Human sacrifices are more frequent here, according to the account of the natives themselves, than in any other islands we visited. These horrid rites are not only had recourse to upon the commencement of war, and preceding great battles and other signal enterprises, but the death of any considerable chief calls for a sacrifice of one or more _Towtows_, according to his rank; and we were told, that ten men were destined to suffer on the death of Terreeoboo. What may, if any thing possibly can, lessen, in some small degree, the horror of this practice is, that the unhappy victims have not the most distant intimation of their fate. Those who are fixed upon to fall, are set upon with clubs wherever they happen to be, and, after being dispatched, are brought dead to the place, where the remainder of the rites are completed. The reader will here call to his remembrance the skulls of the captives that had been sacrificed at the death of some great chief, and which were fixed on the rails round the top of the _morai_ at Kakooa. We got a farther piece of intelligence upon this subject at the village of Kowrowa; where, on our enquiring into the use of a small piece of ground, inclosed with a stone-fence, we were told that it was an _Here-eere_, or burying-ground of a chief; and there, added our informer, pointing to one of the corners, lie the _tangata_ and _waheene taboo_, or the man and woman who were sacrificed at his funeral. To this class of their customs may also be referred that of knocking out their fore-teeth. Scarce any of the lower people, and very few of the chiefs, were seen, who had not lost one or more of them; and we always understood that this voluntary punishment, like the cutting off the joints of the finger at the Friendly Islands, was not inflicted on themselves from the violence of grief on the death of their friends, but was designed as a propitiatory sacrifice to the _Eatooa_, to avert any danger or mischief to which they might be exposed. We were able to learn but little of their notions with regard to a future state. Whenever we asked them whither the dead were gone? we were always answered, that the breath, which they appeared to consider as the soul, or immortal part, was gone to the _Eatooa_; and, on pushing our enquiries farther, they seemed to describe some particular place, where they imagined the abode of the deceased to be; but we could not perceive that they thought, in this state, either rewards or punishments awaited them.