POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
53 
and explicit than theirs could possibly have been. Tubuai 
is stated^ in the Introduction to the Voyage of the Duff^ 
to have been at that time but recently peopled by some 
natives of an island to the westward^ probably Rimatara^ 
who, when sailing to a spot they were accustomed to 
visit, were driven by strong and unfavourable winds on 
Tubuai. A few years after this, a canoe sailing from 
Raiatea to Tahiti, conveying a chief who was ancestor to 
Idia, Pomare’s mother, was also drifted upon this island, 
and the chief admitted to the supreme authority ; a third 
canoe was afterwards wafted upon the shoi'es of Tubuai, 
containing only a human skeleton, which a native of 
Tahiti, who accompanied the mutineers, supposed be¬ 
longed to a man he had killed in a battle at sea. The 
scantiness of the population favoured the opinion that 
the present race had but recently become inhabitants of 
this abode; and the subsequent visits of Missionaries 
from Tahiti, with the residence of native teachers among 
the people, have furnished additional evidence that the 
present Tubuaian population is but of modern origin, 
compared with that inhabiting the island of Raivavai on 
the east, or Rurutu and Rimatara on the west. 
Tubuai is compact, hilly, and verdant; many of the 
hills appeared brown and sunburnt, while others were 
partially wooded. It is less picturesque than Rapa, but 
is surrounded by a reef of coral, which protects the low¬ 
land from the violence of the sea. As we approached 
this natural safeguard to the level shore, a number of 
natives came out to meet us. Their canoes, resembling 
those of Rapa, were generally sixteen or twenty feet long; 
the lower part being hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, and 
the sides, stem, and stern formed by pieces of thin plank 
sewn together with cinet made of the fibrous husk of the 
