106 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
society had existed, or child-murder was practised. 
There is reason to believe that infanticide is not of 
recent origin, and the antiquity of the Areoi frater¬ 
nity, according to tradition, is equal to that of the 
first inhabitants. 
Human sacrifices, we are informed by the natives, 
are comparatively of modern institution : they were 
not admitted until a few generations antecedent to 
the discovery of the islands. They were first offered 
at Raiatea, in the national marae at Opoa, having 
been demanded by the priest in the name of the 
god, who had communicated the requisition to his 
servant in a dream. Human sacrifices were pre¬ 
sented at Raiatea and the Leeward Islands for 
some time before they were introduced among the 
offerings to the deities of Tahiti; but soon after 
they began to be employed, they were offered with 
great frequency, and in appalling numbers : but of 
this, an account will hereafter be given. 
The depopulation that has taken place during 
the last two or three generations, viz. since their 
discovery, may be easily accounted for. In addi¬ 
tion to a disease, which, as a desolating scourge, 
spread, unpalliated and unrestrained, its unsightly 
and fatal influence among the people, two others 
are reported to have been carried thither—one by 
the crew of Vancouver in 1790 ; and the other by 
means of the Britannia, an English whaler, in 1807. 
Both these disorders spread through the islands; 
the former almost as fatal as the plague, the latter 
affecting nearly every individual throughout all the 
islands. The maladies originally prevailing among 
them, appear, compared with those by which they 
are now afflicted, to have been few in number and 
mild in character. 
Next to these diseases, the introduction of fire- 
