66 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
lity, there were others of a contagious and often 
fatal character, to which the natives were formerly 
strangers. These, whether they had been con¬ 
veyed to the islands by the visits of ships, or the 
desertion of seamen afflicted with them, produced 
the most distressing sickness and mortality among 
the people ; and, although nothing could be more 
absurdly imagined, yet, according to their ideas 
of the causes of disease and death, that they origi¬ 
nated in the displeasure of some offended deity, 
or were inflicted in answer to the prayers of some 
malignant enemy, they were, from the representa¬ 
tions of some, and the conjectures of others, led 
to suppose that these diseases were sent by the 
God of the Missionaries, in answer to their pray¬ 
ers, and because they would not reject Oro, and 
join in their worship. 
At this time an event transpired, which threat¬ 
ened at first a revival of all the confusion and 
desolation of war. This was the demise of Pomare, 
the father of Otu the king. His death was sud¬ 
den ; he had taken his dinner, and was pro¬ 
ceeding with two of his attendants in a single 
canoe towards the Dart, a vessel on the point of 
sailing from the bay. While advancing towards 
the ship, he felt a pain in his back, which occa¬ 
sioned him involuntarily to start in his seat; and, 
placing his hand on the part affected, he fell for¬ 
ward in the canoe, and instantly expired. The 
suddenness and circumstances of his death, taken 
in connexion with the troubles in which he had 
recently been engaged with the greater part of the 
people of the island, on account of his violent 
seizure of the idol of Atehuru, strengthened in no 
small degree the idolatrous veneration with which 
the natives regarded their god; and the anger of 
