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POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
wantonly thrown up in the air, and caught on the point 
of the warrior’s spear, where it writhed in agony and died. 
A spear was sometimes thrust through the infant’s head 
from ear to ear, a line passed through the aperture, and 
when the horrid carnage has been over, and the kindling 
brand has been applied to the dwellings, while the 
flames have crackled, the dense columns of smoke as¬ 
cended, and the ashes mingled with the blood from the 
victims, the cruel warriors have retired with fiendish 
exultation, some bearing the spoils of plunder, some 
having two or three infants hanging on the spear they 
bore across their shoulders, and others dragging along 
the sand those that were strung together by a line 
through their heads, or a cord round their necks. 
When those who had been vanquished in the field did 
not return to battle, but remained in their strong-holds, 
another religious ceremony was performed by the con¬ 
querors, called the Hora. A large quantity of property, 
the spoils of victory, was taken to the priests of Oro, 
partly as an acknowledgment for past success, but 
chiefly to encourage them to increased intercession that 
the destruction the god had commenced might not cease 
till their enemies were annihilated, for their wars were 
wars of extermination. 
One singular result of their dreadful wars is, the exist¬ 
ence of a number of wild men inhabiting the fastnesses 
of the interior mountains of Tahiti. I have not heard of 
any having been seen in any other island, but they ha\>e 
been more than once met with in the neighbourhood of 
Atehuru. When I visited this station in 1821,1 saw one 
of these men, who had been some time before taken in the 
mountains, and was comparatively tame, yet I shall not 
soon forget his appearance. He was above the middle 
