As my curiosity was excited by Mr. Monkhouse’s account of the situation of the man who had been shot, I took an opportunity to go with some others to see it. I found the shed under which his body lay, close by the house in which he resided when he was alive, some others being not more than ten yards distant; it was about 15 feet long, and 11 broad, and of a proportionable height: one end was wholly open, and the other end, and the two sides, were partly enclosed with a kind of wicker work. The bier on which the corpse was deposited, was a frame of wood like that in which the sea-beds, called cotts, are placed, with a matted bottom, and supported by four posts, at the height of about five feet from the ground. The body was covered first with a mat, and then with white cloth; by the side of it lay a wooden mace, one of their weapons of war, and near the head of it, which lay next to the close end of the shed, lay two cocoa-nut shells, such as are sometimes used to carry water in; at the other end a bunch of green leaves, with some dried twigs, all tied together, were stuck in the ground, by which lay a stone about as big as a cocoa-nut: near these lay one of the young plantain trees, which are used for emblems of peace, and close by it a stone axe. At the open end of the shed also hung, in several strings, a great number of palm-nuts, and without the shed was stuck upright in the ground the stem of a plantain tree about five feet high, upon the top of which was placed a cocoa-nut shell full of fresh water: against the side of one of the posts hung a small bag, containing a few pieces of bread-fruit ready roasted, which were not all put in at the same time, for some of them were fresh, and others stale. I took notice that several of the natives observed us with a mixture of solicitude and jealousy in their countenances, and by their gestures expressed uneasiness when we went near the body, standing themselves at a little distance while we were making our examination, and appearing to be pleased when we came away. Our residence on shore would by no means have been disagreeable if we had not been incessantly tormented by the flies, which, among other mischief, made it almost impossible for Mr. Parkinson, Mr. Banks’s natural-history painter, to work; for they not only covered his subject so as that no part of its surface could be seen, but even ate the colour off the paper as fast as he could lay it on. We had recourse to musquito-nets and fly-traps, which, though they made the inconvenience tolerable, were very far from removing it.