336 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
It was perhaps less practised by the raatiras^ or farmers^ 
than any other class^ yet they were not innocent. I 
do not recollect having met with a female in the islands^ 
during the whole period of my residence there, who 
had been a mother while idolatry prevailed, who 
had not imbrued her hands in the blood of her offspring, 
r conversed more than once on the subject with Mr^ 
Nott, during his recent visit to his native country. On 
one occasion, in answer to my inquiry, he stated, that he 
did not recollect having, in the course of the thirty 
years he had spent in the South Sea Islands, known a 
female, who was a mother under the former system of 
superstition, that had not been guilty of this unnatural 
crime. Startling and affecting as the inference is, it is 
perhaps not too much to suppose, that few, if any, be¬ 
came mothers, in those later periods of the existence of 
idolatry, who did not also commit infanticide. Without 
reference to other deeds of barbarism, they were in this 
respect a nation of murderers ; and, in connexion with 
the Areoi institution, murder was sanctioned by their 
laws. 
The various methods by which it was effected are most 
of them of such a nature, as to prohibit their publica¬ 
tion. It does not appear that they ever buried them 
alive, as the Sandwich Islanders were accustomed to do, 
by digging a hole, sometimes in the floor of the dwelling, 
laying a piece of native cloth upon the infant’s mouth, 
and treading down the earth upon the helpless child. 
Neither were the children as liable to be destroyed, after 
having been suffered to live for any length of time. The 
horrid deed was always perpetrated before the victim had 
seen the light, or in a hurried manner, and immediately 
after birth. The infants thus disposed of, were called 
