262 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
girdle, of which ceremony an account has been 
already given. On that occasion they bathed the 
king in the sea, before girding him with the sacred 
maro. On the present occasion they anointed his 
person with oil; a part of the ceremony which, I 
think, might have been as well dispensed with. 
Shortly after his coronation, young Pomare III. 
was placed at the South Sea Academy, in Eimeo, 
under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Orsmond, for 
the purpose of receiving, with the children of 
the Missionaries, a systematic English educa¬ 
tion. His disposition was affectionate, his pro¬ 
gress encouraging, and he promised fair to gain 
a correct acquaintance with the English lan¬ 
guage, which, had he lived, by giving him the 
key to all the stores of knowledge contained in 
it, w r ould have conferred on him a commanding 
influence among the people over whom the provi¬ 
dence of God had made him king. So far as his 
faculties were developed, they were not inferior to 
those of European children at the same age; but he 
was soon removed by death. 
Being attacked with a complaint that passed 
through the islands about the middle of December, 
1826, he was immediately conveyed to his mother's 
residence in Pare, where he lingered till the 
eleventh of January, 1827, when he died in 
Mr. Orsmond's arms. His mother and other 
friends standing by, when they saw him actually 
in the agonies of death, were so affected that they 
could not bear to look upon his struggles, but cast 
a cloth over Mr. Orsmond and the dying child he 
held in his arms; they removed it in a few minutes, 
and found his spirit had fled. 
He was Pomare’s only son, and the sole child of 
his surviving widow. A daughter of Pomare IL 
