CHAPTER VII
GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS
Description of the people—Tattowing—Cleanliness—Clothing—Ornaments and head-dress—Houses—Food—Produce of the sea—Fruits—Animals—Cooking—Mahai-making—Drinking salt-water—Meals—Women eat apart from the men—Pastimes—Music—Attachment to old customs—Making of cloth from bark—Dyes and dyeing—Mats—Manufacture of fishing-nets—Fish-hooks—Carpentry, etc—Boats and boat-building—Fighting, fishing, and travelling ivahahs—Instability of the boats—Paddles, sails, and ornaments—Pahies—Predicting the weather—Astronomy—Measurement of time and space—Language—Its resemblance to other languages—Diseases—Medicine and surgery—Funeral ceremonies—Disposal of the dead—Religion—Origin of mankind—Gods—Priests—Marriage—Marais—Bird-gods—Government—Ranks—Army and battles—Justice.
All the islands I have seen are very populous along the whole length of the coast, where are generally large flats covered with a great many bread-fruit and cocoanut trees. There are houses scarcely fifty yards apart, with their little plantations of plantains, the trees from which they make their cloth, etc. But the inland parts are totally uninhabited, except in the valleys, where there are rivers, and even there there are but a small proportion of people in comparison with the numbers who live upon the flats.
These people are of the larger size of Europeans, all very well made, and some handsome, both men and women; the only bad feature they have is their noses, which are in general flat, but to balance this their teeth are almost without exception even and white to perfection, and the eyes of the women especially are full of expression and fire. In colour they differ very much; those of inferior rank who
