130 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
upon the property of the inhabitants; whose lives 
were endangered, if they offered the least resist¬ 
ance. 
Mahamene, a native of Raiatea, gave, at a public 
meeting in that island, the following account 
of their behaviour. “ These teuteu,” (servants 
of the king,) said he, u would enter a house, and 
commit the greatest depredations. The master of 
the house would sit as a poor captive, and look on, 
without daring to say a word. They would seize 
his bundle of cloth, kill his largest pigs, pluck the 
best bread-fruit, take the largest taro, (arum roots,) 
the finest sugar-cane, the ripest bananas, and even 
take the posts of his house for fuel to cook them 
with. Is there not a man present who actually 
buried his new canoe under the sand, to secure it 
from these desperate men V’ 
Nothing fostered tyranny and oppression in the 
rulers, and reduced the population to a state of 
wretchedness, so much as these unjust proceed¬ 
ings. Those who, by habits of industry, or desire 
of comfort for themselves and families, might be 
induced to cultivate more land than others, were, 
from this very circumstance, marked out for de¬ 
spoliation. They had no redress for these wrongs, 
and therefore, rather than expose themselves to the 
mortifying humiliation of seeing the fruits of their 
labour taken to feed a useless and insulting band 
that followed the movements of the king, they 
allowed their lands to remain untilled, and chose to 
procure a scanty means of subsistence from day to 
day, rather than suffer the insults to which even 
their industry exposed them. 
-So far were these shameless extortions practised, 
that during the journey of an European through 
the country, he has been attended by a servant of 
