In our return to the ship, we put ashore at a place where, in the corner of a house, we saw four wooden images, each two feet long, standing on a shelf, having a piece of cloth round their middle, and a kind of turban on their heads, in which were stuck long cocks feathers. A person in the house told us they were, _Eatua no te Toutou_, gods of the servants or slaves. I doubt if this be sufficient to conclude that they pay them divine worship, and that the servants or slaves are not allowed the same gods as men of more elevated rank. I never heard that Tupia made any such distinction, or that they worshipped any visible thing whatever. Besides, these were the first wooden gods we had seen in any of the isles; and all the authority we had for their being such, was the bare word of perhaps a superstitious person, and whom we were likewise liable to misunderstand. It must be allowed that the people of this isle are, in general, more superstitious than at Otaheite. At the first visit I made the chief after our arrival, he desired I would not suffer any of my people to shoot herons and wood-peckers; birds as sacred with them as robin-red breasts, swallows, &c. are with many old women in England. Tupia, who was a priest, and well acquainted with their religion, customs, traditions, &c., paid little or no regard to these birds. I mention this because some amongst us were of opinion that these birds are their _Eatuas_, or gods. We, indeed, fell into this opinion when I was here in 1769, and into some others still more absurd, which we had undoubtedly adopted if Tupia had not undeceived us. A man of his knowledge and understanding we have not since met with, and consequently have added nothing to his account of their religion, but superstitious notions.