“The variety of attitudes into which these women threw themselves, with the rapidity of their action, resembled no amusement in any other part of the world within my knowledge, by a comparison with which I might be enabled to convey some idea of the stage effect thus produced, particularly in the three first parts, in which there appeared much correspondence and harmony between the tone of their voices and the display of their limbs.  One or two of the performers being not quite so perfect as the rest, afforded us an opportunity of exercising our judgment by comparison; and it must be confessed, that the ladies who most excelled, exhibited a degree of graceful action, for the attainment of which it is difficult to account.

“In each of these first parts the songs, attitudes and actions appeared to me of greater variety than I had before noticed amongst the people of the great South Sea nation on any former occasion.  The whole, though I am unequal to its description, was supported with a wonderful degree of spirit and vivacity; so much indeed that some of their exertions were made with such a degree of agitating violence as seemed to carry the performers beyond what their strength was able to sustain; and had the performance finished with the third act, we should have retired from their theatre with a much higher idea of the moral tendency of their drama, than was conveyed by the offensive, libidinous scene, exhibited by the ladies in the concluding part.  The language of the song, no doubt, corresponded with the obscenity of their actions; which were carried to a degree of extravagance that were calculated to produce nothing but disgust, even to the most licentious.”

From “A Voyage of Discovery,” by Captain George Vancouver: 

The Reconciliation by Strategy of a King With One of His Queens.

“Tahowmotoo was amongst the most constant of our guests; but his daughter, the disgraced queen, seldom visited our side of the bay.  I was not, however, ignorant of her anxious desire for a reconciliation with Tamaahmaah; nor was the same wish to be misunderstood in the conduct and behavior of the king, in whose good opinion and confidence I had now acquired such a predominancy that I became acquainted with his most secret inclinations and apprehensions.

“His unshaken attachment and unaltered affection for Tahowmannoo was confessed with a sort of internal self conviction of her innocence.  He acknowledged with great candor that his own conduct had not been exactly such as warranted his having insisted upon a separation from his queen; that although it could not authorize, it in some measure pleaded in excuse for her infidelity; and for his own, he alleged, that his high rank and supreme authority was a sort of license for such indulgences.