OF THE TONGA PEOPLE.

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of their own : the matabooles, however, except-ing, perhaps, two or three inspectors of thechief’s plantations, dwell always in or near hisfencing, as their presence is so often requiredby him for the regulation of different matters :with respect to the inferior chiefs, they gene-rally live at their plantations; but the greaterpart, or, at least, about half of the mooas, dwellin the neighbourhood of the great chief towhom they belong.

We shall now explain how these differentindividuals come to attach themselves to a par-ticular chief. We will suppose that the presentking or any other great chief has a son six orseven years of age, his playmates are the sonsof the inferior chiefs, matabooles, and mooasof his father’s establishment, who freely asso-ciate with him, accompany him upon excursions,and imitate, in many respects, the habits oftheir parents : he does not, however, designedlyplay the chief, and conduct himself with arro-gance towards them; they know his superiorrank without being reminded of it; and althoughthey wrestle and box, and play all manner ofgames with him, they never fail before they eatto perform the ceremony of mbe-moe , to take offthe taboo which his superior rank has imposedupon his inferior associates: in some of hiscountry excursions, he perhaps meets with