e living for months with a tribe of savages, wholly
unchanged from their original primitive condition, and reputed the most
ferocious in the South Seas.

The fact is, that there is a vast deal of unintentional humbuggery
in some of the accounts we have from scientific men concerning the
religious institutions of Polynesia. These learned tourists generally
obtain the greater part of their information from retired old South-Sea
rovers, who have domesticated themselves among the barbarous tribes of
the Pacific. Jack, who has long been accustomed to the long-bow, and
to spin tough yarns on the ship's forecastle, invariably officiates as
showman of the island on which he has settled, and having mastered a few
dozen words of the language, is supposed to know all about the people
who speak it. A natural desire to make himself of consequence in the
eyes of the strangers, prompts him to lay claim to a much greater
knowledge of such matters than he actually possesses. In reply to
incessant queries, he communicates not only all he knows but a good deal
more, and if there be any information deficient still he is at no
loss to supply it. The avidity with which his anecdotes are noted
down tickles his vanity, and his powers of invention increase with the
credulity auditors. He knows just the sort of information wanted, and
furnishes it to any extent.

This is not a supposed case; I have met with several individuals like
the one described, and I have been present at two or three of their
interviews with strangers.

Now, when the scientific voyager arrives at home with his collection
of wonders, he attempts, perhaps, to give a description of some of the
strange people he has been visiting. Instead of representing them as
a community of lusty savages, who are leading a merry, idle, innocent
life, he enters into a very circumstantial and learned narrative of
certain unaccountable superstitions and practices, about which he knows
as little as the islanders themselves. Having had little time, and
scarcely any opportunity, to become acquainted with the customs he
pretends to describe, he writes them down one after another in an
off-hand, haphazard style; and were the book thus produced to be
translated into the tongue of the people of whom it purports to give the
history, it would appear quite as wonderful to them as it does to the
American public, and much more improbable.

For my own part, I am free to confess my almost entire inabili