32 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
having made a number of presents to the chiefs, 
they did not leave any of their crews on shore, 
which was a matter of great satisfaction to the 
Missionaries, who had beheld with regret the bane¬ 
ful influence of unprincipled seamen, on the minds 
and habits of the people. 
From one of these ships, Oripaia, a chief of 
Papara, and a rival of Pomare, had received a 
large quantity of gunpowder as a present. The 
powder being coarser in the grain than what the 
natives had been accustomed to receive, they ima¬ 
gined either that it was not powder, or that it was a 
very inferior kind. In order to satisfy themselves, 
Oripaia proposed to one of his attendants to try it. 
A pistol was loaded, and fired over the whole heap 
of powder they had received, and around which 
the chief and his attendants were sitting. A spark 
fell from the pistol, and the whole of the powder 
instantly exploded. As soon as the natives had 
recovered from the shock, perceiving the powder 
adhering to their limbs, they attempted to rub it 
off, but found the skin peel off with it; they then 
plunged into an adjacent river. Six of the natives 
were severely injured, and Oripaia with one of his 
attendants died. As soon as Pomare was ac¬ 
quainted with the accident, he begged Mr. Broom- 
hall to visit the house in which the accident had 
occurred, and endeavour to relieve the sufferers. 
The chief appeared in a most affecting state, 
dreadfully scorched with the powder ; Mr. Broom- 
hall employed such applications as he supposed 
likely to alleviate his sufferings; these, however^ 
increased, and both the chief and his wife attri¬ 
buted his pains, not to the effects of the explosion, 
but to the remedies applied, or rather to the poison 
imagined to be infused into the application by the 
