POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
325 
These, though the general amusements of the Areois, 
were not the only purposes for which they assembled. 
They included 
“ All monstrous, all prodigious things." 
And these were abominable, unutterable; in some of 
their meetings, they appear to have placed their 
invention on the rack, to discover the worst pollutions 
of which it was possible for man to be guilty, and to 
have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting 
practices. The mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more 
than bestial degradation, to which they were at times 
addicted, must remain in the darkness in which even they 
felt it sometimes expedient to conceal them. I will not 
do violence to my own feelings, or offend those of my 
readers, by details of conduct, which the mind cannot 
contemplate without pollution and pain. I should not 
have alluded to them, but for the purpose of shewing the 
affecting debasement, and humiliating demoralization, 
to which ignorance, idolatry, and the evil propensities 
of the human heart, when uncontrolled or unrestrained 
by the institutions and relations of civilized society and 
sacred truth, are capable of reducing mankind, even 
under circumstances highly favourable to the culture of 
virtue, purity, and happiness. 
In these pastimes, in their accompanying abomina¬ 
tions, and the often-repeated practices of the most unre¬ 
lenting, murderous cruelty, these wandering Areois passed 
their lives, esteemed by the people as a superior order 
of beings, closely allied to the gods, and deriving from 
them direct sanction, not only for their abominations, 
but even for their heartless murders. Free from labour or 
care, they roved from island to island, supported by the 
