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contingent of only two districts, Attahuru and Ahurai. Afterward the number increased, until, allowing forty men to each war-canoe and four to each of the smaller canoes which were to serve as transports, &c., the men exceeded nine thousand: "an astonishing number to be raised in four districts, and one of them, viz: Matavai, did not equip a fourth part of its fleet.... The number of war-canoes belonging to Attahourou and Ahopata [Paea and Patea] was an hundred and sixty, to Tettaha forty, and to Matavai ten.... If we suppose every district in the island, of which there are forty-three, to raise and equip the same number of war-canoes as Tettaha, we shall find by the estimate that the whole island can raise and equip one thousand seven hundred and twenty war-canoes and sixty-eight thousand able men, allowing forty men to each canoe; and as these cannot amount to above one-third part of the number of both sexes, children included, the whole island cannot contain less than two hundred and four thousand inhabitants; a number which at first sight exceeded my belief. But when I came to reflect on the vast swarms which appeared wherever we came, I was convinced that this estimate was not much if at all too great."
Cook was one of the most exact explorers that ever lived, and on this second voyage he had as a scientific companion another man as exact as himself, John Reinold Forster, the naturalist and intended historian of the voyage, who wrote a volume of "Observations" about it, and among many other careful studies made a particularly careful estimate of the population 1. He concluded that on a very moderate computation the main island contained eighty-one thousand, the peninsula of Taiarapu contained half as many, or forty thousand five hundred, and the adjacent island of Eimeo or Moorea half of that of Taiarapu, or twenty thousand two hundred and fifty; which made one hundred and forty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty for the whole population.
Another method of calculation might have been used. Attahuru and Tettaha -- that is, the Oropaa and Tefana i Ahurai -- produced two
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© Derived from the revised Paris edition of 1901 page 3, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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