Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/366

300 300 TRANSACTIONS AT clubs with, as well as their wooden pillows (see p. 127:) the high price set upon these orna- ments will be exemplified in the following ac- count, which Finow, on this occasion, gave to Mr. Mariner. A short time after the revolt at Tonga, when Finow first became sovereign of Hapai and Va- vaoo, news was brought him of a large dead whale being drifted on a reef, off a small island, inhabited only by one man and his wife j who had the cultivation of a small plantation there. Finow immedktely sailed for this place, and finding the teeth taken from the whale, ques- tioned the man about them, v/ho thereupon went to his house, and taking down a basket from the roof presented it to him,, but in it were only two teeth. The man protested that he put them all there, and knew nothing more about them ; and taxing his wife with having concealed them, she acknowledged that she had secreted one, and brought it to him, from a place in which no others were found ; but this she assured him was all she had taken. The man defended [his innpcence on the plea that the teeth would be of no use to him ; for being poor, he could not sell them for any thing else, since every chief who could afford .to give their value would question his right to them, and take them from him : and, for the