On asking them to go aboard with me to dinner, they readily consented.  But some having afterward objected to the king’s going, he instantly rose up, and declared he would be the first man.  Accordingly we came on board.  I kept them there till near four o’clock, when I conducted them ashore; and, soon after, the kid, and one of the turkey-cocks, were brought back.  The other, they said, should be restored the next morning.  I believed this would happen, and released both them and the canoes.

After the chiefs had left us, I walked out with Omai, to observe how the people about us fared; for this was the time of their meals.  I found that, in general, they were at short commons.  Nor is this to be wondered at, since most of the yams, and other provisions which they brought with them, were sold to us; and they never thought of returning to their own habitations, while they could find any sort of subsistence in our neighbourhood.  Our station was upon an uncultivated point of land; so that there were none of the islanders, who, properly, resided within half a mile of us.  But, even at this distance, the multitude of strangers being so great, one might have expected, that every house would have been much crowded.  It was quite otherwise.  The families residing there were as much left to themselves, as if there had not been a supernumerary visitor near them.  All the strangers lived in little temporary sheds, or under trees and bushes; and the cocoa-trees were stripped of their branches, to erect habitations for the chiefs.

In this walk we met with about half a dozen women, in one place, at supper.  Two of the company, I observed, being fed by the others, on our asking the reason, they said taboo mattee.  On farther enquiry we found, that one of them had, two months before, washed the dead corpse of a chief; and that, on this account, she was not to handle any food for five months.  The other had performed the same office to the corpse of another person of inferior rank, and was now under the same restriction; but not for so long a time.  At another place, hard by, we saw another woman fed; and we learnt, that she had assisted in washing the corpse of the above-mentioned chief.

Early the next morning, the king came on board, to invite me to an entertainment, which he proposed to give the same day.  He had already been under the barber’s hands; his head being all besmeared with red pigment, in order to redden his hair, which was naturally of a dark-brown colour.  After breakfast, I attended him to the shore; and we found his people very busy, in two places, in the front of our area, fixing, in an upright and square position, thus [::], four very long posts, near two feet from each other.  The space between the posts was afterward filled up with yams; and as they went on filling it, they fastened pieces of sticks across, from post to post, at the distance of about every four feet, to prevent the posts from separating by the weight of the inclosed