POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
507 
in reply, and seemed unwilling to have the subject 
brought under consideration. This was the most dis¬ 
tressing circumstance attending his illness, and to none 
more painfully affecting than to his aged father. 
On the last day of his life, Mrs. Ellis and our two 
elder children, to whom he had always been partial, went 
to see him: he appeared comparatively cheerful, listened 
to all that was said, and shook the children by the 
hand very affectionately, when they said la ora na, or 
Farewell. I spent some time with him during the 
same afternoon, and it was the most affecting inter¬ 
course I ever had with a dying fellow-creature. 
The encampment was fixed on an elevated part of 
the plain, near which the river, that flowed from the 
interior mountain to the sea, formed a considerable 
curvature. The adjacent parts of the valley were covered 
with shrubs, but the margin of the river was overgrown 
with slender branching purau, and ancient chestnut-trees, 
that reared their stately heads far above the rest, and 
shed their grateful shade on the waters, and on the 
shore. Near the edge of the cool stream that rippled 
among the pebbles, and at the root of one of these stately 
trees, I found the young chieftain, lying on a portable 
couch, surrounded by his sorrowing friends and attend¬ 
ants. 
I asked why they had brought him there : they said 
that he complained of heat or want of air, and they had 
brought him to that spot that he might enjoy the refresh¬ 
ing coolness of the stream and the shade. I could not 
but admire their choice as I sat beside him, and felt, after 
leaving the portions of the valley exposed to the sun’s 
rays, as if I had entered another climate. The gentle 
but elastic current of air swept along the course of the 
