back again. This is reckoned very disgraceful, and is also attended with
the loss of the board, which I have often seen, with great terror, dashed
to pieces, at the very moment the islander quitted it. The boldness and
address with which we saw them perform these difficult and dangerous
manoeuvres, were altogether astonishing, and is scarcely to be
credited.[11]

An accident, of which I was a near spectator, shews at how early a period
they are so far familiarized to the water, as both to lose all fears of it,
and to set its dangers at defiance. A canoe being overset, in which was a
woman with her children, one of them an infant, who, I am convinced, was
not more than four years old, seemed highly delighted with what had
happened, swimming about at its ease, and playing a hundred tricks, till
the canoe was put to rights again.

Besides the amusements I have already mentioned, the young children have
one, which was much played at, and shewed no small degree of dexterity.
They take a short stick, with a peg sharpened at both ends, running through
one extremity of it, and extending about an inch on each side; and throwing
up a ball, made of green leaves, moulded together, and secured with twine,
they catch it on the point of the peg; and immediately throwing it up again
from the peg, they turn the stick round, and thus keep catching it on each
peg alternately, without missing it, for a considerable time. They are not
less expert at another game of the same nature, tossing up in the air, and
catching, in their turns, a number of these balls; so that we frequently
saw little children thus keep in motion five at a time. With this latter
play the young people likewise divert themselves at the Friendly Islands.

The great resemblance which prevails in the mode of agriculture and
navigation, amongst all the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, leaves me