eret, Byron, Kotzebue, and
Vancouver.

For my own part, although hardly a day passed while I remained upon the
island that I did not witness some religious ceremony or other, it was
very much like seeing a parcel of 'Freemasons' making secret signs to
each other; I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing.

On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the islanders in the
Pacific have no fixed and definite ideas whatever on the subject of
religion. I am persuaded that Kolory himself would be effectually posed
were he called upon to draw up the articles of his faith and pronounce
the creed by which he hoped to be saved. In truth, the Typees, so far
as their actions evince, submitted to no laws human or divine--always
excepting the thrice mysterious Taboo. The 'independent electors' of the
valley were not to be brow-beaten by chiefs, priests, idol or devils.
As for the luckless idols, they received more hard knocks than
supplications. I do not wonder that some of them looked so grim, and
stood so bolt upright as if fearful of looking to the right or the left
lest they should give any one offence. The fact is, they had to
carry themselves 'PRETTY STRAIGHT,' or suffer the consequences. Their
worshippers were such a precious set of fickle-minded and irreverent
heathens, that there was no telling when they might topple one of them
over, break it to pieces, and making a fire with it on the very altar
itself, fall to roasting the offerings of bread-fruit, and at them in
spite of its teeth.

In how little reverence these unfortunate deities were held by the
natives was on one occasion most convincingly proved to me.--Walking
with Kory-Kory through the deepest recesses of the groves, I perceived
a curious looking image, about six feet in height which originally had
been placed upright against a low pi-pi, surmounted by a ruinous bamboo
temple, but having become fatigued and weak in the knees, was now
carelessly leaning against it. The idol was partly concealed by the
foliage of a tree which stood near, and whose leafy boughs drooped over
the pile of stones, as if to protect the rude fane from the decay to
which it was rapidly hastening. The image itself was nothing more than
a grotesquely shaped log, carved in the likeness of a portly naked man
with the arms clasped over the head, the jaws thrown wide apart, and its
thick shapeless legs bowed into an arch. It was much decayed. The
lower part was overgrown with a bright sil