Nineteen years in Polynesia Author:George Turner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HOSTILITIES AKD DIFFICULTIES. As we awoke one morning, we heard an unusual stir and snouting, and, on looking out, saw the natives hurrying pa... more »st with their clubs and spears, and talking about war. Presently we found that a chief in the neighbourhood had been killed by a party from a tribe a few miles off, wh6 had been lurking about for a victim as the signal to renew a former war. We made all haste, and went off too, thinking we might possibly be able to mediate, and get the affair settled without further bloodshed. We soon reached the settlement of the poor man who had just been killed, and in the centre of the village there was a most affecting scene. The men were all off to the battle; but there were some thirty or forty women, with their children, rending the air with the most doleful wailing over the dead body of their chief. He was laid out on a mat in a reclining posture, with his face painted red, and supported in the arms of his wife. We expressed our sympathy, felt the region of the heart, and found the poor man was quite dead. He had a great spear-hole in his left cheek, and, as his wife raised a covering which had been put on his head, we saw that his skull had been beaten in by a club. The women implored us not to go further, lest anything should happen to us; but we went on a mile or two, until we were close up to the yells and hootings of their savage fight. I climbed a tree, and looked ahead a bit, but the bush concealed what was going on. Here, however, a number of the chiefs came running to us. We found that it was vain that day to attempt any interview with the enemy, and, at the entreaties of our people, returned, lest we should get mixed up in the affray, and wounded unintentionally by some arrow, or stone from a sling. All that we could ...« less