article of great rarity and scarcity among them, as in fact 

 it is. For although the island abounds in hogs, the natives seldom 

 kill them for the use of their families, but keep them for their 

 feasts ; and, on such occasions, they will frequently kill five or 

 six hundred at a time. If a relation die, they have a feast On the 

 occasion ; and they will save their hogs for years, in order to 

 make their feast abundant, in which consists its chief splendour. 



When a marriage takes place, they also have a feast, and in 

 this consists the whole ceremony. The union is not binding, 

 and the parties are at liberty to separate when they no longer 

 like each other, provided they have had no children. The girls 

 are seldom married before they are nineteen or twenty years of 

 age, and their licentious life prevents them from having children 

 before that period ; they therefore preserve their beauty to an 

 advanced age. Before marriage they are at liberty to indulge 

 themselves with whom they please, but after marriage the right 

 of disposing of them remains with the husband. The women, 

 different from those of almost every other Indian nation, are not 

 subjected to any laborious work. Their occupations are wholly 

 domestic ; to them belongs the manufacturing of cloth, also the care 

 of the house and children. The men cultivate the ground, catch 

 fish, build canoes and houses, and protect their families ; they are 

 all artificers, and as they have but few wants, they are perfect in 

 the knowledge necessary to supply them. To be sure there are 

 certain professional trades, which they are not all so perfect in, 

 such as tattooing, and the manufacturing of ornaments for the 

 ears; for those objects there are men who devote their whole 

 attention to render themselves perfect. There are also professed 

 barbers, and their doctors are, in some measure, professional men. 

 Their furniture consists of mats of a superior workmanship, 

 calabashes, baskets, kava cups, formed of the cocoa-nut, and 

 cradles for their children, hollowed out of a log, and made with 

 great neatness, some small chests, also hollowed out of a solid 

 piece, with covers to them, wooden bowls, and stands, calculated 

 to hang different objects on, so contrived that the rats cannot get 

 on them. Their plumes and other articles of value, which would 

 otherwise be injured by the rats, are suspe^ided in baskets from 

 the roofs of their houses, by lines passing through the bottom 

 of an inverted calabash, to prevent those animals from descend- 

 ing them. Agricultural implements consist only of sharp stakes 

 for digging the ground ; those for fishing consist of the net, bone 

 and wooden harpoons, the rod and line, and fish-hooks formed of 

 mother-of-pearl, of which, as well as of the bone and wooden 

 harpoons, particular descriptions may be necessary. 



They shave their heads, or rather their barbers shave them. 

 Voyages and Travels, No. XLVII. Vol. VIII. q 



