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POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
chiefs and the priests j and were often feasted with provi¬ 
sion plundered from the industrious husbandman, whose 
gardens were spoiled by the hands of lawless violence, 
to provide their entertainments, while his own family was 
not unfrequently deprived thereby, for a time, of the 
means of subsistence. Such was their life of luxurious 
and licentious indolence and crime. And such was the 
character of their delusive system of superstition, that, 
for them, too, was reserved the Elysium which their 
fabulous mythology taught them to believe, was pro¬ 
vided in a future state of existence, for those so preemi¬ 
nently favoured by the gods. 
A number of singular ceremonies were, on this 
account, performed at the d^ath of an Areoi. The oto- 
haa, or general lamentation, was continued for two or 
three days. During this time the body remained at 
the place of its decease, surrounded by the relatives 
and friends of the departed. It was then taken by 
the Areois to the grand temple, where the bones of 
the kings were deposited. Soon after the body had 
been brought within the precincts of the marae, the 
priest of Oro came, and, standing over the corpse, 
offered a long prayer to his god. This prayer, and the 
ceremonies connected therewith, were designed to divest 
the body of all sacred and mysterious influence the 
individual was supposed to have received from the god, 
when, in the presence of the idol, the perfumed oil had 
been sprinkled upon him, and he had been raised to 
the order or rank in which he died. By this act it was 
imagined they were all returned to Oro, by whom 
they had been originally imparted. The body was then 
buried as the body of a common man, within the pre¬ 
cincts of the temple, in which the bodies of chiefs were 
