212 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
In these, all the appendages of battle were ex¬ 
hibited on land, and the fleets were equipped as in 
maritime war. The fighting men, in both exhibi¬ 
tions, wore the dress and bore the arms employed 
in actual combat. They also performed their 
different evolutions, in attack and defence, advance 
and retreat. Sham-fights were connected with 
these displays of naval or military parade. In 
their mock engagements, they threw the spear, 
thrust the lance, parried the club, and at length, 
with deafening shouts, mingled in general and 
promiscuous struggle. Some of the combatants 
were thrown, others captured, and the respective 
parties retreated to renew the contest. 
Their naval reviews often exhibited a spectacle, 
which to them was remarkably imposing. Ninety 
or a hundred canoes were, on these occasions, 
ranged in a line along the beach, ready to be 
launched in a moment. Their elevated and often 
curiously carved stems, their unwieldy bulk, the 
raised and guarded platform for the fighting men, 
the motley group assembled there, bearing their 
singularly and sometimes fantastically shaped wea¬ 
pons, the numerous folds of native cloth that formed 
their cumbrous dress, their high, broad turbans, 
the lofty sterns of their vessels, grotesque and 
rudely carved, together with the broad streamers 
floating in the breeze, combined to inspire them 
with the most elevated ideas of their naval prowess. 
The effect thus produced was heightened by the 
appearance of the sacred canoes, bearing the 
images or the emblems of the gods, the flag of the 
gods, and the officiating or attending priests. 
Often, while the vessels were thus ranged along 
the beach, the king stood in a small one, drawn 
by a number of his men, who walked in the sea. 
