158 
A VOYAGE TO 
1777. above. And fo agreeable is this licentious plan of life to 
their dilpofition, that the moll beautiful of both fexes thus 
commonly fpend their youthful days, habituated to the 
practice of enormities which would difgrace the moll favage 
tribes ; but are peculiarly blocking among# a people whofe 
general character, in other refpe£ts, has evident traces of 
the prevalence of humane and tender feelings *. When an 
Erreoe 
* That the Caroline Iflands are inhabited by the fame tribe or nation, whom Captain 
Cook found, at fuch immenfe diftances, fpread throughout the South Pacific Ocean, has 
been fatisfadorily eftablifhed in fome preceding notes. The fituation of the Ladrones, 
or Marianne Hands, ftill farther North than the Carolines, but at no great diftance from 
them, is favourable, at firfi: fight, to tire conjecture, that the fame race alfo peopled that 
clufter; and, on looking into Father le Gobien’s Hiftory of them, this conjecture appears 
to be actually confirmed by direCt evidence. One of the greateft Angularities of the Ota- 
heite manners, is the exiftence of the fociety of young men, called Erreoes , of whom fome 
account is given in the preceding paragraph. Now we learn from Father le Gobien, 
that fuch a fociety exifls alfo aijiongft the inhabitants of the Ladrones. His words are ; 
Les Urritoes font parmi eux les jeum gens qui vivent avec des maitrejfes , fans vouloir s’engager 
dans les liens du manage. That there fhould be young men in the Ladrones, as well as in 
Otaheite, who live with vnjlreffes , without being inclined to enter into the marriedJlate, 
would not, indeed, furnifh the fhadow of any peculiar refenrblance between them. But 
that the young men in the Ladrones, and in Otaheite, whofe manners are thus licentious, 
fhould be confidered as a diftind confraternity, called by a particular name ; and that this 
name fhould be the fame in both places : this Angular coincidence of cuftom, confirmed 
by that of language, feems to furnifh an irrefragable proof of the inhabitants of both places 
being the fame nation. We know, that it is the general property of the Otaheite dialed, 
to foften the pronunciation of its words. And, it is obfervable, that, by the omiflion of 
one Angle letter (the confonantr), our Arreoys (as fpelled in Hawkefworth’s Colledion), 
or Erreoes (according to Mr. Anderfon’s orthography), and the Urritoes of the Ladrones, 
are brought to fuch a fimilitude of found (the only rule of comparing two unwritten lan¬ 
guages), that we may pronounce them to be the fame word, without expofing ourfelves 
to the fneers of fupercilious criticifm. 
One or two more fuch proofs, drawn from fimilarity of language, in very fignificant 
words, may be affigned. Le Gobien tells us, that the people of the Ladrones worfhip 
their dead, whom they call Anitis. Here, again, by dropping the confonant n- y we have a 
word that bears a ftrong refemblance to that which fo often, occurs in Captain Cook’s 
3 Voyages, 
