l woven.

I did not remain long enough with these people to acquire very extensive
and exact notions of their religion: I know that they recognise a
Supreme Being, whom they call _Etoway_, and a number of inferior
divinities. Each village has one or more _morais_. These morais are
enclosures which served for cemeteries; in the middle is a temple,
where the priests alone have a right to enter: they contain several
idols of wood, rudely sculptured. At the feet of these images are
deposited, and left to putrify, the offerings of the people, consisting
of dogs, pigs, fowls, vegetables, &c. The respect of these savages for
their priests extends almost to adoration; they regard their persons as
sacred, and feel the greatest scruple in touching the objects, or going
near the places, which they have declared _taboo_ or forbidden. The
_taboo_ has often been useful to European navigators, by freeing them
from the importunities of the crowd.

In our rambles we met groups playing at different games. That of
draughts appeared the most common. The checker-board is very simple, the
squares being marked on the ground with a sharp stick: the men are
merely shells or pebbles. The game was different from that played in
civilized countries, so that we could not understand it.

Although nature has done almost everything for the inhabitants of the
Sandwich islands--though they enjoy a perpetual spring, a clear sky, a
salubrious climate, and scarcely any labor is required to produce the
necessaries of life--they can not be regarded as generally happy: the
artisans and producers, whom they call _Tootoos_, are nearly in the same
situation as the Helots among the Lacedemonians, condemned to labor
almost incessantly for their lord or _Eris_, without hope of bettering
their condition, and even restricted in the choice of their daily
food.[F] How has it happened that among a people yet barbarous, where
knowledge is nearly equally distributed, the class which is beyond
comparison the most numerous has voluntarily submitted to such a
humiliating and oppressive yoke? The Tartars, though infinitely less
numerous than the Chinese, have subjected them, because the former were
warlike and the latter were not. The same thing has happened, no doubt,
at remote periods, in Poland, and other regions of Europe and Asia. If
moral causes are joined to physical ones, the superiority of one caste
and the inferiority of the other will be still more marked; it is k