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Updated: July 26, 2025
There is not the smallest reason to think that the Otaheitans, with all their ingenuity and love of freedom, are, any more than other people, exempt from those principles so vigorously depicted by Cowper in his "Task," as the origin of kingship: The Otaheitans, we know, are not historians.
Roused, apparently, to madness by their bloody work, the Otaheitans now rushed in a body to Brown's garden. The botanist had been somewhat surprised at the frequent firing, but like his unfortunate fellow-countrymen, appeared to have not the remotest suspicion of what was going on. The sight of the natives, however, quickly opened his eyes.
These Otaheitans, then, are evidences to themselves of the existence of a power and wisdom superior to their own, to which they are consciously accountable; and they are without excuse, if, knowing this, they do not worship God as they ought.
He foresaw the doom that awaited him if he should remain at Otaheite, and resolved to return to the former island with a quantity of livestock. He began to barter with the friendly Otaheitans, and soon had as many hogs, goats, fowls, cats, and dogs as he required, besides a bull and a cow which had been left there by Captain Cook. With these and several natives he sailed again for Toubouai.
If the unfortunate Englishmen had known what these men were about, they would not have toiled so quietly on that peaceful morning! The Otaheitans met in a cocoa-nut grove at some distance to the eastward of the settlement. Each had a musket, which he loaded with ball. They did not speak much, and what they did say was uttered in a suppressed tone of voice.
According to Marsden, the New Zealanders believe that three gods created the first man, and that the first woman was made from one of his ribs. Among the Otaheitans and various tribes of Indians, the belief prevails that all created things have proceeded from a triplicated deity who was saved from the ravages of a flood in an ark or ship.
"An Otaheitan chief," says Cook, "who had got two nails in his possession, received no small emolument by letting out the use of them to his neighbours for the purpose of boring holes when their own methods failed, or were thought too tedious." The native methods referred to by Cook were of a very clumsy sort; the principal tools of the Otaheitans being of wood, stone, and flint.
These were formidable difficulties, to people of such nice sense as the Otaheitans, who were therefore readily induced to revert to their own stock. See account of the missionary voyage, for a good deal of information on the subjects alluded to in this note. As to the people, they are of the largest size of Europeans. The men are tall, strong, well-limbed, and finely shaped.
Neither of these multiplied by 13 will make up the solar year exactly. In what manner then the Otaheitans reckon, it is not easy to comprehend. The probability is, that they have no notion of the periodical month.
At these divisions they guess pretty nearly by the height of the sun while he is above the horizon; but there are few of them that can guess at them, when he is below it, by the stars. What is here said of the Otaheitans confirms his observations.
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