All parties consenting, preparations commenced, and one, two, or three months were spent collecting various kinds of property. All the family and relatives of the bride were called upon to assist, and thus they raised a great quantity of _tonga_, which included all kinds of fine mats and native cloth, manufactured by the women. This was invariably the dowry presented to the bridegroom and his friends on the celebration of the nuptials. He and his friends, on the other hand, collected in a similar manner for the family of the bride _oloa_, which included canoes, pigs, and foreign property of any kind which might fall into their hands, such as knives, hatchets, trinkets, cloth, garments, etc., received through a Tongan canoe or a passing vessel. A time was fixed when the parties assembled. The bride and her friends, taking with them her dowry, proceeded to the home of the bridegroom, which might be in another settlement, or on an adjacent island. If they were people of rank it was the custom that the ceremonies of the occasion pass off in the marae. The marae is the forum or place of public assembly--an open circular space, surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under the shade of which the people sit. Here the bridegroom and his friends and the whole village assembled, together with the friends of the bride. All were seated cross-legged around the marae, glistening from head to foot with scented oil, and decked off with beads, garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, and whatever else their varying fancy might suggest for the joyous occasion. In a house close by the bride was seated. A pathway from this house to the marae, in front of where the bridegroom sits, was carpeted with fancy native cloth; and, all being ready, the bride, decked off with beads, a garland of flowers or fancy shells, and girt round the waist with fine mats, flowing in a train five or six feet behind her, moved slowly along towards the marae. She was followed along the carpeted pathway by a train of young women, dressed like herself, each bearing a valuable mat, half spread out, holding it to the gaze of the assembly; and, when they reached the bridegroom, the mats were laid down before him. They then returned to the house for more, and went on renewing the procession and display until some fifty or a hundred fine mats and two or three hundred pieces of native cloth were heaped before the bridegroom. This was the dowry. The bride then advanced to the bridegroom and sat down. By-and-by she rose up before the assembly, and was received with shouts of applause, and, as a further expression of respect, her immediate friends, young and old, took up stones and beat themselves until their heads were bruised and bleeding. The obscenity to prove her virginity which preceded this burst of feeling will not bear the light of description. Then followed a display of the _oloa_ (or property) which the bridegroom presented to the friends of the bride. Then they had dinner, and after that,