44 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
priest Areoi bade the captain goodbye, and the 
officer, as he watched them going over the side, 
turned to the ship’s doctor and said with a 
laugh, “ What an unmitigated old heathen.” 
“ But there’s a good deal of sound logic 
in his contentions,” replied the doctor, seriously. 
The history of the Areois of Polynesia and 
the Uritois of the Micronesian Islands is an 
interesting subject, and Mr. Ellis in his 
“ Researches ” has given us a full account of 
the former ; while Padre Canova, a Jesuit 
missionary who was killed in the Caroline 
Islands before the time of Cook, has left on 
record an account of the dreaded and mysterious 
Uritois society of that archipelago. The Areois 
are now extinct, but the Uritois, whose practices 
are very similar to those of the Polynesian 
fraternity are still in existence, though not 
possessed of anything like the power they 
wielded in former days. 
“ The Areois of Polynesia,” says Mr. Ellis, 
“ were a fraternity of strolling players, and 
privileged liberties, who spent their days in 
travelling from island to island, and from one 
district to another, exhibiting their pantomimes, 
