166 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
earth, that no trace would be left of the form in which 
it had been deposited. 
Questions of this kind were only presented during 
the first stages of their Christian progress, and they 
were not frequent. In general their inquiries were 
exceedingly interesting. The time when, the means by 
which, the attending circumstances, and the manner 
of the resurrection, the recognition of friends, the 
identity of the bodies of adults, and whether the souls 
of infants would be united to infant bodies, and 
whether they would be as inferior in the future state, 
as their powers and faculties appeared in this, often 
furnished matter for hours of interesting conversation. 
There were, however, other points of inquiry pecu¬ 
liarly affecting to themselves. Many of their rela¬ 
tives or countrymen had been devoured by sharks; 
a limb or large portion of the fleshy part of the body 
of others, had been destroyed by these savage fish. 
A constant attendant on these meetings at Afareaitu 
had, while we resided there, one side of his face torn 
off, and eaten by one. The sharks, that had eaten 
men, were perhaps afterwards caught, and became food 
for the natives, who might themselves be devoured by 
other sharks. Cannibalism, though some deny its having 
been practised among themselves, is supposed to have 
existed in one of the islands at least, and is known, 
and universally acknowledged to prevail among those 
by which they are surrounded; and it is not consi¬ 
dered by them improbable that some of their own 
countrymen have been eaten by the islanders among 
whom they have, from stress of weather, been cast. 
The men who had eaten their fellow-men, might, and 
perhaps often were, (as many of the cannibals inhabit 
