I Will Not Pretend
To Say Whether It Was Real Or Feigned Grief They Shewed On This Occasion.
Perhaps There Was A Mixture Of Both; But Were I To Abide By My Own Opinion
Only, I Should Believe It Was Real.
At last, when we were about to weigh,
they took a most affectionate leave.
Oree's last request was for me to
return; when he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of
my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I
hesitated not a moment to tell him Stepney; the parish in which I live when
in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could
pronounce it; then, Stepney Marai no Toote was echoed through an
hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put
to Mr Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more
proper answer, by saying, no man, who used the sea, could say where he
should be buried. It is the custom, at these isles, for all the great
families to have burial-places of their own, where their remains are
interred. These go with the estate to the next heir. The Marai at
Oparee in Otaheite, when Tootaha swayed the sceptre, was called Marai no
Tootaha; but now it is called Marai no Otoo. What greater proof
could we have of these people esteeming us as friends, than their wishing
to remember us, even beyond the period of our lives?
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