towards the shore, were favourite juvenile sports. Canoe-racing, races
with one party in a canoe and another along the beach, races with both
parties on land, climbing cocoa-nut trees to see who can go up
quickest, reviews and sham-fighting, cock-fighting, tossing up oranges
and keeping three, four, or more of them on the move: these and many
other things were of old and are still numbered among Samoan sports.
The teeth and jaws, too, are called into exercise. One man would
engage to unhusk with his teeth and eat five large native chesnuts
(_Tuscapus edulis_) before another could run a certain distance and
return. If he failed, he paid his basket of cocoa-nuts, or whatever
might be previously agreed upon.

Our juvenile friends will be sure to recognise some of their
favourite amusements in this description, and will, perhaps, feel
inclined to try the novelty of some of these Samoan variations. What a
surprising unity of thought and feeling is discoverable among the
various races of mankind from a comparison of such customs as these!




CHAPTER XI.

MORTALITY, LONGEVITY, DISEASES, ETC.


Mortality, longevity, diseases, and the treatment of the sick, will
now form the subject of a few observations; and here we begin with--

_Infants._--Before the introduction of Christianity probably not less