The ceremony began, as usual, with bringing a young plantain-tree, and laying it down at the king’s feet.  After this a prayer was repeated by the priests, who held in their hands several tufts of red feathers, and also a plume of ostrich feathers, which I had given to Otoo on my first arrival, and had been consecrated to this use.  When the priests had made an end of the prayer, they changed their station, placing themselves between us and the morai; and one of them, the same person who had acted the principal part the day before, began another prayer, which lasted about half an hour.  During the continuance of this, the tufts of feathers were, one by one, carried and laid upon the ark of the Eatooa.

Some little time after, four pigs were produced, one of which was immediately killed, and the others were taken to a sty hard by, probably reserved for some future occasion of sacrifice.  One of the bundles was now untied; and it was found, as I have before observed, to contain the maro, with which these people invest their kings, and which seems to answer, in some degree, to the European ensigns of royalty, it was carefully taken out of the cloth, in which, it had been wrapped up, and spread at full length upon the ground before the priests.  It is a girdle, about five yards long; and fifteen inches broad; and, from its name, seems to be put on in the same manner as is the common maro, or piece of cloth, used by these people to wrap round the waist.  It was ornamented with red and yellow feathers, but mostly with the latter, taken from a dove found upon the island.  The one end was bordered with eight pieces, each about the size and shape of a horse-shoe, having their edges fringed with black feathers.  The other end was forked, and the points were of different lengths.  The feathers were in square compartments, ranged in two rows, and otherwise so disposed, as to produce a pleasing effect.  They had been first pasted or fixed upon some of their own country cloth, and then sewed to the upper end of the pendant which Captain Wallis had displayed, and left flying ashore, the first time that he landed at Matavai.  This was what they told us; and we had no reason to doubt it, as we could easily trace the remains of an English pendant.  About six or eight inches square of the maro was unornamented, there being no feathers upon that space, except a few that had been sent by Waheiadooa, as already mentioned.  The priests made a long prayer, relative to this part of the ceremony; and, if I mistook not, they called it the prayer of the maro.  When it was finished, the badge of royalty was carefully folded up, put into the cloth, and deposited again upon the morai.

The other bundle, which I have distinguished by the name of the ark, was next opened at one end.  But we were not allowed to go near enough to examine its mysterious contents.  The information we received was, that the Eatooa, to whom they had been sacrificing, and whose name is Ooro, was concealed in it, or rather what is supposed to represent him.  This sacred repository is made of the twisted fibres of the husk of the cocoa-nut, shaped somewhat like a large fig, or sugar-loaf, that is, roundish, with one end much thicker than the other.  We had very often got small ones from different people, but never knew their use before.