156 
OTAHEITE. 
in their cheeks ; their nose is generally somewhat flat, but their eyes 
are full of expression, and their teeth beautifully even and white. 
“The women,” says M. de Bougainville, “have features not less 
agreeable than the generality of Europeans ; and a symmetry of body, 
and beautiful proportion of limbs, which might vie with any of them. 
Some have their hair brown, red, or flaxen, in which they are excep- 
tions to all the nations of Asia, Africa, and America, who have their 
hair black universally ; here, in the children of both sexes, it is gene- 
rally flaxen. The strongest expression is painted in the countenances 
of these people ; their walk is graceful, and all their motions are per- 
formed with great vigour and ease. The men of consequence on the 
island w'ear their nails long, as a badge of distinction. The women 
ahvays cut their hair short round their heads. Both sexes have a cus- 
tom of staining their bodies, w hich they call tattowing, and both men 
and women have the hinder part of their thighs and loins marked 
very thick with black lines, in various forms. These marks are made 
by striking the teeth of an instrument, somewhat like a comb, just 
through the skin, and rubbing into the punctures a kind of paste, 
made of soot and oil, which leaves an indelible stain. Both sexes are 
gracefully clothed, in a white cloth made of the bark of a shrub. 
Their dress consists of tw’o pieces of this cloth; one of them, 
having a hole in the middle to put the head through, hangs from the 
shoulders to the middle leg, before and behirjd ; another piece, between 
four and five yards long, and about one broad, they wrap round the 
body ; this doth is made, like paper, of the macerated fibres of the 
inner bark, spread out and beaten together. Their ornaments are fea- 
thers, flow'ers, pieces of shell, and pearls ; the pearls are worn chiefly 
by the w'omen. In wet weather they wear matting of different kinds, 
as their cloth will not bear wetting. 
Funeral Ceremonies in Otaheife. 
Captain Cook has given the following account of these ceremonies. 
“ When one of them died, they placed the corpse in the open air till 
the bones w'ere quite dry ; a shed was erected close by the house 
w'here the deceased had resided ; it was about fifteen feet long and 
eleven broad ; one end was left quite open ; the other, and the tw'o sides, 
were partly enclosed wdth a sort of wicker-work. The bier w'as a 
frame of w ood, like that on which the sea-beds, called cots, are placed, 
with a matted bottom, supported w'ith four posts, at the height of 
about four feet from the ground. The body was covered first with a 
mat, and then w’ith white cloth; by the side of it lay a w'ooden mace, 
one of their weapons of w'ar ; and near the head of it, which lay next 
to the close end of the shed, lay two cocoa-nut shells; at the other end 
a bunch of green leaves, w ith some dried twigs, all tied together, w'ere 
stuck in the ground, by which lay a stone as big as a cocoa-nut. 
Near the>se lay one of the young plantain leaves that are used for em- 
blems of peace, and close by it a stone axe. At the other end of the 
shed also hung, in several strings, a great number of palm-nuts, and 
without the shed was stuck up in the ground a stem of a plantain 
tree, about six feet high, upon the top of which was placed a cocoa-nut- 
