Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/154

96 this morning to see her. A small square was neatly railed in with bamboo, and in the midst of it a canoe awning set up upon two posts; in this the body was laid, covered with fine cloth. Near this was laid fish, meat, etc. for the gods, not for the deceased, but to satisfy the hunger of the deities lest they should eat the body, which Tubourai told us they would certainly do, if this ceremony were neglected. In the front of the square was a kind of stile, or place lower than the rest, where the relatives of the deceased stood when they cried or bled themselves. Under the awning were numberless rags containing the blood and tears they had shed. Within a few yards were two occasional houses; in one of them some of the relations, generally a good many, constantly remained; in the other the chief male mourner resided, and kept a very remarkable dress in which he performed a ceremony. Both dress and ceremony I shall describe when I have an opportunity of seeing it in perfection, which Tubourai promises me I shall soon have.

This day we kept the King's birthday, which had been delayed on account of the absence of the two observing parties. Several of the Indians dined with us and drank his Majesty's health by the name of Kilnargo, for we could not teach them to pronounce a word more like King George. Tupia (Oborea's right-hand man, who was with her when the Dolphin was here), to show his loyalty, got most enormously drunk.

6th. In walking into the woods yesterday, I saw in the hands of an Indian an iron tool, made in the shape of the Indian adzes, but very different, I am sure, from anything that had been carried out or made either by the Dolphin or this ship. This excited my curiosity, the more so as I was told that it did not come out of either of those ships, but from two others which came here together. This was a discovery not to be neglected. With much difficulty and labour I at last got the following account of them, viz. that in their month of Pepare (which answers to our January 1768), two Spanish ships came here, commanded by a man whom they called To Otterah; that they lay eight days in a