TUBUAT. 
38. 
driven by strong and unfavourable winds on 
Tubuai. A few years after this, a canoe sailing 
from Raiatea to Tahiti, conveying a chief who was 
ancestor to Idia, Pomare’s mother, was also drifted 
upon this island, and the chief admitted to the 
supreme authority; a third canoe was afterwards 
wafted upon the shores of Tubuai, containing only 
a human skeleton, which a native of Tahiti, who 
accompanied the mutineers, supposed belonged to 
a man he had killed in a battle at sea. The scan¬ 
tiness of the population favoured the opinion that 
the present race had but recently become inha¬ 
bitants of this abode ; and the subsequent visits of 
Missionaries from Tahiti, with the residence of 
native teachers among the people, have furnished 
additional evidence that the present Tubuaian 
population is but of modern origin, compared with 
that inhabiting the island of Raivavai on the east, 
or Rurutu and Rimatara on the west. 
In 1817, I touched at Tubuai. The island is 
compact, hilly, and verdant; many of the hills 
appeared brown and sunburnt, while others were 
partially wooded. At a distance it appears like 
two distinct islands, but on a nearer approach the 
high land is found to be united. It is less pictu¬ 
resque than Rapa, but is surrounded by a reef of 
coral, which protects the low-land from the vio¬ 
lence of the sea. As we approached this natural 
safeguard to the level shore, which is perhaps 
more extensive than the level land in any other 
island of equal size, a number of natives came out 
to meet us. Their canoes, resembling those of 
Rapa, were generally sixteen or twenty feet long ; 
the lower part being hollowed out of the trunk of a 
tree, and the sides, stem, and stern, formed by 
pieces of thin plank sewed together with cinet o* 
