POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
295 
Tahitians do not appear to have followed it with such 
avidity as the Sandwich Islanders were accustomed to 
do^ nor to have made such proficiency in the art. In 
order to avoid accidents while practising with the sling, 
the boys generally employed the fruit of the nono, 
Morhida citrifolia^ instead of a stone. The mark at 
which they threw was a thin cane, or small white stick, 
fixed erect in the ground; and the force and preci¬ 
sion with which it was repeatedly struck, were truly 
astonishing. 
Besides these games, they often had what might be 
termed reviews of their land and naval forces. In these, 
all the appendages of battle were exhibited on land, and 
the fleets were equipped as in maritime war. The 
fighting men, in both exhibitions, wore the dress and 
bore the arms employed in actual combat. They also 
performed their different evolutions, or plans of attack 
and defence, advance and retreat. Sham-fights were 
connected with these displays of naval or military 
parade. In their mock engagements, they threw the 
spear, thrust the lance, parried the club, and at length, 
with deafening shouts, mingled in general and promis¬ 
cuous struggle. Some of the combatants were thrown 
down, others captured, and the respective parties re¬ 
treated to renew the contest. 
Their naval reviews often exhibited a spectacle, which 
to them was remarkably imposing. Ninety or a hun¬ 
dred canoes were, on these occasions, ranged in a line 
along the beach, ready to be launched in a moment. 
Their elevated and often curiously carved sterns, their 
unwieldy bulk, the raised and guarded platform for 
the fighting men, the motley group assembled there, bear¬ 
ing their singularly and sometimes fantastically shaped 
