INAUGURATION OF AN AREOI.

191

worn by the chief woman present, and by this act he completed his initiation, and became a member, or one of the seventh class.

The lowest members of the society were the principal actors in all their exhibitions, and on them chiefly devolved the labour and drudgery of dancing and performing for the amusement of the spectators. The superior classes led a life of dissipation and luxurious indolence. On this account, those who were novices continued a long time in the lower class; and were only admitted to the higher order at the discretion of the leaders or grand masters.

The advancement of an Areoi from the lower classes took place also at some public festival, when all the members of the fraternity in the island were expected to be present. Each individual appointed to receive this high honour, attended in the full costume of the order. The ceremonies were commenced by the principal Areoi, who arose, and uttered an invocation to Te buaa ra (which I presume must mean the sacred pig), to the sacred company of Tabutabuatea (the name of a principal national temple in Raiatea), belonging to Taramanini, the chief Areoi of that island. He then paused, and another exclaimed, Give us such an individual, or individuals, mentioning the names of the party nominated for the intended elevation.

When the gods had been thus required to sanction their advancement, they were taken to the temple. Here, in the presence of the gods, they were solemnly anointed, the forehead of each person being sprinkled with fragrant oil. The sacred pig, clothed or wrapped in the haio, or cloth of the order, was next put into his hand, and offered to the god. Each individual was then declared, by the person officiating on the occasion, to be an Areoi of the order to which he was thus raised. If the pig wrapped in the sacred cloth was killed, which was sometimes done, it was buried in the temple; but if alive, its ears were ornamented with the orooro, or sacred braid and tassel, of cocoanut fibre. It was then liberated, and being regarded as sacred, or belonging to the god to whom it had been offered, was allowed to range the district uncontrolled till it died.

The artist or priest of the tattoo was now employed to imprint, with unfading marks, the distinctive badges of the rank or class to which the individuals had been

raised. As this operation was attended with considerable suffering to the parties invested with these insignia of rank, it was usually deferred till the termination of the festival which followed the ceremony. This was generally furnished with an extravagant profusion; every kind of food was prepared, and large bales of native cloth were also provided as presents to the Areois, among whom it was divided. The greatest peculiarity, however, connected with this entertainment was, that the restrictions of tabu, which prohibited females, on pain of death, from eating the flesh of the animals offered in sacrifice to the gods, were removed, and they partook, with the men, of the pigs, and other kinds of food considered sacred, which had been provided for the occasion. Music, dancing, and pantomime exhibitions followed, and were sometimes continued for several days. These, though the general amusements of the Areois, were not the only purposes for which they assembled. They included

"All monstrous, all prodigious things;

and these were "abominable, unutterable." In some of their meetings, they appear to have placed their invention on the rack, to discover the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting practices. The mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more than bestial degradation, to which they were at times addicted, must remain in the darkness in which even they felt it sometimes expedient to conceal them. I will not do violence to my own feelings, or offend those of my readers, by details of conduct which the mind cannot contemplate without pollution and pain. I should not have alluded to them, but for the purpose of showing the affecting debasement and humiliating demoralization to which ignorance, idolatry, and the evil propensities of the human heart, when uncontrolled or unrestrained by the institutions and relations of civilized society and sacred truth, are capable of reducing mankind, even under circumstances highly favourable to the culture of virtue, purity, and happiness.

In these pastimes, in their accompanying abominations, and the often-repeated practices of the most unrelenting murderous cruelty, these wandering Areois

FUNERAL OF AN AREOI.

193

passed their lives, esteemed by the people as a superior order of beings, closely allied to the gods, and deriving from them direct sanction, not only for their abominations, but even for their heartless murders. Free from labour or care, they roved from island to island, supported by the chiefs and the priests; and often feasted on plunder from the gardens of the industrious husbandman, while his own family was not unfrequently deprived thereby, for a time, of the means of subsistence. Such was their life of luxurious and licentious indolence and crime. And such was the character of their delusive system of superstition, that for them too was reserved the Elysium which their fabulous mythology taught them to believe was provided, in a future state of existence, for those so pre-eminently favoured by the gods.

A number of singular ceremonies were, on this ac count, performed at the death of an Areoi. The otohaa, or general lamentation, was continued for two or three days. During this time the body remained at the place of its decease, surrounded by the relatives and friends of the departed. It was then taken by the Areois to the grand temple, where the bones of the kings were deposited. Soon after the body had been brought within the precincts of the marae, the priest of Oro came, and standing over the corpse, offered a long prayer to his god. This prayer, and the ceremonies connected therewith, were designed to divest the body of all the sacred and mysterious influence the individual was supposed to have received from the god, when in the presence of the idol, the perfumed oil had been sprinkled upon him, and he had been raised to the order or rank in which he died. By this act it was imagined they were all returned to Oro, by whom they had been originally imparted. The body was then buried as the body of a common man, within the precincts of the temple, in which the bodies of chiefs were interred. This ceremony was not much unlike certain portions of the degrading rites performed on the person of a heretic, in connexion with an auto-de-fé, in the Romish church.

The resources of the Areois were ample. They were, therefore, always enabled to employ the priest of Romatane, who was supposed to have the keys of Rohutu noanoa, the Tahitian's paradise. This priest consequently succeeded the priest of Oro in the funeral VOL. I.-I

ceremonies: he stood by the dead body, and offered his petitions to Urutaetae, who was not altogether the Charon of their mythology, but the god whose office it was to conduct the spirits of Areois and others, for whom the priest of Romatane was employed, to the place of happiness.

This Rohutu noanoa, (literally perfumed or fragrant Rohutu), was altogether a Mohammedan paradise. It was supposed to be near a lofty and stupendous mountain in Raiatea, situated in the vicinity of Hamaniino harbour, and called Temehani unauna, splendid or glorious Temehani. It was, however, said to be invisible to mortal eyes, being in the reva, or aerial regions. The country was described as most lovely and enchanting in appearance, adorned with flowers of every form and hue, and perfumed with odours of every fragrance. The air was free from every noxious vapour, pure, and salubrious. Every species of enjoyment to which the Areois and other favoured classes had been accustomed on earth was to be participated there; while rich viands and delicious fruits were supposed to be furnished in abundance, for the celebration of their sumptuous festivals. Handsome youths and women, purotu anae, all perfection, thronged the place. These honours and gratifications were only for the privileged orders, the Areois and chiefs, who could afford to pay the priests for the passport thither the charges were so great that the common people seldom or never thought of attempting to procure it for their relatives; besides, it is probable that the high distinction kept up between the chiefs and people here would be expected to exist in a future state, and to exclude every individual of the lower ranks from the society of his superiors.

Those who had been kings of Areois in this world were the same there for ever. They were supposed to be employed in a succession of amusements and indulgences similar to those to which they had been addicted on earth, often perpetrating the most unnatural crimes. which their tutelar gods were represented as sanctioning by their own example.

These are some of the principal traditions and particulars relative to this singular and demoralizing institution, which, if not confined to the Georgian and Society Islands, appears to have been patronised and carried to a greater extent there than among any other islands of

the Pacific. Considering the imagined source in which it originated, the express appointment of Oro, their powerful god, the antiquity it claimed, its remarkable adaptation to the indolent habits and depraved uncontrolled passions of the people, the sanction it received here, and the prospect it presented to its members of the perpetuity, in a future state, of gratifications most congenial to those to whom they were exhibited, the Areoi institution appears a masterpiece of satanic delusion and deadly infatuation, exerting an influence over the minds of an ignorant, indolent, and demoralized people which no human power, and nothing less than a Divine agency, could counteract or destroy.

CHAPTER X.

Customs of the islanders-Infanticide-Numbers destroyed-Universality of the crime--Mode of its perpetration-Reasons assigned for its continuance -Disproportion it occasioned between the sexes-Former treatment of children-Ceremonies performed at the temple on the birth of chiefs-Manner of carrying their children-Evils of neglecting parental discipline-Practice of tattooing-Tradition of its origin-Account of the die instruments and process of tattooing-Variety of figures or patterns-The operation painful, and frequently fatal--Marriage contracts--Betrothment--Ancient usages --Ceremonies in the temple-Conduct of the relatives-Prevalence of polygamy.

NEXT to the occupations and amusements of the islanders, such of their customs and observances as were peculiar or striking require to be briefly noticed. Many of their usages were singular, some remarkably interesting, and others horribly cruel. Among the latter kind, the murder of their children, violating the closest and tenderest sympathies of human nature, and seizing its victims with their first consciousness of existence, stands prominently forward.

This

Infanticide, the most revolting and unnatural crime that prevails, even among the habitations of cruelty which fill the dark places of the earth, was intimately connected with the execrable Areoi institution. affecting species of murder was not peculiar to the inhabitants of the Pacific. It has prevailed in different parts of the world, in ancient and modern times, among civilized as well as barbarous nations: but,