t behind, but the
most prevailing custom is to permit it to hang over the shoulders. The
females may be termed handsome, of fine forms, and although possessing
a modest demeanour, flocked on board in numbers on the ship's arrival.
The women before marriage have the hair cut close and covered with the
shoroi, which is burnt coral mixed with the gum of the bread-fruit tree;
this is removed after marriage and their hair is permitted to grow long,
but on the death of a chief or their parents it is cut close as a badge
of mourning. Both sexes paint themselves with a mixture of the root of
the turmeric plant (curcuma longa) and cocoa-nut oil, which frequently
changed our clothes and persons of an icteroid hue, from _our_
curiosity to mingle with them in the villages--_theirs_ to come on
board the ship.

On visiting the king, who resided at the village of Fangwot, we found
him a well-formed and handsome man, apparently about thirty years of
age; the upper part of his body was thickly covered with the Rang, or
paint of turmeric and oil, which had been recently laid on in honour
of the visit from the strangers. There was somewhat of novelty, but
little of "regal magnificence" in our reception. In the open air, under
the wide-spreading branches of their favourite Fifau, (Callophyllum
Inophyllum) sat his Majesty squatted on the ground, and surrounded by a
crowd of his subjects. The introduction was equally unostentatious; one
of the natives who had accompanied us from the ship, pointing towards
him, said, in tolerably pronounced English, "That the king." His Majesty
not being himself acquainted with our language, one of his attendants,
who spoke it with considerable fluency, acted as interpreter. After some
common-place questions, such as where the ship came from, where bound
to, what provisions we stood in need of, &c., we adjourned to the royal
habitation, which differed in no respect from the other native houses.
Yams, bread-fruit, and fish, wrapped in the plantain leaves in which
they had been cooked, were here placed before us, with cocoa-nut water
for our beverage; plantain leaves serving also as plates.

The chiefs are elected kings in rotation, and the royal office is
held for six months, but by the consent of the other chiefs, it may be
retained by the same chief for two or three years. The royal title is
Sho: the king to whom we had been introduced, as a chief, is named Mora.
We had an interview also with the former kin