may please his
palate. Nutritious roots are cultivated with great ease; and the sea
yields abundance of shell and other fish, for the trifling trouble of
catching it: the brooks also contain fish, and a species of crab. The
opulent eat fowls and pigs roasted over hot stones in a hole in the
ground, the flavour of which is very agreeable even to an European; and,
by way of variety, they roast _dogs_ which have been fed upon
vegetables, and are considered great delicacies.

Several families often live together in the same house, in the greatest
concord. Their furniture consists simply of a few ingeniously-woven mats
for sleeping on, and some vessels made of gourds and cocoa-nut shells.

The disposition of the Tahaitians is gentle, benevolent, open, gay, and
peaceable, although some of them show scars of wounds received in war,
which prove that they are not deficient in courage. To hatred and
revenge they are wholly strangers. Hardly and unjustly as Cook sometimes
treated them, he was pardoned immediately that he required their
assistance, and showed the slightest wish to pacify them. Individuals of
his crew often ventured to pass the nights alone and unarmed upon the
island: they were every where received with the greatest hospitality,
and overwhelmed with marks of friendship. The simple inhabitants, wholly
devoid of envy, rejoiced in each other's good fortune, and when one
received a present, all seemed equally gratified. Their feelings readily
broke out either into smiles or tears: even men were often seen to weep;
and their joys and sorrows were as fugitive as those of children. Nor
are their minds more stable: notwithstanding the great curiosity with
which they gazed at and required an explanation of every object in the
ship, it was as impossible, says the elder Forster, to rivet their
attention for any time, as to make quicksilver stand still.

They seemed incapable of either mental or bodily effort, and their time
was passed in indolence and enjoyment. They were, however, skilful in
manufacturing a soft paper from the barks of trees; nets and lines from
the fibres of the cocoa-nut; and hooks from muscle-shells; in weaving
their rush mats, and especially in building canoes and war-boats. The
latter, large enough to contain forty men and upwards, were made of
planks laboriously split from the trunks of trees with sharp stones,
for want of better implements, fastened together with cocoa threads, and
well caulked. The