The Mutiny of the Bounty | Page 9

among whom were some women, who were reduced to a state as near to nakedness as himself; the boy was blacked all over, after which the procession set forward, the chief mourner having mumbled something like a prayer over the body. It is the custom of the Indians to fly from these processions with the utmost precipitation. On the present occasion several large bodies of the natives were put to flight, all the houses were deserted, and not an Otaheitan was to be seen. The body being deposited on the stage, the mourners were dismissed to wash themselves in the river, and to resume their customary dresses and their usual gaiety.
They are, however, so jealous of any one approaching these abodes of the dead, that one of Cook's party, happening one day to pull a flower from a tree which grew in one of these sepulchral inclosures, was struck by a native who saw it, and came suddenly behind him. The morai of Oberea was a pile of stone-work raised pyramidically, two hundred and sixty-seven feet long, eighty-seven feet wide, and forty-four feet high, terminating in a ridge like the roof of a house, and ascended by steps of white coral stone neatly squared and polished, some of them not less than three feet and a half by two feet and a half. Such a structure, observes Cook, raised without the assistance of iron tools, or mortar to join them, struck us with astonishment, as a work of considerable skill and incredible labour.
On the same principle of making himself acquainted with every novelty that presented itself, Captain Cook states that 'Mr. Banks saw the operation of tattooing performed upon the back of a girl about thirteen years old. The instrument used upon this occasion had thirty teeth, and every stroke, of which at least a hundred were made in a minute, drew an ichor or serum a little tinged with blood. The girl bore it with most stoical resolution for about a quarter of an hour; but the pain of so many hundred punctures as she had received in that time then became intolerable: she first complained in murmurs, then wept, and at last burst into loud lamentations, earnestly imploring the operator to desist. He was however inexorable; and when she began to struggle, she was held down by two women, who sometimes soothed and sometimes chid her, and now and then, when she was most unruly, gave her a smart blow. Mr. Banks stayed in the neighbouring house an hour, and the operation was not over when he went away.'
The sufferings of this young lady did not however deter the late President of the Royal Society from undergoing the operation on his own person.
The skill and labour which the Otaheitans bestow on their large double boats is not less wonderful than their stone morais, from the felling of the tree and splitting it into plank, to the minutest carved ornaments that decorate the head and the stern. The whole operation is performed without the use of any metallic instrument. 'To fabricate one of their principal vessels with their tools is,' says Cook, 'as great a work as to build a British man of war with ours.' The fighting boats are sometimes more than seventy feet long, but not above three broad; but they are fastened in pairs, side by side, at the distance of about three feet; the head and stern rise in a semi-circular form, the latter to the height of seventeen or eighteen feet. To build these boats, and the smaller kinds of canoes;--to build their houses, and finish the slight furniture they contain;--to fell, cleave, carve, and polish timber for various purposes;--and, in short, for every conversion of wood--the tools they make use of are the following: an adze of stone; a chisel or gouge of bone, generally that of a man's arm between the wrist and elbow; a rasp of coral; and the skin of a sting-ray, with coral sand as a file or polisher.
The persons of the Otaheitan men are in general tall, strong, well-limbed and finely shaped; equal in size to the largest of Europeans. The women of superior rank are also above the middle stature of Europeans, but the inferior class are rather below it. The complexion of the former class is that which we call a brunette, and the skin is most delicately smooth and soft. The shape of the face is comely, the cheek bones are not high, neither are the eyes hollow, nor the brow prominent; the nose is a little, but not much, flattened; but their eyes, and more particularly those of the women, are full of expression, sometimes sparkling with fire, and sometimes melting with softness; their teeth also are, almost without exception, most beautifully even and