Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/186

152 amined the passage toward the north-west, of which Tonga had given us information. They had run along very close to Attata, which they had left on the larboard, as they sailed from our anchorage. Kepa, the chief of this little island, had come to meet them, and received them with great civility. In the morning he came to see us, and inquired after Captain Cook, who, he told us, was his friend. On being informed of his death, he could not refrain from tears, and took out of his girdle a shark's tooth, with which he was going to wound his cheeks, in order to express the violence of his grief, if we had not prevented him.

The art of physic is practised among those people with a parade of mystery. One of crew, who had accompanied us along the beach, having hurt his wrist by an exertion, a native offered to ease the pain, and succceded pretty quickly by squeezing and pressing the part injured, (en massant la partie blessée); at the same time he blew upon it repeatedly, intending, no doubt, that we should ascribe the cure to his breath.

On the sea-side we saw several natives occupied in squaring some large stones of the calcareous kind, which, we were informed, were intended to be employed in burying a chief, who was re-