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The mock-fights were of course in imitation of their serious warfare, and they parried with admirable dexterity the blow of a club or thrust of a lance, by which otherwise they must have been severely wounded. The dramatic pieces were performed by both sexes, and sometimes by persons of the highest quality.
Strange that mere lust of fighting, common to man and animals, whose traces even the lamb and the civilised child evince in their mock-fights, the earliest and most natural form of play. Is it, after all, the one human propensity which is utterly evil, incapable of being turned to any righteous use?
There they performed certain strange incantations, after which they descended and began to indulge in mock-fights, sometimes even simulating an attack upon the caravan. What was the real meaning of their pantomime it was impossible to make out, but they amused us exceedingly by their wild gestures and cries.
He did not support them, but they supported him, and when children became too numerous he lessened his family by killing off a few. More than half the children were thus destroyed. Their enjoyments consisted of games with a kind of ball, and mock-fights, but especially in a wild dance they called the corrobboree.
These modern Olympics consist of chariot-races and wrestling, horse and foot races, ascensions of balloons, carrying three or four persons, descents from them by means of a parachute, mock-fights and aquatic tilting.
In order to try the activity of these vessels, as they were then new, and, at the same time, to have every thing in fit condition for a battle, he put out to sea every day, and exercised both the rowers and marines in mock-fights; for he thought that all his hopes of succeeding in the siege depended on the circumstance of his cutting off all supplies by sea.
An American, however, was planning the introduction of a sugar manufactory, and promised himself great profit from it. By order of the Missionaries, the flute, which once awakened innocent pleasure, is heard no more. No music but that of the psalms is suffered in Tahaiti: dancing, mock-fights, and dramatic representations are no longer permitted.
They leaped out of their places of ambush upon the columns which attempted to penetrate into their fastnesses; and attacking the more numerous enemy in dense masses as formerly practised by the Turkish spahis, setting all modern tactics at defiance, and bent on bearing down every thing before them by the mad fury of their onset, they rushed upon the Russian squares and guns as if they had been the mere branches of trees used in their own mock-fights.
Having now noticed all that was reprehensible in the otherwise amiable character of the Ante-christian Tahaitian, I hope the reader, in consideration of his many good qualities, will forgive his faults, and, in a friendly disposition towards him, cast a glance upon his innocent amusements, which were chiefly derived from music, dancing, mock-fights, and theatrical representations.
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