their fore-teeth. Scarce any of the lower people, and very few of the
chiefs, were seen, who had not lost one or more of them; and we always
understood that this voluntary punishment, like the cutting off the joints
of the finger at the Friendly Islands, was not inflicted on themselves from
the violence of grief on the death of their friends, but was designed as a
propitiatory sacrifice to the _Eatooa_, to avert any danger or mischief to
which they might be exposed.

We were able to learn but little of their notions with regard to a future
state. Whenever we asked them whither the dead were gone? we were always
answered, that the breath, which they appeared to consider as the soul, or
immortal part, was gone to the _Eatooa_; and, on pushing our enquiries
farther, they seemed to describe some particular place, where they imagined
the abode of the deceased to be; but we could not perceive that they
thought, in this state, either rewards or punishments awaited them.

Having promised the reader an explanation of what was meant by the word
_taboo_, I shall, in this place, lay before him the particular instances
that fell under our observation of its application and effects. On our
enquiring into the reasons of the interdiction of all intercourse between
us and the natives, the day preceding the arrival of Terreeoboo, we were
told that the bay was _tabooed_. The same restriction took place, at our
request, the day we interred the bones of Captain Cook. In these two
instances the natives paid the most implicit and scrupulous obedience, but
whether on any religious principle, or merely in deference to the civil
authority of their chiefs, I cannot determine. When the ground near our
observatories, and the place where our masts lay, were _tabooed_, by
sticking small wands round them, this operated in a manner not less
efficacious. But though this mode of consecration was performed by the
priests only, yet still, as the men ventured to come within the space, when