POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
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clothed in a kind of armour of net-work, made with small 
and strongly twisted cords of romaha, or native flax, 
and armed with a musket and a spear. She was sup¬ 
ported on one side by Farefau, her steady and courageous 
friend, who acted as her squire or champion; while 
Mahine was supported on the other by Patini, a fine, 
tall, manly chief, a relative of Mahine’s family; and one 
who, with his wife and two children, has long enjoyed 
the parental and domestic happiness resulting from Chris¬ 
tianity,—hut whose wife, prior to their renunciation of 
idolatry, had murdered twelve or fourteen children. 
Pomare took his station in a canoe with a number of 
musketeers, and annoyed the flank of his enemy nearest 
the sea. A swivel mounted in the stern of another 
canoe, which was commanded by an Englishman, called 
Joe by the natives, and who came up from Raiatea, did 
considerable execution during the engagement. 
Before the king’s friends had properly formed them¬ 
selves for regular defence, the idolatrous army arrived, 
and the battle commenced. The impetuous attack of 
the idolaters, attended with all the fury, imprecations, 
and boasting shouts, practised by the savage when rush¬ 
ing to the onset, produced by its shock a temporary con¬ 
fusion in the advanced guard of the Christian army: 
some were slain, others wounded, and Upaparu, one of 
Pomare’s leading men, saved his life only by rushing 
into the sea, and leaving part of his dress in the hands 
of the antagonist* with whom he had grappled. Not- 
* This man was afterwards an inmate of my family, and, in conversa¬ 
tion on the subject, has often declared that he did not go to battle to 
support idolatry, about which he was indifferent; but from the 
allegiance he owed to his chief, in whose cause he felt bound to fight, 
and who was leader of the idolatrous army. 
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