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great insight into matters of futurity, he shotit with his musket: but, however, this did notprevent them from going back to their gar-rison ; and several had a full conviction thatMr. Mariner would soon be killed for this sa-crilege.

In respect to the charms practised amongthem, we have also a few words to say. Theprincipal is that called tatao , which has alreadybeen described, Vol. I. chap. 14. There areonly two other practices which can well comeunder this head, viz. cube, or rather vangi,which means a curse, or a malevolent order orcommand; and ta nioo, a charm to discoverwhether a sick person will live or die. Of theformer, viz. cabe , we have given instances (Vol.I. p. 284), from which it will appear that theyare chiefly malevolent wishes, or commands,that the object may eat, or otherwise maltreathis relations or gods; and when we come toreflect that they believe in no future place ofpunishment, but that all human evils are theconsequences of crimes, and that disrespect toone’s superior relations is little short of sacrilegeto the gods, these malevolent commands, how-ever ridiculous some of them may appear to us,amount to the most horrible curses ; for if suchcommands were fulfilled, nothing less than themost dreadful of human miseries would be ex-