The nose only is defective in these beauties, it is usually too flat, but may sometimes be seen as perfectly formed as in the females of Europe. The curse, "in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," falls harmless on the Tahaitians. Three bread-fruit trees are sufficient for a man's subsistence during a year; and he has here only to stretch out his hand to obtain this and many other fruits whose variety may please his palate. Nutritious roots are cultivated with great ease; and the sea yields abundance of shell and other fish, for the trifling trouble of catching it: the brooks also contain fish, and a species of crab. The opulent eat fowls and pigs roasted over hot stones in a hole in the ground, the flavour of which is very agreeable even to an European; and, by way of variety, they roast _dogs_ which have been fed upon vegetables, and are considered great delicacies. Several families often live together in the same house, in the greatest concord. Their furniture consists simply of a few ingeniously-woven mats for sleeping on, and some vessels made of gourds and cocoa-nut shells. The disposition of the Tahaitians is gentle, benevolent, open, gay, and peaceable, although some of them show scars of wounds received in war, which prove that they are not deficient in courage. To hatred and revenge they are wholly strangers. Hardly and unjustly as Cook sometimes treated them, he was pardoned immediately that he required their assistance, and showed the slightest wish to pacify them. Individuals of his crew often ventured to pass the nights alone and unarmed upon the island: they were every where received with the greatest hospitality, and overwhelmed with marks of friendship. The simple inhabitants, wholly devoid of envy, rejoiced in each other's good fortune, and when one received a present, all seemed equally gratified. Their feelings readily broke out either into smiles or tears: even men were often seen to weep; and their joys and sorrows were as fugitive as those of children. Nor are their minds more stable: notwithstanding the great curiosity with which they gazed at and required an explanation of every object in the ship, it was as impossible, says the elder Forster, to rivet their attention for any time, as to make quicksilver stand still. They seemed incapable of either mental or bodily effort, and their time was passed in indolence and enjoyment. They were, however, skilful in manufacturing a soft paper from the barks of trees; nets and lines from the fibres of the cocoa-nut; and hooks from muscle-shells; in weaving their rush mats, and especially in building canoes and war-boats. The latter, large enough to contain forty men and upwards, were made of planks laboriously split from the trunks of trees with sharp stones, for want of better implements, fastened together with cocoa threads, and well caulked. The value they set on our axes and nails may therefore be easily imagined.