provisions wanting. For two or three days, great quantities of
mackerel had been caught by the natives, within the reef, in seines;
some of which they brought to the ships and tents and sold.

Otoo was not more attentive to supply our wants, by a succession of
presents, than he was to contribute to our amusement, by a succession
of diversions. A party of us having gone down to Oparre on the 10th,
he treated us with what may be called a play. His three sisters were
the actresses; and the dresses that they appeared in were new and
elegant; that is, more so than we had usually met with at any of these
islands. But the principal object I had in view, this day, in going
to Oparre, was to take a view of an embalmed corpse, which some of our
gentlemen had happened to meet with at that place, near the residence
of Otoo. On enquiry, I found it to be the remains of Tee, a chief well
known to me when I was at this island during my last voyage. It was
lying in a _toopapaoo_, more elegantly constructed than their common
ones, and in all respects similar to that lately seen by us at
Oheitepeha, in which the remains of Waheiadooa are deposited, embalmed
in the same manner. When we arrived at the place, the body was under
cover, and wrapped up in cloth within the _toopapaoo_; but, at my
desire, the man who had the care of it, brought it out, and laid it
upon a kind of bier, in such a manner, that we had as full a view of
it as we could wish; but we were not allowed to go within the pales
that enclosed the _toopapaoo_. After he had thus exhibited the corpse,
he hung the place with mats and cloth, so disposed as to produce a
very pretty effect. We found the body not only entire in every part;
but, what surprised us much more, was, that putrefaction seemed
scarcely to be begun, as there was not the least disagreeable smell
proceeding from it; though the climate is one of the hottest, and Tee
had been dead above four months. The only remarkable alteration that