POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
33 
Raiatea, in the national marae at Opoa, having been 
demanded by the priest in the name of the god^ who had 
communicated the requisition to his servant in a dream. 
Human sacrifices were presented at Raiatea and the Lee¬ 
ward Islands for some time before they were introduced 
among the offerings to the deities of Tahiti; but soon 
after they began to be employed, they were offered with 
great frequency, and in appalling numbers ; but of this, 
an account will hereafter be given. 
The depopulation that has taken place during the last 
two or three generations, viz. since their discovery, may 
be easily accounted for. In addition to a disease, which, 
as a desolating scourge, spread, unpalliated and unre¬ 
strained, its unsightly and fatal influence among the 
people, two others are reported to have been carried 
thither—one by the crew of Vancouver in 1790; and the 
other by means of the Britannia, an English whaler, 
in I 8 O 7 . Both these disorders spread through the 
islands; the former almost as fatal as the plague, the 
latter affecting nearly every individual throughout all 
the islands of the group. The maladies originally pre¬ 
vailing among them, appear, compared with those by 
which they are now afflicted, to have been few in 
number and mild in character. 
Next to disease, the introduction of fire-arms, which, 
although their use in war has not perhaps rendered 
their engagements more cruel and murderous than 
when they fought hand to hand with club and spear— 
they have undoubtedly cherished, in those who pos¬ 
sessed them, a desire for war, as a means of en¬ 
larging their territory, and augmenting their power, 
Pomare’s dominion would never have been so extensive 
and so absolute, but for the aid he derived, in the early 
II. 
F 
