The next day the chiefs came off to the ship with pigs, bread-fruit, and other provisions, for which they received suitable return presents of hatchets and linen. Cook then established an encampment on shore, but their pleasant relations with the natives were temporarily spoilt by the petulance of a midshipman named Monkhouse (not to be confused with the surgeon of that name) commanding one of the landing parties. A Tahitian had snatched away the musket of one of the marines. Whereupon this midshipman ordered his men to fire into the thickest of the crowd, afterwards pursuing the thief and shooting him dead. However, thanks to the chiefs Tuburai, Tamaide, and Tutaha, peace was made and intercourse soon resumed without much restraint. The body of the man who had been shot in the encampment was found to be wrapped in cloth and placed on a bier supported by stakes under a roof, where it would be allowed to decay with a terrible stench until at last it was nothing but a dry skeleton. Charming as life was in many respects on this Pacific island there was one pest which at times proved almost unendurable--apparently none other than the common house fly, which existed in such enormous numbers that it was an incessant torment during daylight. If one of the draughtsmen attached to the expedition attempted to make a water-colour study of any object, the flies would settle on his paper so thickly that no part of its surface could be seen, and eat the colour up as fast as he could lay it on. [It will be remembered that Tasman noted the same plague of flies in the Tonga archipelago.] The principal personage of Tahiti seemed to be a queen, whose name was Oberea, about forty years of age, almost white-skinned, but now very stout, though with evidence of great beauty at an earlier age. There were several men chiefs of importance in the main island, and something like an aristocracy. This "nobility" had faces of a more Caucasian character and a taller stature than the common people, who were many of them in the position of serfs. The Tahitians believed in numerous gods, one of which was supreme over the rest. They also had priests called _tahawa_, who were the "wise men" of the land, possessing more knowledge of navigation, astronomy, and medicine than the others. They believed vaguely in a life after death, and their dead were disposed of usually (in all but cases of worthless slaves) in the following manner (I quote from Banks):--