SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
9 
reverted to the king, and his wives and children remained 
destitute, unless, as most frequently happened, the king be¬ 
stowed them anew on the family*. 
It does not appear that any thing like money was in use 
among these people, but they practised barter, and readily 
understood, and steadily adhered to, equivalents in their 
exchanges. The ornamental wreaths and chaplets, and the 
curiously formed bracelets of the women ; the war-cloaks 
and helmets made of feathers procured with difficulty, and 
whose arrangement, as it required a great expense of time, 
was one of the employments of the chiefs, and the finer 
kinds of cloth, as they were articles of luxury, were desired 
above all things, and were consequently exchangeable for 
more of the necessaries of life than any other objects; and 
next to them in value were their weapons, in general highly 
ornamented. These goods, therefore, constituted the trea- 
* Tamehameha I. felt the inconvenience of this custom, and wishing to 
render lands hereditary, he usually bestowed on the son the ground the father 
had occupied. It will be seen in the sequel that the custom of inheritance is 
gaining ground. It was probably to remedy the evils arising from the reversion 
of the lands to the king on the death of the occupant that the people of Otaheite 
had adopted the singular custom mentioned in Cook’s first voyage, of considering 
the son, from his birth, the possessor of the estate, regarding the father, from 
that hour, as regent only. 
May not this unnatural custom of the son’s displacing the father have been 
one of the incitements to child-murder, of which all the South Sea Islanders are 
accused ? 
C 
