On one point, at least, Cook and Forster could hardly have been deceived. They saw and counted a fleet of two hundred and ten large double war-canoes collected for an attack on Eimeo. Throughout Polynesia, as far as I know, the natives estimated each large war-canoe as carrying fifty men, at least. Less than that number could hardly have managed these great double vessels, from sixty to a hundred feet long, with platforms, which Cook measured and drew in pictures, and which old men still remember. Any native would certainly say that a fleet of two hundred double war-canoes carried, in round numbers, ten thousand men. Cook's estimate of nine thousand was low. In Tonga, thirty years later, Mariner gave aforce of five thousand men, besides a thousand women, for fifty large canoes¹, an average of more than a hundred to each canoe; and in one or two cases the Tahiti canoes held nearly two hundred men. Forster counted in the largest double canoes at Matavai one hundred and forty-four paddlers and eight steersmen, besides thirty warriors on the platform².

There cannot be a doubt that Cook knew quite well what he said when he estimated the force which set out against Eimeo, in 1774, at nine thousand men, drawn only from thirty-six kilometres of the coast. From this fact, which is perfectly well attested, we can form some idea of the population of Eimeo, and from this we can again make a guess at the population of the whole group. Eimeo or Moorea, as every one knows

1. Mariner, I, 85 -- 2. Forster's Voyage, ii, 62 ,64. Observations, 217, 218.

Indigenous Histories