was a boy about fourteen years old. One of the chiefs of the
district was the principal mourner, wearing a fantastical dress. Mr.
Banks was stripped entirely of his European clothes, and a small piece
of cloth was tied round his middle. His face and body were then smeared
with charcoal and water, as low as the shoulders, till they were as
black as those of a negro: the same operation was performed on the rest,
among whom were some women, who were reduced to a state as near to
nakedness as himself; the boy was blacked all over, after which the
procession set forward, the chief mourner having mumbled something like
a prayer over the body. It is the custom of the Indians to fly from
these processions with the utmost precipitation. On the present occasion
several large bodies of the natives were put to flight, all the houses
were deserted, and not an Otaheitan was to be seen. The body being
deposited on the stage, the mourners were dismissed to wash themselves
in the river, and to resume their customary dresses and their usual
gaiety.

They are, however, so jealous of any one approaching these abodes of
the dead, that one of Cook's party, happening one day to pull a flower
from a tree which grew in one of these sepulchral inclosures, was struck
by a native who saw it, and came suddenly behind him. The morai of
Oberea was a pile of stone-work raised pyramidically, two hundred and
sixty-seven feet long, eighty-seven feet wide, and forty-four feet high,
terminating in a ridge like the roof of a house, and ascended by steps
of white coral stone neatly squared and polished, some of them not less
than three feet and a half by two feet and a half. Such a structure,
observes Cook, raised without the assistance of iron tools, or mortar to
join them, struck us with astonishment, as a work of considerable skill
and incredible labour.

On the same principle of making himself acquainted with every novelty
that presented itself, Captain Cook states that 'Mr. Banks saw the
operation of _tattooing_ performed upon the back of a girl about
thirteen years old. The instrument used upon this occasion had thirty
teeth, and every stroke, of which at least a hundred were made in a
minute, drew an ichor or serum a little tinged with blood. The girl bore
it with most stoical resolution for about a quarter of an hour; but the
pain of so many hundred punctures as she had received in that time then
became intolerable: she first complained in murmurs,