Voyages and Travels Round the World; By the REV. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq. Deputed from the London Missionary Society to Visit Their Vari (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 edition. Excerpt: ...taught to his successor, all the family aneedotes of his patron, and the national events of his own times. These accumulated memorials, some in prose and others in verse, were occasionally rehearsed at feasts and public assemblies, in the most exact manner, though frequently of great length, and embracing a vast variety of heterogeneous narratives, in which fiction and fact were inextricably blended. Tamatoa himself is an eminent chronicler in this way, and on a certain great national occasion, not long ago, traced up his own genealogy to Taroa. When a new king was consecrated, by ceremonies too filthy to be detailed, he was invested with the maro or hereditary robe of royalty, of net-work covered with red feathers, and to which an additional lappet is annexed at the accession of each sovereign. This splendid train, which was wont to be wound about the body, and flowed upon the ground, is twentyone leet in length, and six inches broad. The needle by which the fabric was wrought is still attached to it, and according to report no stitch VISIT TO OPOA--PUBLIC FESTIVAL. 139 could be taken with it, but thunder was forthwith heard in the heavens. The symbolical marks, which are apparent on the plumage and texture, indicate that many hundreds of human victims have been sacrificed, during its gradual making and extension, when the sundry monarchs, by whom it has been worn in succession, wrapped themselves with its folds, as their insignia of authority. This sacred maro has, therefore, never been completed, nor might have been, so long as the ancient system continued, for it was intended to be lengthened to the end of time, or at least to the end of empire in the island. Hence, almost every handbreadth of the patchwork that composed it...