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Updated: June 7, 2025
Two girls soon appeared, carrying their mistress' repast; and then, surrounded by cut-glass and porcelain, and jars of sweetmeats and confections, Pomaree Vahinee I., the titular Queen of Tahiti, ate fish and "poee" out of her native calabashes, disdaining either knife or spoon.
Outside, it seemed originally stained of a green colour, which, here and there, was now changed into a dingy purple. The prow terminated in a high, blunt beak; both sides were covered with carving; and upon the stern, was something which Long Ghost maintained to be the arms of the royal House of Pomaree.
"But I cannot help noticing," he adds, "that in the general expression of inconsolable distress, Pomaree was the only person who showed no concern; he took leave of his son with all the indifference imaginable, and hurrying into his canoe, paddled back to the shore a solitary exception to the affecting sensibility of his countrymen."
Her majesty must be now upwards of thirty years of age. She has been twice married. Her first husband was a son of the old King of Tahar, an island about one hundred miles from Tahiti. This proving an unhappy alliance, the pair were soon afterwards divorced. The present husband of the queen is a chief of Imeeo. The reputation of Pomaree is not what it ought to be.
The herds are the private property of Queen Pomaree; from whom the planters had obtained permission to shoot for their own use as many as they pleased. The natives stand in great awe of these cattle; and for this reason are excessively timid in crossing the island, preferring rather to sail round to an opposite village in their canoes.
The day following, Tanee was privately paddled over to Imeeo in a canoe; where, after remaining in banishment for a couple of weeks, he was allowed to return, and once more give in his domestic adhesion. Though Pomaree Vahinee I. be something of a Jezebel in private life, in her public rule she is said to have been quite lenient and forbearing.
Several years since, Pomaree II. said to Tyreman and Bennet, the deputies of the London Missionary Society, "You have come to see me at a very bad time. Your ancestors came in the time of men, when Tahiti was inhabited: you are come to behold just the remnant of my people." Of like import was the prediction of Teearmoar, the high-priest of Paree; who lived over a hundred years ago.
While we were amusing ourselves in this museum of curiosities, our conductor plucked us by the sleeve, and whispered, "Pomaree! Pomaree! armai kow kow." "She is coming to sup, then," said the doctor, staring in the direction indicated. "What say you, Paul, suppose we step up?" Just then a curtain near by lifted, and from a private building a few yards distant the queen entered, unattended.
Thus, by force of arms, was Christianity finally triumphant in Tahiti. Pomaree II., dying in 1821, was succeeded by his infant son, under the title of Pomaree III. This young prince survived his father but six years; and the government then descended to his elder sister, Aimata, the present queen, who is commonly called Pomaree Vahinee I., or the first female Pomaree.
"Oh, king of a great nation," said Pomaree, in her letter to Louis Philippe, "fetch away this man; I and my people cannot endure his evil doings. He is a shameless man." Although the excitement among the natives did not wholly subside upon the rear-admiral's departure, no overt act of violence immediately followed.
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