494 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
interesting inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific. With 
the Society and Sandwich Islanders^ it has, since the in¬ 
troduction of Christianity, ceased. In the Friendly, Figi, 
and other groups, it still prevails : in the Marquesas, and 
New Zealand, it rages with unabated violence, and spreads 
devastation and wretchedness among the infatuated and 
hapless people. 
Among the Society Islanders, in consequence of the 
influence of the climate, luxurious mode of living, and 
effeminacy of • character, induced thereby, the obstinacy 
and the continuance of actual combat were not equal 
to that which obtained in other tribes; yet we learn from 
the frequency of its occurrence, and the deadly hatred 
which was cherished, that the passion for war was not 
less powerful with them than with the New Zealander 
or the Marquesian; and its consequent cruelties and 
demoralization were perhaps unequalled in any other part 
of the world. Their wars were most merciless and 
destructive. Invention itself was tortured to find out 
new or varied modes of inflicting suffering; and the 
total extermination of their enemies, with the desolation 
of a country, was often the avowed object of the war. 
This design, horrid as it is, has been literally accom¬ 
plished: every inhabitant of an island, excepting the 
few that may have escaped by flight in their canoes, 
has been slaughtered; the bread-fruit trees have been 
cut down, and left to rot; the cocoa-nut trees have been 
killed by cutting off their tops or crown, and leaving 
the stems in desolate leafless ranks, as if they had been 
shivered by the lightning. 
Their wars were not only sanguinary, but frequent; 
yet from a variety of ceremonies, which preceded the 
expeditions, they were seldom prompt in commencing 
