lo4 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP, was observed by these people in all their dealings. If one person had 
not the number of cocoa-nuts demanded for a piece of iron, he bor- 
Jaii. rowed from his neighbour ; and when any of the fruit fell over-board in 
putting it into the boat, they swam after it and restored it to the owner. 
Such honesty is rare among the natives of Polynesia, and the Lagoon 
Islanders consequently ingratiated themselves much with us. We got 
from them nearly two hundred cocoa-nuts, and several ornamental parts 
of their dress, one of which consisted of thin bands of human hair, very 
neatly plaited, about five feet in length, with four or five dozen strings 
in each. To some of these were attached a dried doodoe-nut {aleurites 
triloba), or a piece of wood. We also got some of their mats and sinnet 
made of the porou bark (hibiscus tiliaceus). 
The men were a fine athletic race, with frizzled hair, w'hich they 
wore very thick. In complexion, they were much lighter than the 
islanders of Clermont Tonnere : one man, in particular, and the only 
one who had whiskers, was so fair, and so like an European, that the 
boat’s crew claimed him as a countryman. No superfluous ornaments 
were worn by either sex, nor were any of them tatooed : the dress of the 
males was simply a maro of straw, and sometimes a straw sack hung over 
their shoulders to prevent the sun from scorching their backs: two of 
them were distinguished by crowns of white feathers. The women had a 
mat wrapped about their loins as their only covering : some wore the hair 
tied in a bunch upon one side of the head, others had a plaited band 
tied round it. They were inferior to the men in personal appearance, 
and mostly bow-legged ; but they exerted an authority not very common 
among uncivilized people, by taking from the men whatever articles 
they received in exchange for their fruit, as soon as they returned to 
the shore. The good-natured countenances of these people, the honesty 
observed in all their dealings, and the great respect they paid their 
women, bespeak them a more amiable race than the avaricious Gam bier 
Islanders. 
We quitted them about three o’clock in the afternoon, and in a 
few hours after saw Thrum Cap Island, bearing N. 56° 54' W. ; the 
clump on Lagoon Island at the same time bearing S. 58° 14' E., thirteen 
miles distant. This island, discovered and so named by Captain Cook, is 
