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The smaller common people, constrained to some degree of industry, look plump and well fed, but not so swollen as their superiors, and more fine forms are therefore to be seen among them than among the Yeris: the latter also frequently suffer under a most disfiguring disease caused by want of exercise and excess of nourishment: the legs swell to such a degree from the knees downward, that the form of the calf and foot is entirely lost, and the thick cylinders which usurp the place of legs, and from under which the toes only project, resemble nothing but the legs of elephants; thence the name of elephantism has been bestowed on the complaint by Europeans.
We pointed their attention to their forsaken companions, but the volatile creatures only laughed, and not a single canoe would return to take them in. At length, towards nightfall, they left us with the cry of "Marua! Marua!" Among these islanders we observed the disease of elephantism, from which the Tahaitians suffer so much; otherwise they appeared healthy.
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