The brothers then taking some stones, heated them in a fire, and thrusting them into pieces of mahee, desired one of the Taheeai to open his mouth; on which one of these pieces was dropped in, and some water poured down, which made a boiling or hissing noise, in quenching the stone, and killed him.  They entreated the other to do the same; but he declined it, representing the consequences of his companion’s eating.  However, they assured him that the food was excellent, and its effects only temporary; for that the other would soon recover.  His credulity was such that be swallowed the bait, and shared the fate of the first.  The natives then cut them in pieces, which they buried; and conferred the government of the island on the brothers, as a reward for delivering them from such monsters.  Their residence was in the district called Whapaeenoo; and to this day there remains a bread-fruit tree, once the property of the Taheeais.  They had also a woman, who lived with them, and had two teeth of a prodigious size.  After they were killed, she lived at the island Otaha; and when dead, was ranked amongst their deities.  She did not eat human flesh, as the men; but, from the size of her teeth, the natives still call any animal that has a fierce appearance, or is represented with large tusks, Taheeai.

Every one must allow that this story is just as natural as that of Hercules destroying the hydra, or the more modern one of Jack the giant-killer.  But I do not find that there is any moral couched under it, any more than under most old fables of the same kind, which have been received as truths only during the prevalence of the same ignorance that marked the character of the ages in which they were invented.  It, however, has not been improperly introduced, as serving to express the horror and detestation entertained here against those who feed upon human flesh.  And yet, from some circumstances, I have been led to think that the natives of these isles were formerly cannibals.  Upon asking Omai, he denied it stoutly; yet mentioned a fact, within his own knowledge, which almost confirms such an opinion.  When the people of Bolabola, one time, defeated those of Huaheine, a great number of his kinsmen were slain.  But one of his relations had, afterward, an opportunity of revenging himself, when the Bolabola men were worsted in their turn, and cutting a piece out of the thigh of one of his enemies, he broiled, and eat it.  I have also frequently considered the offering of the person’s eye, who is sacrificed, to the chief, as a vestige of a custom which once really existed to a greater extent, and is still commemorated by this emblematical ceremony.