330 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
cried more than the parents, particularly the 
mother, could patiently bear, instead of clasping 
the little sufferer to her bosom, and soothing by 
caresses the pains which, though unable to tell 
them, it has probably felt, she has, to free herself 
from this annoyance, stopped its cries by thrusting 
a piece of tapa into its mouth, dug a hole in the 
floor of the house, and perhaps within a few yards 
of her bed, and the spot where she took her daily 
meals, has relentlessly buried, in the untimely 
grave, her helpless babe ! 
The Society Islanders buried the infants they 
destroyed among the bushes, at some distance 
from their houses ; but many of the infants in the 
Sandwich Islands are buried in the houses in 
which both parents and child had resided together. 
In the floors, which are frequently of earth or 
pebbles, a hole is dug, two or three feet deep, into 
which they put the little infant, placed in a broken 
calabash, and having a piece of native cloth laid 
upon its mouth to stop its cries. The hole is then 
filled up with earth, and the inhuman parents 
themselves have sometimes joined in treading 
down the earth upon their own innocent but mur¬ 
dered child. 
The bare recital of these acts of cruelty has 
often filled our minds with horror, while those who 
have been engaged in the perpetration of them 
have related all their tragical circumstances in de¬ 
tail with apparent unconcern. 
How great are the obligations of those whose lot 
is cast in countries favoured with the Bible, to 
whose domestic society Christianity imparts so 
much happiness. And how consoling to know, 
that its principles, wherever imbibed, will produce, 
even in the most barbarous communities, such a 
