t five feet in diameter, had a very good effect while the ladies kept
their faces to us; but when in a bending attitude, they presented their
rumps, to shew the wonderful agility of their loins; the effect is better
conceived than described. After half an hour's hard exercise, the dear
creatures had remuee themselves into a perfect fureur, and the piece
concluded by the ladies exposing that which is better felt than seen;
and, in that state of nature, walked from the bottom of the theatre to
the top where we were sitting on the grass, till they approached just by
us, and then we complimented them in bowing, with all the honours of war.

These accomplishments are so much prized amongst them that girls come
from the interior parts of the country to the court residence, for
improvement in the Haeva, just as country gentlemen send their daughters
to London boarding-schools.

This may well be called the Cytheria of the southern hemisphere, not only
from the beauty and elegance of the women, but their being so deeply
versed in, and so passionately fond of the Eleusinian mysteries; and what
poetic fiction has painted of Eden, or Arcadia, is here realized, where
the earth without tillage produces both food and cloathing, the trees
loaded with the richest of fruit, the carpet of nature spread with the
most odoriferous flowers, and the fair ones ever willing to fill your
arms with love.

It affords a happy instance of contradicting an opinion propagated by
philosophers of a less bountiful soil, who maintain that every virtuous
or charitable act a man commits, is from selfish and interrested views.
Here human nature appears in more amiable colours, and the soul of man,
free from the gripping hand of want, acts with a liberality and bounty
that does honour to his God.

A native of this country divides every thing in common with his friend,
and the extent of the word friend, by them, is only bounded by the
universe, and was he reduced to his last morsel of bread, he cheerfully
halves it with him; the next that comes has the same claim, if he wants
it, and so in succession to the last mouthful he has. Rank makes no
distinction in hospitality; for the king and beggar relieve each other in
common.

The English are allowed by the rest of the world, and I believe with some
degree of justice, to be a generous, charitable people; but the
Otaheiteans could not help bestowing the most contemptuous word in their
language upon us, which i