A party of the men then presented themselves dressed with a large quantity of curiously-coloured cloth[49] and after performing various dances and manœuvres and leaving their dresses for the men of our party, they marched for the mountains having likewise received the King’s approbation and our shouts and expressions of admiration. The tribute was now examined by the King’s command. It consisted of 280 hogs, vast quantities of yams, cava-root, etc., on which the High-Priest of our nation envoked the Great Spirit for his approbation of the tribute. The priest, after a ceremony of twirling a cocoanut round two or three times, pronounced that it was very Good, and that it would be proper to have a feast of pork and yams, drink cava, etc. The King then gave orders for a certain number of hogs to be killed, the rest to be divided, and the cava got ready and as we had had nothing to eat for some days we all joined in obeying orders. Each one of the party, ourselves not excepted, received a portion of the provisions and while the King drank his cava, the people prepared the feast. The King gave the mountaineers a few presents and a specimen of his eloquence in which he informed them that as the ship cast away on his shores had rendered him very powerful, he should expect a larger tribute the next year, giving them to understand he should be ready to use forcible means if it became necessary. With this, the chief took his leave of us and we commenced, according to the advice of the priest, to eat. At night we repaired to the canoes with the tribute and on the next morning started for the town where on the 20th of April we arrived. On our return, the 2nd officer of the ship, with the carpenter and a number of the crew, left in a canoe to go to Bow, having understood by the natives that a vessel was lost in the same gale that had wrecked our ship and that the Captain and crew resided there. We found the natives of another town, enemies to the King, had set fire to the _Glide_ and she had burnt nearly up. The 2nd chief, to whom the ship had been delivered, when we abandon’d her, was now taken sick and the priest continued to howl through the night for his recovery. On our asking the reason of such proceedings they told us that the priest was angry because a sufficient sacrifice of pigs had not been made and that the Great Spirit had caused a sickness to afflict the greatest warrior. A number of hogs were immediately killed and buried and numbers of the friends of the chief’s cut off a finger or toe[50] to satisfy the Great Spirit. We learn’d that it was the custom to cut off their fingers or toes on the death of their friends or on the sickness of their chiefs. We saw a number of very aged people who had become feeble and infirm, call round their friends and bid them farewell and then allow themselves to be strangled and buried without showing any signs of fear for the future or regret for leaving the past.