IIUAHEINE. 
131 
their condition in life j and are very comfortably lodged in compari- 
son of vvhat others are, in their own straw cottages. The chief of their 
business, perhaps, consists in tending a herd of cattle or flock of sheep 
during the heat of the day, when they have an opportunity of getting 
into a gentle state of intoxication by smoking tobacco ; a state which 
excites in them sensations of as agreeable a nature, as the frenzy pro- 
duced by spirituous liquors and opium seems to afford to many others, 
who are never at ease but when they can procure 'to themselves this 
delicious butpernicious pleasure. And yet, though they may thus agree- 
ably pass away the otherwise tedious hours of their lives in smoking and 
sleep, they nevertheless run away. The colonists wonder at this, as a 
procedure entirely devoid of reason ; without perceiving, that in so 
doing they suppose the Hottentots not endued with a desire, which 
has its immediate foundation in nature, and which is common to the 
human race, and even to most brute" animals, viz. an earnest longing 
after their birth-place and families, and more especially after their 
liberty. 
The slave business, that violent outrage to the natural rights of 
mankind, always in itself a crime, and which leads to all manner of 
abominations and wickedness, is exercised by the colonists in 
general with a cruelty towards the natiom of Boshies-men, which 
riiei iis the abhorrence of every man ; though I have been told that 
they pique themselves upon it, and that not only are the captors of 
those Hottentots considered merely as a party of pleasure, hut in cold 
blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between husbands 
and their wives and children. Not content, for instance, with having 
torn an unhappy woman from the embraces of her husband, her only 
protection and comfort, they also endeavour all they can, and that 
chiefly at night, to deprive her of her infants ; for it has been observed, 
that the mothers can seldom persuade themselves to flee from their 
tender offspring. The amiable tenderness of the mother, which per- 
haps glows with a more lively flame in the breast of this poor heathen 
than in that of her Christian tyrants, is the very circumstance laid 
hold on by her persecutors to rivet the chains of this wretched female 
so much the faster. There are some mothers, however, that set 
themselves free, \^hen they have lost all hopes of saving their 
children ; but having mafle their escape, they keep Secretly about the 
neighbourhood, Hn hopes of some opportunity of recovering their 
infants again. 
Inhabitants o^’Huaheine, one of the Society Islands. 
They are nearly as fair as the Europeans, and bolder than the 
inhabitants of the other Society Islands. They are stout and well 
made, some of the tallest being six feet three inches in height ; they 
are extremely indolent, and seem to have as little curiosity as fear. 
The dogs are ill great favour with all the women, ** who could not 
have caressed them,” says Mr. Forster, with a more ridiculous 
affection,! they had been European ladies of fashion. Here was 
seen a middle-aged woman, whose breasts were full of milk, offering 
them to a little puppy which had been trained up to suck them. 
