Adults.—­The universal opinion of the natives is that the mortality is now greater among young and middle-aged people than it was formerly.  “It was common,” they say, “to see three or four old men in a house, whereas you rarely see more than one now.”  Among a people destitute of statistics or records of any kind, it is difficult to speak correctly of an earlier date than 1830.  Since that time, however, the population has been remarkably stationary.  We have not observed any marked disproportion in the deaths of adults of any particular age compared with other parts of the world.  A person died in 1847 who was present at the massacre of M. de Langle and others connected with the exploring expedition of La Perouse in 1787, and who was then a youth of about fourteen years of age.  Judging from his appearance, we may suppose that there are some in every village who must be sixty, seventy, and even eighty years of age.

They have stories of a giant race, and tell particularly of one called Tafai.  He was very tall and strong, but not cruel to any one.  He could throw a long cocoa-nut tree at the rocks as if he were but hurling a thin spear.  He plucked up by the roots a great Malili tree, eighty feet high, carried it off on his shoulder, branches and all, and could throw it up and catch it again as if he were playing with a small crab.  It is said, too, that so great was his weight, if he put his foot on a rock it left a footprint as if the rock had been soft sand.

Diseases.—­Pulmonary affections, paralysis, diseases of the spine producing humpback, ophthalmia, skin diseases, scrofulous, and other ulcers, elephantiasis, and a species of leprosy, are among the principal diseases with which they were afflicted.  Ophthalmia and various diseases of the eye were very prevalent.  There were few cases of total blindness; but many had one of the organs of vision destroyed.  Connected with diseases of the eye, pterygium is common; not only single, but double, triple, and even quadruple are occasionally met with.  The leprosy of which we speak has greatly abated.  The natives say that formerly many had it, and suffered from its ulcerous sores until all the fingers of a hand or the toes of a foot had fallen off.  Elephantiasis, producing great enlargement of the legs and arms, has, they think, somewhat abated too; only, they say, it prevails among the young men more now than it did formerly.  Insanity is occasionally met with.  It was invariably traced in former times to the immediate presence of an evil spirit.  If furious, the party was tied hand to hand and foot to foot until a change for the better appeared.  Idiots are not common.  Consumption they call “Moomoo;” and there were certain native doctors who were supposed to be successful in spearing the disease, or rather the spirit causing it.  The doctor when sent for would come in, sit down before the patient, and chant as follows:—­

    “Moomoo e!  Moomoo e! 
    O le a ou velosia atu oe;”