in a quarrel, the friends of the deceased assemble, and engage the survivor and his adherents.  If they conquer, they take possession of the house, lands, and goods of the other party; but if conquered, the reverse takes place.  If a Manahoone kill the Toutou, or slave of a chief, the latter sends people to take possession of the lands and house of the former, who flies either to some other part of the island, or to some of the neighbouring islands.  After some months he returns, and finding his stock of hogs much increased, he offers a large present of these, with some red feathers, and other valuable articles, to the Toutou’s master, who generally accepts the compensation, and permits him to repossess his house and lands.  This practice is the height of venality and injustice; and the slayer of the slave seems to be under no farther necessity of absconding, than to impose upon the lower class of people, who are the sufferers.  For it does not appear that the chief has the least power to punish this Manahoone; but the whole management marks a collusion between him and his superior, to gratify the revenge of the former, and the avarice of the latter.  Indeed, we need not wonder that the killing of a man should be considered as so venial an offence, amongst a people who do not consider it as any crime at all to murder their own children.  When talking to them, about such instances of unnatural cruelty, and asking, whether the chiefs or principal people were not angry, and did not punish them?  I was told, that the chief neither could nor would interfere in such cases; and that every one had a right to do with his own child what he pleased.

Though the productions, the people, and the customs and manners of all the islands in the neighbourhood, may, in general, be reckoned the same as at Otaheite, there are a few differences which should be mentioned, as this may lead to an enquiry about more material ones hereafter, if such there be, of which we are now ignorant.

With regard to the little island Mataia, or Osnaburgh Island, which lies twenty leagues east of Otaheite, and belongs to a chief of that place, who gets from thence a kind of tribute, a different dialect from that of Otaheite is there spoken.  The men of Mataia also wear their hair very long; and when they fight, cover their arms with a substance which is beset with sharks’ teeth, and their bodies with a sort of shagreen, being skin of fishes.  At the same time they are ornamented with polished pearl-shells, which make a prodigious glittering in the sun; and they have a very large one, that covers them before, like a shield or breast plate.