POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
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from fifty to a hundred persons^ of all ages, sporting like 
so many porpoises in the surf, that has been rolling with 
foam and violence towards the land, sometimes mounted 
on the top of the wave, and almost enveloped in spray, 
at other times plunging beneath the mass of water that 
has swept in mountains over them, cheering and animat¬ 
ing each other ^ and, by the noise and shouting they 
made, rendering the roaring of the sea, and the dashing 
of the surf, comparatively imperceptible. Their surf¬ 
boards are inferior to those of the Sandwich Islanders, 
and I do not think swimming in the sea as an amuse¬ 
ment, whatever it might have been formerly, is now 
practised so much by the natives in the south, as by 
those in the north Pacific. Both were exposed in this 
sport to one common cause of interruption; and this was, 
the intrusion of the shark among them. The cry of a mao 
among the former, and a mano among the latter, is one 
of the most terrific they ever hear; and I am not sur¬ 
prised that such should be the effect of the approach of 
one of these voracious monsters. . The great shouting and 
clamour which they make, is principally designed to 
frighten away such as may approach. Notwithstanding 
this, they are often disturbed, and sometimes meet their 
death from these formidable enemies. 
A most affecting instance of this kind occurred very 
recently in the Sandwich Islands, of which the following 
account is given by Mr. Richards, and published in the 
American Missionary Herald: 
^^At nine o'clock in the morning of June 14th, 1826, 
while sitting at my writing-desk, I heard a simultaneous 
scream from multitudes of people. Pan i ha mano ! Pan i 
ha manol (Destroyed by a shark! Destroyed by a shark !) 
The beach was instantly lined by hundreds of persons, 
2 R 
