to the shore with drums beating, flutes playing, and streamers
floating on the wind, was a picturesque sight, and as the canoes neared
the land the dancers might be seen jigging it on stages erected on
board, while the voices of the singers mingled with the roll of the
drums, the shrill music of the flutes, and the roar of the surf on the
beach in a confused but not unmelodious babel of sound.[59]

[58] J. R. Forster, _Observations_, p. 412; G. Forster,
_Voyage_, ii. 128.

[59] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 236 _sq._ Compare J. A. Moerenhout,
_op. cit._ ii. 132 _sq._ According to the latter writer there
were traditions of as many as a hundred and fifty canoes sailing
at once, each one seldom containing less than thirty or forty,
and sometimes a hundred persons.

On landing in an island their first business was to take a small
sucking-pig to the temple and present it to the god as a thank-offering
to him for having brought them safe to shore. This, we are told, was the
only sacrifice ever offered in token of gratitude by any of the South
Sea Islanders to their imaginary divinities.[60] While they were
everywhere welcomed by the vulgar for the merriment they carried with
them, and were everywhere countenanced and liberally entertained by the
kings and chiefs, who found them convenient tools of fraud and
oppression, they were not received with equal enthusiasm by the farmers,
who had to furnish them with provisions, and who durst not refuse them
anything, however unreasonable and extortionate their demands. For the
Areois lived on the fat of the land. When they alighted, like a swarm of
locusts, on a rich district, they would send out their henchmen to scour
the neighbourhood and plunder the miserable inhabitants; and when they
moved on to their next halting-place, the gardens which they left behind
them often presented a scene of desolation and ruin.[61] Such havoc,
indeed, did they spread by their feastings and carousings on even a
short visit of a few days, that in some parts of Tahiti the natives were
compelled to abandon the fertile lowlands and retreat up the mountains,
submitting to the trouble of clambering up almost inaccessible slopes
and cultivating a less fruitful soil rather than expose much of the
produce of their labour to the ravages of these privileged robbers.[62]

[60] D. Tyerman and G. Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 326 _sq._

[61] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 237 _sq._; D. Tyerman a