te
diversions are chiefly singing, dancing, and music performed by the
women. When two or three women sing in concert, and snap their fingers,
it is called _hoobai_; but when there is a greater number, they divide
into several parties, each of which sings on a different key, which
makes a very agreeable music, and is called _heeva_ or _haiva_. In the
same manner, they vary the music of their flutes by playing on those of
a different size; but their dancing is much the same as when they
perform publicly. The dancing of the men (if it is to be called
dancing), although it does not consist much in moving the feet, as we
do, has a thousand different motions with the hands, to which we are
entire strangers; and they are performed with an ease and grace which
are not to be described, nor even conceived, but by those who have seen
them. But I need add nothing to what has been already said on this
subject, in the account of the incidents that happened during our stay
at the islands.[182]

[Footnote 182: If, to the copious descriptions that occur in the
preceding pages, of the particular entertainments exhibited in Hepaee
and Tongataboo, we add the general view of the usual amusements of the
inhabitants of these islands, contained in this paragraph, and compare
it with the quotation from the Jesuit's Letters, in a former note, we
shall be still more forcibly struck with the reasonableness of tracing
such singularly resembling customs to one common source. The argument,
in confirmation of this, drawn from identity of language, has been
already illustrated, by observing the remarkable coincidence of the name
by which the chiefs of the Caroline Islands, and those at Hamao, one of
the friendly ones, are distinguished. But the argument does not rest on
a single instance, though that happens to be a very striking one.
Another of the very few specimens of the dialect of the North Pacific
islanders, preserved by Father Cantova, furnishes an additional proof.
Immediately after the passage above referred to, he proceeds thus: "Ce
divertissement s'appelle, en leur langue, _tanger ifaifil_; qui veut
dire, la plainte des femmes."--_Lettres tres Edifiantes et Curieuses_,
tom. xv. p. 315. Now it is very remarkable, that we learn from Mr
Anderson's collection of words, which will appear in this chapter, that
_la plainte des femmes_, or, in English, _the mournful song of the
women_, which the inhabitants of the Caroline Islands express in their