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The ladies each received a spike-nail and some beads, greatly to their delight. On landing, the Union-Jack was hoisted, and the three islands in sight taken possession of in the name of his Britannic Majesty. Here was a large morai, called Tapodeboatea, which was visited, and found to be different from those of Otaheite.
He understood that this was the way they paid respect to their own great chiefs. Having arranged about getting a supply of water, he walked with Messrs. Anderson and Wilder into the country, to visit an obelisk of wickerwork, fifty feet high, standing in a morai. A native had been selected as a guide, and wherever they went the people fell prostrate before the captain.
On the south side of the entrance is a Morai: the reef side is to be kept on board and a lookout to be kept from aloft, whence the shoal water is better discerned than from the deck. Sunday 14. This forenoon we performed divine service. Many of the principal natives attended and behaved with great decency.
None of those who were on the voyage and have left any record behind them, suggest that Cook was treated in any respect otherwise than as a great chief and a man. A small potato field was placed under tabu, near the Morai, for the purpose of the observatory, and a camp under the command of King was established there.
After this, we took a walk to a great morai, called Tapodeboatea.
They are Eimeo, Huaheine, Ulitea, Bolabola, and others. They are volcanic, and mostly fertile in the extreme. We visit Ulitea, a beautiful island where there is a vast morai. Numbers of priests reside here, and it is looked on as the sacred island of the group. In reality it is more given over to horrible wickedness than any other. While on shore we witness another terrible human sacrifice.
The inside of his hut, and that of his garden, he kept as sacred from human intrusion as the natives of Otaheite do their Morai; apparently he would have deemed it polluted by the step of any human being. When he shut himself up in his habitation, no entreaty could prevail upon him to make himself visible, or to give audience to any one whomsoever.
Before this figure he prostrated himself and kissed it, desiring Captain Cook to do the same, who suffered himself to be directed by Koah throughout the whole of this ceremony. "We were now led back to the other division of the Morai, where there was a space ten or twelve feet square, sunk about three feet below the level of the area.
The day following that on which the events described took place, Mr King, with a company of marines, landed, and erected an observatory near the morai, the ground being marked off by the priests. For some unknown reason but one probably connected with the previous exhibition the entire bay was tabooed for a day or two, and no canoes ventured off with provisions.
At this time we saw coming in solemn procession, at the entrance of the top of the Morai, ten men carrying a live hog and a large piece of red cloth.
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