316 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES* 
crowded with sharks, lizards, and figures of other 
animals, delineated with considerable spirit, free¬ 
dom, and accuracy., frequently with open mouths, 
or extended claws, so as to give the countenance 
a most repulsive and frightful aspect. The ope¬ 
ration of puncturing the skin, and injecting the 
colouring matter, (of which a more ample account 
has been already given,) must be exceedingly 
tedious and painful, as the most tender parts of 
the face, such as the inner surface of the lips, and 
the edges of the eye-lids, are thus punctured. 
Those Marquesans who have been in the schools 
in the Society Islands, have not manifested any 
inferiority in mental capacity; and those who were 
my pupils in the Sandwich Islands appeared to 
be equally capable of learning to read, write, 
cipher, &c. with the people around them, though 
they usually manifested a greater restlessness and 
impatience of the application necessary to make 
much proficiency; this, I presume, arose from their 
natural fickleness and volatile dispositions. 
All those I have had any means of becoming 
acquainted with, have appeared gay, thoughtless, 
and good natured. I never witnessed any thing of 
that ferocity of barbarism which has distinguished 
their intercourse with most of those by whom they 
have been visited; but I have only seen them as 
guests among strangers, where the vices, practised 
extensively in their native islands, were held in 
abhorrence, and where dispositions of hospitality 
and kindly feelings were respected and cultivated. 
The testimony of almost all who have visited them 
concurs in inducing the belief that their morals 
are most debased, that their licentiousness is of 
the most shameless kind, that their propensity to 
theft is universal, and that they are quarrelsome 
