 upon the thoughtless inhabitants; and, in the celebration of
many of their strange rites, they appeared merely to seek a sort of childish
amusement.
    A curious evidence of this was given in a remarkable ceremony, in which I
frequently saw Mehevi and several other chiefs and warriors of note take part;
but never a single female.
    Among those whom I looked upon as forming the priesthood of the valley,
there was one in particular who often attracted my notice, and whom I could not
help regarding as the head of the order. He was a noble-looking man, in the
prime of his life, and of a most benignant aspect. The authority this man, whose
name was Kolory, seemed to exercise over the rest, the episcopal part he took in
the Feast of Calabashes, his sleek and complacent appearance, the mystic
characters which were tattooed upon his chest, and, above all, the mitre he
frequently wore, in the shape of a towering head-dress, consisting of part of a
cocoa-nut branch, the stalk planted uprightly on his brow, and the leaflets
gathered together and passed round the temples and behind the ears, - all these
pointed him out as Lord Primate of Typee. Kolory was a sort of Knight Templar -
a soldier-priest; for he often wore the dress of a Marquesan warrior, and always
carried a long spear, which, instead of terminating in a paddle at the lower
end, after the general fashion of these weapons, was curved into a
heathenish-looking little image. This instrument, however, might perhaps have
been emblematic of his double functions. With one end in carnal combat he
transfixed the enemies of his tribe; and with the other as a pastoral crook he
kept in order his spiritual flock.. But this is not all I have to say about
Kolory. His martial grace very often carried about with him what seemed to me
the half of a broken war-club. It was swathed round with ragged bits of white
tappa, and the upper part, which was intended to represent a human head, was
embellished with a strip of scarlet cloth of European manufacture. It required
little observation to discover that this strange object was revered as a god. By
the side of the big and lusty images standing sentinel over the altars of the
hoolah-hoolah ground, it seemed a mere pigmy in tatters. But appearances all the
world over are deceptive. Little men are sometimes very potent, and rags
sometimes cover very extensive pretensions. In fact, this funny little image was
the crack god of the island; lording it over
