Whether
This Was His Name Or His Title I Cannot Determine, As We Never Heard
It Mentioned Again By The Natives; But They All Agreed In Telling Us,
That He Was Their Areghee, Or King.
They added, that his name was
Latoo-Ni-pooroo, of which we concluded that the former part (Latoo)
was
A title, it being the same which Schooten and La Maire, the Dutch
navigators, in the year 1616, found at the Cocos, Traytors, and Horne
islands, which are situated in this neighbourhood, only a few degrees
to the northward. We were confirmed in this opinion by the great
correspondence of the vocabularies, which these intelligent seamen
have left us, with the language which was spoken at Tonga-Tabboo, and
still more so by the entire similarity in the behaviour and customs of
these islanders." - G.F.
[7] Mr G. Forster agrees with Cook as to the toper-like qualities of
this priest, but speaks of his having great authority among the
people. This merely apparent difference of statement is quite easily
understood, by what one may witness in some other countries, where
respect for the ecclesiastical office is not unfrequently accompanied
with the most thoroughly merited contempt of the self-degraded
hirelings that sustain it. The three-bottle vicar still continues in
England, to obtain the accustomed reverence to his surplice, from the
wondering parishioners, though the companions of his jovial hours have
long ceased to feel the slightest compunctions arising from inward
respect, when they laugh at his heinously red nose, or chorus in his
ribaldry.
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