The inhabitants of these isles come more frequently to Otaheite and the other neighbouring high islands, from whose natives they differ in being of a darker colour, with a fiercer aspect, and differently punctured.  I was informed, that at Mataeeva, and others of them, it is a custom for the men to give their daughters to strangers who arrive amongst them; but the pairs must be five nights lying near each other, without presuming to proceed farther.  On the sixth evening, the father of the young woman, treats his guest with food, and informs his daughter, that she must, that night, receive him as her husband.  The stranger, however, must not offer to express the least dislike, though the bed-fellow allotted to him should be ever so disagreeable; for this is considered as an unpardonable affront, and is punished with death.  Forty men of Bolabola, who, incited by curiosity, had roamed as far as Mataeeva in a canoe, were treated in this manner; one of them having incautiously mentioned his dislike of the woman who fell to his lot, in the hearing of a boy, who informed her father.  In consequence of this the Mateevans fell upon them; but these warlike people killed three times their own number; though with the loss of all their party, except five.  These hid themselves in the woods, and took an opportunity, when the others were burying their dead, to enter some houses, where, having provided themselves with victuals and water, they carried them on board a canoe, in which they made their escape; and, after passing Mataia, at which they would not touch, at last arrived safe at Eimeo.  The Bolabolans, however, were sensible enough that their travellers had been to blame; for a canoe from Mateeva, arriving some time after at Bolabola, so far were they from retaliating upon them for the death of their countrymen, that they acknowledged they had deserved their fate, and treated their visitors kindly.

These low isles are, doubtless, the farthest navigation which those of Otaheite and the Society Islands perform at present.  It seems to be a groundless supposition, made by Mons. de Bougainville, that they made voyages of the prodigious extent[5] he mentions; for I found, that it is reckoned a sort of a prodigy, that a canoe, once driven by a storm from Otaheite, should have fallen in with Mopeeha, or Howe’s Island, though so near, and directly to leeward.  The knowledge they have of other distant islands is, no doubt, traditional; and has been communicated to them by the natives of those islands, driven accidentally upon their coasts, who, besides giving them the names, could easily inform them of the direction in which the places lie from whence they came, and of the number of days they had been upon the sea.  In this manner, it may be supposed, that the natives of Wateeoo have increased their catalogue by the addition of Otaheite and its neighbouring isles, from the people we met with there, and also of the other islands these had heard of.  We may thus account for that extensive knowledge attributed by the gentlemen of the Endeavour to Tupia in such matters.  And, with all due deference to his veracity, I presume that it was, by the same means of information, that he was able to direct the ship to Oheteroa, without having ever been there himself, as he pretended; which, on many accounts, is very improbable.[6]