{"id":"01KG8AM6KN0AYNH3Y4FV0ZDKC8","cid":"bafkreib2u5v3jgzqqia3uek2vasqoqqnbi57bhyhakgar2wjcch6p5enga","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8486,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:25.203Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 5","source_file":"01KG89J1JYRSHWXR7JM0HYS9D4","start_line":8431,"text":"home. I never knew of more than two youngsters living together in the\r\nsame home, and but seldom even that number. As for the women, it was\r\nvery plain that the anxieties of the nursery but seldom disturbed the\r\nserenity of their souls; and they were never seen going about the valley\r\nwith half a score of little ones tagging at their apron-strings, or\r\nrather at the bread-fruit-leaf they usually wore in the rear.\r\n\r\nThe ratio of increase among all the Polynesian nations is very small;\r\nand in some places as yet uncorrupted by intercourse with Europeans,\r\nthe births would appear not very little to outnumber the deaths; the\r\npopulation in such instances remaining nearly the same for several\r\nsuccessive generations, even upon those islands seldom or never\r\ndesolated by wars, and among people with whom the crime of infanticide\r\nis altogether unknown. This would seem expressively ordained by\r\nProvidence to prevent the overstocking of the islands with a race too\r\nindolent to cultivate the ground, and who, for that reason alone, would,\r\nby any considerable increase in their numbers, be exposed to the most\r\ndeplorable misery. During the entire period of my stay in the valley of\r\nTypee, I never saw more than ten or twelve children under the age of six\r\nmonths, and only became aware of two births.\r\n\r\nIt is to the absence of the marriage tie that the late rapid decrease\r\nof the population of the Sandwich Islands and of Tahiti is in part to be\r\nascribed. The vices and diseases introduced among these unhappy people\r\nannually swell the ordinary mortality of the islands, while, from the\r\nsame cause, the originally small number of births is proportionally\r\ndecreased. Thus the progress of the Hawaiians and Tahitians to utter\r\nextinction is accelerated in a sort of compound ratio.\r\n\r\nI have before had occasion to remark, that I never saw any of the\r\nordinary signs of a pace of sepulture in the valley, a circumstance\r\nwhich I attributed, at the time, to my living in a particular part\r\nof it, and being forbidden to extend my rambles to any considerable\r\ndistance towards the sea. I have since thought it probable, however,\r\nthat the Typees, either desirous of removing from their sight the\r\nevidences of mortality, or prompted by a taste for rural beauty, may\r\nhave some charming cemetery situation in the shadowy recesses along\r\nthe base of the mountains. At Nukuheva, two or three large quadrangular\r\n‘pi-pis’, heavily flagged, enclosed with regular stone walls, and shaded\r\nover and almost hidden from view by the interlacing branches of\r\nenormous trees, were pointed out to me as burial-places. The bodies, I\r\nunderstood, were deposited in rude vaults beneath the flagging, and were\r\nsuffered to remain there without being disinterred. Although nothing\r\ncould be more strange and gloomy than the aspect of these places, where\r\nthe lofty trees threw their dark shadows over rude blocks of stone,\r\na stranger looking at them would have discerned none of the ordinary\r\nevidences of a place of sepulture.\r\n\r\nDuring my stay in the valley, as none of its inmates were so\r\naccommodating as to die and be buried in order to gratify my curiosity\r\nwith regard to their funeral rites, I was reluctantly obliged to\r\nremain in ignorance of them. As I have reason to believe, however, the\r\nobservances of the Typees in these matters are the same with those of\r\nall the other tribes in the island, I will here relate a scene I chanced\r\nto witness at Nukuheva.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 5"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJR25VD49M8PDP0DQV6HE","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JYRSHWXR7JM0HYS9D4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM5Y4C8XG7ZJ7Z2R6N8FD","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AM6KNTD902P4JS9C1FWZ7","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:29.301Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:41.717Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}