C H A P . XI.
I
■
¡30
>777-
Jaíy.
Employments o f the Women, at the Friendly Ifa n d s.—
O f the M en .— Agriculture,— ConflruBion o f their
Houfes.— Ih e ir working 'Tools.— Cordage, and fifhihg
Implements.— M u fca l Injlruments.— Weapons.— Food,
and Cookery. — Amufements.— M arriage.— Mourning
Ceremonies fo r the D ead.— -Their D ivinities.— Notions
about the Soul\ and a fu tu r e State.— -Their Places o f
Worjhip.— Government.— Manner o f paying Obeifance
to the K in g .— Account o f the Royal Family.— Remarks
on their Language, and a Specimen o f it N autical,
and other Obfervations,
T H EIR domeftic life is of that middle kind, neither
fo laborious as to be difagreeable, nor fo vacant as to
■fuffer them to degenerate into indolence. Nature has done
fo much for their country, that the firft can hardly occur,
and their difpolition feems to be a pretty good bar to the
laft. By this happy combination of circumftances, their
neceffary labour feems to yield, in its turn, to their recreations,
in fuch a manner, that the latter are never interrupted
by the thoughts of being’ obliged to recur to the
former, till fatiety makes them wiih for fuch a tranfition.
The employment of the women is of the eafy kind, and,
for the moil part, fuch' as may be executed in the houfe.
The manufacturing- their cloth, is wholly coniigned to their
care. Having already defcribed the procefs, I (hall only
add, that they have this cloth of different degrees of fine-
nefs. The coarfer fort, of which they make very large
pieces,' does not receive the impreflion of any pattern. Of
the finer fort, they have fome that is ftriped, and chequered,
and of other patterns differently coloured. But how thefe
colours are laid on, I cannot fay, as I never faw any of this
fort made. The cloth, in general, will refift water, for fome
time ; but that wlych has the ftrongeft glaze will refift
longeft.
Thè manufacture next in confequence, and alfo within
the department of the women, is that of their mats, which
excel every thing I have feen at any other place, both as-
to their texture and their beauty. In particular, many of
them are fo fuperior to thofe made at Otaheite, that they
are not a bad article to carry thither, by way of trade. Of
thefe mats, they have feven or eight different forts, for the
purpofes of wearing or fieeping upon ; and many are merely
ornamental. The laft are chiefly made from the tough,
membraneous part of the ftock of the plantain tree ; thofe
that they wear, from the pandanus, cultivated for that pu-r-
pofe, and never fuffered to fhoot into a trunk; and the
coarfer fort, which they fleep upon, from a plant called
evarra. There are many other articles of lefs note, that
employ the fpare time of their females ; as combs, of which
they make Vaft numbers ; and little bafkets made of the
fame fubftance as the mats, and others of the fibrous cocoa-
nut hufk, either plain, or interwoven with fmall beads ;
but all, finifhed with fuch neatnefs and tafte in the difpofi-
tion of the various parts, that a ftranger cannot help admiring
their afliduity and dexterity.-