e nations at war, that the treaty of peace be
confirmed by the conquerors sending a certain number of their women to
cohabit with the nation that is vanquished, in order to conciliate their
affection by a bond more lasting than wax and parchment. It was the
unhappy lot of Otaheite to be overcome by a nation whose women were too
masculine for them; they being accustomed to the amorous dalliance of
their own beautiful females, were averse to familiar intercourse with
strangers. The ladies returned with all the rage of disappointed women,
and the war was renewed with all its horrors.

They are well acquainted with the bow and arrow, but use it as an
amusement. The only missive weapons they use are the sling and spear.
They have now amongst them about twenty stand of arms, and two hundred
rounds of powder and ball. They can take a musket to pieces, and put it
up again; are good marksmen, take proper care of their arms and
ammunition; and are highly sensible of the superior advantage it gives
them over the neighbouring nations.

In the preparing and printing their cloth, the women display a great
share of ingenuity and good taste. Many of their figures were exactly the
patterns which prevailed, as fashionable, when we left England, both
striped and figured. They print their figured cloth by dipping the leaves
in dye-stuffs of different colours, placing them as their fancy directs.
Their cloth is of different texture of fineness, from a stuff of the same
nature in quality as the slightest India paper, to a kind as durable as
some of our cottons; but they will not bear water, and of course become
troublesome and expensive. They are generally made up in bales, running
about two yards broad, and twenty or thirty yards long. We had some
thousands of yards of it sent on board as presents.

Their sumptuary laws, at first sight, may appear severe towards the fair
sex, who are not permitted to eat butchermeat, nor to eat at all, in the
presence of their husbands. It certainly does not convey the most
delicate ideas, to a mind impressed with much sensibility, to see a fine
woman devouring a piece of beef; and those voluptuaries, who may be said
to exist only by their women, would naturally endeavour to remove the
possibility of presupposing a disgusting idea in that object in which all
their happiness centres.

Every woman, the queen and royal family excepted, on the approach of the
king, is denuded down to the waist, and continues