There are also houses of a much larger size, built as common receptacles for all the people of a district. Some of these are two hundred feet long, thirty broad, and under the ridge twenty feet high. These, which are built at the common expence of the district, have on one side of them a large area, inclosed with low palisades; yet, like those of separate families, they have no walls. Privacy, indeed, is little wanted among people who have not even the idea of indecency, and who gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses, with no more sense of impropriety or shame, than we feel when we satisfy our hunger at a social board with our family or friends. In other countries, the girls and unmarried women are supposed to be wholly ignorant of what others, upon some occasions, may appear to know; and their conduct and conversation are consequently restrained within narrower bounds, and kept at a more remote distance from whatever relates to a connection with the other sex; but here it is just the contrary. Among other diversions, there is a dance called timorodee, which is performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words, which, if it were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. In these dances they keep time with an exactness, which is scarcely excelled by the best performers upon the stages of Europe. But the practice which is allowed to the virgin, is prohibited to the woman from the moment that she has put these hopeful lessons in practice, and realized the symbols of the dance. It cannot be supposed that, among these people, chastity is held in much estimation. It might be expected that sisters and daughters would be offered to strangers, either as a courtesy, or for reward; and that breaches of conjugal fidelity, even in the wife, should not be otherwise punished than by a few hard words, or perhaps a slight beating, as indeed is the case: but there is a scale in dissolute sensuality, which these people have ascended, wholly unknown to every other nation, whose manners have been recorded from the beginning of the world to the present hour, and which no imagination could possibly conceive. A very considerable number of the principal people of Otaheite, of both sexes, have formed themselves into a society, in which every woman is common to every man; thus securing a perpetual variety, as often as their inclination prompts them to seek it, which is so frequent, that the same man and woman seldom cohabit together more than two or three days. t These societies are distinguished by the name of arreoy; and the members have meetings, at which no other is present, where the men amuse themselves by wrestling, and the women, notwithstanding their occasional connection with different men, dance the timorodee in all its latitude, as an incitement to desires, which, it is said, are frequently gratified upon the spot. This, however, is comparatively nothing. If any of the women happen to be with child, which in this manner of life happens less frequently than if they were to cohabit only with one man, the poor infant is smothered the moment it is born, that it may be no incumbrance to the father, nor interrupt the mother in the pleasures of her diabolical prostitution. It sometimes indeed happens, that the pas sion which prompts a woman to enter into this society, is surmounted when she becomes a mother, by that instinctive affection which nature has given to all creatures for the preservation of their offspring; but even in this case she is not permitted to spare the life of her infant, except she can find a man who will patronise it as his child; if this can be done, the murder is prevented; but both the man and woman, being deemed by this act to have appropriated each other, are ejected from the community, and forfeit all claim to the privileges and pleasures of arreoy for the future; the woman from that time being distinguished by the term whannownow, "bearer of children," which is here a term of reproach; though none can be more honourable in the estimation of wisdom and humanity, of right reason, and every passion that distinguishes the man from the brute. Their principal manufacture is their cloth, of which there are three kinds, made of the bark of three different trees. The finest and whitest is made of the Chinese paper mulberry-tree; this is worn chiefly by the principal people, and when it is dyed red, takes a better colour. A second sort, inferior in whiteness and softness, is made of the bread-fruit tree, and is chiefly worn by the inferior people; and a third, of a tree that resembles the fig, which is coarse and harsh, and of the colour of the darkest brown paper; this, though it is less pleasing both to the eye and the touch, is the most valuable, because it resists water, which the other sorts will not. Another considerable manufacture is matting, some of which is finer, and in every respect better, than any we have in Europe. The coarser sort serves them to sleep upon, and the finer to wear in wet weather. |