Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/149

] Feenou, too, received a scarlet suit, with a hatchet of much smaller dimensions; and a few small hatchets were distributed among the other chiefs. They were all on the deck, forming a circle round Toobou, who sat on the watch bench, with Feenou on his right hand, and another chief, named Omalaï, on his left.

Toobou appeared to us to be at least sixty years old. He was of a middling height, and still much more corpulent than Feenou. His garments were made in the same shape as those of the other natives, differing only in the fineness of their texture. He wore a very beautiful mat, fastened round him by means of a girdle, fabricated of the bark of the paper mulberry tree.

When Toobou gave orders for making kava, we requested some of the chiefs to take upon themselves its preparation, and chew the roots of the kava pepper tree, which we offered them; but they uniformly refused, with an air of disdaining an occupation beneath them. It was entrusted to men of an inferior class (mouas), who were seated near the middle of the circle formed by the chiefs.

The rain, which had come on in the mean time, increasing rapidly, we imagined that every one of them would have sought shelter; but they all braved the weather, without quitting their