Page:Voyages in the Northern Pacific - 1896.djvu/130

102 their best garments, and the head god is taken from the principal morai, and sent round the island carried by the priests. Any persons coming between the god and the sea are immediately stripped of their garments, and the same is done if they do not strip as the god is passing, and lie flat on their faces. This is the season for dancing, boxing, feasting, and all kinds of amusement. When the god arrives from the place whence he first started, the Taboo is taken off. They are generally about thirty days going round, calling at all the villages and plantations, to remind the people that it is time to bring in their taxes, which they do twice a year. This feast ended while I was here on the 24th of December. I have frequently questioned the chiefs about their religion, and their general answer was, that they go to the morais more to feast than pray, which I believe to be really the case. Mr. Cox, or Teymotoo (Keeaumoku), that I have before mentioned, sets the wooden gods and priests at defiance; he says, that they are all liars, and that the white men's God is the true and only God. The Sandwich Islanders have entirely abolished human sacrifices; all the time I have been about these islands, I have not known a single instance of sacrificing a human being.