Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/392

326 and, running up, beat him about the head, and pierced him wherever they could, till, at length, after much hard work, they killed him. When their toil was over, the first thing they thought of (for these people have a strange genius), was, to try if he was good to eat : they accord- ingly cut him up, and, selecting those parts which they thought the tenderest, they baked a sufficient quantity, and, finding it very good, made a hearty meal. Cow Mooala saw the bones of this animal, from the description of .which, as well as what he had heard concerning the living animal, Mr. Mariner supposes that it must have been a crocodile that, by some acci^ dent, had made its way from the East Indies ; and, as it was the first animal of the kind the natives had ever seen, or ever heard of, we need not wonder that they supposed it to be a superr natural lizard, sent by the gods from Bolotoo, as a punishment for their offences. Pau is decidedly the largest of the Fiji islands, and much larger than Vav^oo: but Cow Mooala gave an exaggerated account of its size, describing it to be so large, that many of the people in its interior had pever seen the sea, owing to their distance from it ; and that the people living on the mountains, and who constantly resided there to avoid the frequent wars and disturbances on the plains below.