advisers; they see that the orders and wishes of their chiefs are duly executed, and may not improperly be called their ministers, and are more or less regarded according to the rank of the chief to whom they are attached. They have the management of all ceremonies.

Moods are the next class of people below the matabooles. They are either the sons or brothers of matabooles, or descendants of the latter. As the sons or brothers of matabooles are mooas, and as no mooa can become a mataboole till his father or brother, whom he is to succeed, be dead; so, in like manner, the sons and brothers of mooas are only toous, and no tooa can become a mooa till his father or brother, whom he is to succeed, be dead.

Professional class of society.-We now come to speak of those who draw respect rather than rank, according to their usefulness in different manufactures more or less regarded. Some of these are matabooles, and rank accordingly; the greater part of them are mooas, and the remainder of course tooas.

Among those that practise the arts, there are many that do it because their fathers did the same before them, and consequently have brought them up to it; and these are, for the most part, such as practise arts that are considered ingenious, and therefore respect

able, and hence they have no motive sufficiently strong (unless it be sometimes laziness) to engage them to relinquish it, particularly as they obtain presents from their chiefs for their ingenuity. There is no positive law to oblige them to follow the business of their fathers, nor any motive but the honourable estimation in which their arts are held, or their own interest, or the common custom.

None of them are matabooles, but a few of the canoe-builders, and the superintendents of funeral rites; perhaps about a fifth or a sixth part of them. And some of these are very expert in cutting ornaments out of whale's teeth, for necklaces, or for inlaying clubs; likewise in making clubs and spears and other warlike instruments, which are not separate professions, but arts practised by the canoe-builders as being expert in the use of the togi or axe.

But the two lowest of all, viz. the cooks and peasants, are such by inheritance. The term cook is frequently applied to a man though he be not a cook, to signify that he is of very low rank.

The following, then, will be the order in which the different professions will stand, as to the respect they may command in society. All individuals are not, however, esteemed according to their profession, but according to their abilities in it; for a clever man in one art will

be sometimes more esteemed than a man of moderate abilities in a higher. In this arrangement, the cooks of chiefs are placed before the peasants, because the cooks of chiefs generally have to overlook them.

Hereditary.

Hereditary or not.

Toofoonga fo váca, canoe

builders.

Followed

Toofoonga a fino le, cutters of both by ma

whale-teeth ornaments.

Toofoonga táboo, superintendents

of funeral rites.

Toofoonga ta máca, stone-masons,

or makers of stone coffins.

Toofoonga jia cobénga, net-mak

ers.

Toofoonga toty'íca, fishermen.

Toofoonga lánga fulle, large

house-builders.

Toofoonga tu tatto'w, those who

perform the tattow.

Toofoonga tongi aców, club

carvers.

Toofoonga fy cava, barber, or

shaver with shells.

Targáta fe oo'moo, cooks. Hereditary. Key fonoóa, peasants.

RELIGION.

tabooles and

mooas.

Followed both by mooas and tooas.

Followed only by

tooas.

The religion of the Tonga Islands rests chiefly on the belief of the following notions:

1. That there are Hotooas, gods, or supreme beings, who have the power of dispensing good

and evil to mankind, according to their merit, but of whose origin they form no idea, rather supposing them to be eternal.

2. There are other Hotooas, or gods, viz. the souls of all deceased nobles and matabooles, who have the like power of dispensing good and evil, but in an inferior degree.

3. That there are besides several Hotooa Pow, or mischievous gods, whose attribute is never to dispense good, but petty evils and troubles; not as a punishment, but indiscriminately, to whomsoever it may be, from a pure mischievous disposition.

4. That all superior beings, although they may perhaps have had a beginning, will have no end.

5. That the world also is of doubtful origin, and co-existent with the gods; the solid sky, the heavenly bodies, and the ocean, being preexistent to the habitable earth, which was afterwards drawn out of the water by the god Tangaloa, whilst fishing with a line and hook.

6. That mankind, according to a partial tradition, first came from Bolatoo, the residence of the gods, an island to the north-westward, and resided at the Tonga Islands by command of Tangalao. They consisted of two brothers with their wives and attendants, whose origin they pretend to know nothing about.

7. That all human evil is inflicted by the gods upon mankind, on account of some neglect of religious duty, either in the person or persons who suffer the infliction, or in the egi or chief whom they serve; and the contrary of good.

8. That all egi or nobles have souls, which exist hereafter in Bolotoo, not according to their mortal merit but their rank in this world; and then they have power similar to the original gods, but less. The matabooles also go to Bolotoo after death, where they exist as matabooles or ministers to the gods; but they have not the power of inspiring priests. The mooas, according to the belief of some, also go to Bolotoo; but this is a matter of great doubt. But the tooas, a lower class of people, have no souls, or such only as dissolve with the body after death, which consequently ends their sentient existence.

9. That the human soul during life is not a distinct essence from the body, but only the more etherial part of it, which exists in Bolotoo in the form and likeness of the body the moment after death.

10. That the primitive gods and deceased nobles sometimes appear (visibly) to mankind, to warn or to afford comfort and advice; that the primitive gods also sometimes come into the