M POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
part of his reign, from the mutineers of the Bounty, 
who attended him to battle with arms which they had 
previously learned to use with an effect, which his 
opponents could iiot resist. Subsequently, the hostile 
chieftains, having procured fire-arms, and succeeding in 
attaching to their interest European deserters from their 
ships, considered themselves, if not invincible, at least 
equal to their enemies, and sought every opportunity 
for engaging in the horrid work of accelerating the de¬ 
population of their country. Destruction was the avowed 
design with which they commenced every war, and the 
principle of extermination rendered their hostilities so 
fatal to the vanquished party. 
Another cause most influential in the diminution of 
the Tahitian race, has been the introduction of the art 
of distillation, and the extensive use of ardent spirits. 
They had, before they were visited by our ships, a kind 
of intoxicating beverage called ava, but the deleterious 
effects resulting from its use were confined to a com¬ 
paratively small portion of the inhabitants. The growth 
of the plant from which it was procured was slow; its 
culture required care; it was usually tabued for the 
chiefs; and the common people were as strictly prohibited 
from appropriating it to their own use, as the peasantry 
are in reference to tke game of England. Its effects also 
were rather sedative, than narcotic or inebriating. 
But after the Tahitians had been taught by foreign 
seamen, and natives of the Sandwich Islands, to distil 
spirits from indigenous roots, and rum had been 
carried to the islands in abundance as an article of 
barter, intoxication became almost universal; and all the 
demoralization, crimes, and misery, that follow in its 
train, were added to the multiplied sorrows and wasting 
