h a Tongan canoe or a passing
vessel.

A time was fixed when the parties assembled. The bride and her
friends, taking with them her dowry, proceeded to the home of the
bridegroom, which might be in another settlement, or on an adjacent
island. If they were people of rank it was the custom that the
ceremonies of the occasion pass off in the marae. The marae is the
forum or place of public assembly--an open circular space, surrounded
by bread-fruit trees, under the shade of which the people sit. Here
the bridegroom and his friends and the whole village assembled,
together with the friends of the bride. All were seated cross-legged
around the marae, glistening from head to foot with scented oil, and
decked off with beads, garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, and
whatever else their varying fancy might suggest for the joyous
occasion. In a house close by the bride was seated. A pathway from
this house to the marae, in front of where the bridegroom sits, was
carpeted with fancy native cloth; and, all being ready, the bride,
decked off with beads, a garland of flowers or fancy shells, and girt
round the waist with fine mats, flowing in a train five or six feet
behind her, moved slowly along towards the marae. She was followed
along the carpeted pathway by a train of young women, dressed like
herself, each bearing a valuable mat, half spread out, holding it to
the gaze of the assembly; and, when they reached the bridegroom, the
mats were laid down before him. They then returned to the house for
more, and went on renewing the procession and display until some fifty
or a hundred fine mats and two or three hundred pieces of native cloth
were heaped before the bridegroom. This was the dowry. The bride then
advanced to the bridegroom and sat down. By-and-by she rose up before
the assembly, and was received with shouts of applause, and, as a
further expression of respect, her immediate friends, young and old,
took up stones and beat themselves until their heads were bruised and
bleeding. The obscenity to prove her virginity which preceded this
burst of feeling will not bear the light of description. Then followed
a display of the _oloa_ (or property) which the bridegroom presented
to the friends of the bride. Then they had dinner, and after that,
the distribution of the property. The father, or, failing him, the
brother or sister of the father of the bridegroom, had the disposal of
the _tonga_ which formed the dowry; and on the othe