We visit Ulitea, a beautiful island where there is a vast morai. Numbers of priests reside here, and it is looked on as the sacred island of the group. In reality it is more given over to horrible wickedness than any other. While on shore we witness another terrible human sacrifice. Not a week passes but some unhappy people fall victims to the bloodthirsty passions of the priests. This my first introduction to savage life makes me feel doubly grateful to God that I was born of Christian parents, and in a land where the law of Christ, however imperfectly obeyed, is acknowledged in some sort as the standard. The wind being fair, we sail north-east towards the Marquesas. We have been for ten days at the anchorage of Taogou, off the island of Ohevahoa, the most fertile of the Marquesas. We have been engaged most profitably in purchasing sandal-wood, and hogs, and fruits, and vegetables of all sorts, and Phineas Golding is in high spirits, and declares that these are a people truly after his own heart. Their country certainly is beautiful, for though the mountains are not so lofty as those of the islands we have lately left, they equally please the eye, as do the groves, the valleys, and the waterfalls. The men are tall, handsome, and athletic, and the women are scarcely inferior in beauty to those of Tahiti. Alas, that I can say no more in their praise. Both men and women are most depraved, of which we have constant evidence. Hitherto we have been on good terms with these islanders. We have a strict watch kept, and whatever may be their secret disposition, they have had no opportunity of taking us at advantage. Taro warns us to be on our guard. He tells us that they are treacherous, and that if they thought they would gain by murdering every man of our crew they would do so. Taro understands their language, which is much like that of Tahiti and his own country. The men are much tattooed, their only clothing being a piece of native cloth round their loins, but the women wear a petticoat and a mantle over the shoulder. This cloth is made of the fibre of a sort of mulberry tree--not woven, but beaten into a consistency of paper. When torn the rent is mended by beating on a fresh piece. It will bear washing only once. A garment thus lasts about six weeks. The women are better treated than among most Indian tribes. Their occupations are entirely domestic--they manufacture cloth, cook, tend the house, and look after the children, but from all we hear and see, their morals are degraded in the extreme.