POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
503 
ultimate decision, and at these times they always pre¬ 
tended to follow implicitly supernatural intimation, though 
all this juggling and contrivance was designed only to 
deceive the people into a persuasion that the god sanc¬ 
tioned the views of the king and government. The divina¬ 
tions were connected with the offerings, and the success or 
failure of the expedition was often chiefly augured from 
the muscular action in the heart or liver of the animal 
offered, or the involuntary acts and writhing contortions 
of the limbs of the human sacrifice in the agonies of 
death. 
When the murder and destruction of actual conflict 
terminated, and the vanquished sought security in flight, 
or in the natural strong-holds of the mountains, some 
of their conquerors pursued them to their hiding-places, 
while others repaired to the villages, and destroyed the 
wives, children, infirm and afflicted relatives, of those 
who had fled before them in the field. These defenceless 
wretches seldom made much resistance to the lawless and 
merciless barbarians, whose conduct betrayed a cowardly 
delight in torturing their helpless victims. Plunder and 
revenge were the principal objects in these expeditions. 
Every thing valuable they destroyed or bore away, while 
the miserable objects of their vengeance were deliberately 
murdered. No age or sex was spared. The infant that 
unconsciously smiled in its mother’s arms, and the vene¬ 
rable gray-haired father or mother, experienced unbridled 
and horrid barbarity. The aged were at once despatched, 
though embowelling and every horrid torture was prac¬ 
tised. The females experienced brutality and murder, 
and the tenderest infants were perhaps transfixed to the 
mother’s heart by a ruthless weapon—caught up by ruf¬ 
fian hands, and dashed against the rocks or the trees—or 
