she is not entitled to censure, however she may envy, their happier exertions and success.  She ought to know, that unless our taxes are removed, and the bread-fruit is naturalized among us, it is impossible for her to have so speedy a redemption from the estate of “solitary blessedness;” and that as many of her elder sisters still feel the necessity of practising patience in the same condition, it is very incumbent on her to learn by times a little self-controul.  Besides, she ought, in charity to the other sex, to remember, that even the “concealed magic” of her manner, as Mr Hume expresses it, and which he says is easily explained, is abundantly efficacious without further disclosure than common necessity requires.—­E.]

It cannot be supposed that, among these people, chastity is held in much estimation.  It might be expected that sisters and daughters would be offered to strangers, either as a courtesy, or for reward; and that breaches of conjugal fidelity, even in the wife, should not be otherwise punished than by a few hard words, or perhaps a slight beating, as indeed is the case:  But there is a scale in dissolute sensuality, which these people have ascended, wholly unknown to every other nation whose manners have been recorded from the beginning of the world to the present hour, and which no imagination could possibly conceive.

A very considerable number of the principal people of Otaheite, of both sexes, have formed themselves into a society, in which every woman is common to every man; thus securing a perpetual variety as often as their inclination prompts them to seek it, which is so frequent, that the same man and woman seldom cohabit together more than two or three days.

These societies are distinguished by the name of Arreoy; and the members have meetings, at which no other is present, where the men amuse themselves by wrestling, and the women, notwithstanding their occasional connection with different men, dance the Timorodee in all its latitude, as an incitement to desires, which, it is said, are frequently gratified upon the spot.  This, however, is comparatively nothing.  If any of the women happen to be with child, which in this manner of life happens less frequently than if they were to cohabit only with one man, the poor infant is smothered the moment it is born, that it may be no incumbrance to the father, nor interrupt the mother in the pleasures of her diabolical prostitution.  It sometimes indeed happens, that the passion which prompts a woman to enter into this society, is surmounted when she becomes a mother, by that instinctive affection which Nature has given to all creatures for the preservation of their offspring; but even in this case, she is not permitted to spare the life of her infant, except she can find a man who will patronise it as his child:  If this can be done, the murder is prevented; but both the man and woman, being deemed by this act to have appropriated each other, are ejected from the community, and forfeit all claim to the privileges and pleasures of the Arreoy for the future; the woman from that time being distinguished by the term Whannownow, “bearer of children,” which is here a term of reproach; though none can be more honourable in the estimation of wisdom and humanity, of right reason, and every passion that distinguishes the man from the brute.