The orders, or classes, amongst their chiefs, or those who call themselves such, seemed to be almost as numerous as amongst us; but there are few, in comparison, that are lords of large districts of territory, the rest holding their lands under those principal barons, as they may be called.  I was indeed told, that when a man of property dies, everything he leaves behind him falls to the king; but that it is usual to give it to the eldest son of the deceased, with an obligation to make a provision out of it for the rest of the children.  It is not the custom here, as at Otaheite, for the son, the moment he is born, to take from the father the homage and title, but he succeeds to them at his decease, so that their form of government is not only monarchical, but hereditary.

The order of succession to the crown has not been of late interrupted; for we know, from a particular circumstance, that the Futtafaihes (Poulaho being only an addition to distinguish the king from the rest of the family) have reigned in a direct line, for at least one hundred and thirty-five years.  Upon enquiring, whether any account had been preserved amongst them, of the arrival of Tasman’s ships, we found that this history had been handed down to them from their ancestors, with an accuracy which marks, that oral tradition may sometimes be depended upon.  For they described the two ships as resembling ours, mentioning the place where they had anchored, their having staid but a few days, and their moving from that station to Annamooka.  And by way of informing us how long ago this had happened, they told us the name of the Futtafaihe who was then king, and of those who had succeeded, down to Poulaho, who is the fifth since that period, the first being an old man at the time of the arrival of the ships.

From what has been said of the present king, it would be natural to suppose, that he had the highest rank of any person in the islands.  But, to our great surprise, we found it is not so; for Latoolibooloo, the person who was pointed out to me as king, when I first visited Tongataboo, and three women, are, in some respects, superior to Poulaho himself.  On our enquiring who these extraordinary personages were, whom they distinguish by the name and title of Tammaha?[191] we were told, that the late king, Poulaho’s father, had a sister of equal rank, and elder than himself; that she, by a man that came from the island of Feejee, had a son and two daughters, and that these three persons, as well as their mother, rank above Futtafaihe the king.

[Footnote 191:  The reader need not be reminded that Tamoloa, which signifies a chief, in the dialect of Hamao, and Tammaha, become the same word, by the change of a single letter, the articulation of which is not very strongly marked.—­D.]