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.

It is not fit that a practice so horrid and so strange should be
imputed to human beings upon slight evidence, but I have such as
abundantly justifies me in the account I have given. The people
themselves are so far from concealing their connection with such a
society as a disgrace, that they boast of it as a privilege; and both
myself and Mr Banks, when particular persons have been pointed out to us
as members of the Arreoy, have questioned them about it, and received
the account that has been here given from their own lips. They have
acknowledged, that they had long been of this accursed society, that
they belonged to it at that time, and that several of their children had
been put to death.[15]

[Footnote 15: It seems, from Mr Turnbull's account, that these accursed
arreoys were rather on the increase,--a circumstance, which, considering
that infanticide formed a part, an essential part indeed, of their
policy, may well explain the rapidity in the diminution of the people
before noticed.--E.]

But I must not conclude my account of the domestic life of these people
without mentioning their personal cleanliness. If that which lessens the
good of life and increases the evil is vice, surely cleanliness is a
virtue: The want of it tends to destroy both beauty and health, and
mingles disgust, with our best pleasures. The natives of Otaheite, both
men and women, constantly wash their whole bodies in running water three
times every day; once as soon as they rise in the morning, once at noon,