Cutting, or inciding the foreskin, should be mentioned here as a practice adopted amongst them from a notion of cleanliness; and they have a reproachful epithet in their language for those who do not observe that custom. When there are five or six lads pretty well grown up in a neighbourhood, the father of one of them goes to a _Tahoua_, or man of knowledge, and lets him know. He goes with the lads to the top of the hills, attended by a servant, and seating one of them properly, introduces a piece of wood underneath the foreskin, and desires him to look aside at something he pretends is coming; having thus engaged the young man's attention to another object, he cuts through the skin upon the wood with a shark's tooth, generally at one stroke. He then separates, or rather turns back the divided parts; and having put on a bandage, proceeds to perform the same operation on the other lads. At the end of five days they bathe, and the bandages being taken off, the matter is cleaned away. At the end of five days more they bathe again, and are well; but a thickness of the prepuce, where it was cut, remaining, they go again to the mountains with the _Tahoua_ and servant; and a fire being prepared, and some stones heated, the _Tahoua_ puts the prepuce between two of them, and squeezes it gently, which removes the thickness. They then return home, having their heads, and other parts of their bodies, adorned with odoriferous flowers; and the _Tahoua_ is rewarded for his services by their fathers, in proportion to their several abilities, with presents of hogs and cloth; and if they be poor, their relations are liberal on the occasion. Their religious system is extensive, and, in many instances, singular; but few of the common people have a perfect knowledge of it; that being confined chiefly to their priests, who are pretty numerous. They do not seem to pay respect to one god, as possessing pre-eminence; but believe in a plurality of divinities, who are all very powerful; and in this case, as different parts of the island, and the other islands in the neighbourhood, have different ones, the inhabitants of each, no doubt, think that they have chosen the most eminent, or, at least, one who is invested with power sufficient to protect them, and to supply all their wants. If he should not answer their expectations, they think it no impiety to change; as has very lately happened in Tiarabooa, where, in the room of the two divinities formerly honoured there, Oraa,[4] god of Bolabola, had been adopted, I should suppose, because he is the protector of a people who have been victorious in war; and as, since they have made this change, they have been very successful themselves against the inhabitants of _Otaheite-nooe_, they impute it entirely to _Oraa_, who, as they literally say, fights their battles.