The required degree of deference towards them, however, was willingly and cheerfully yielded; and as all authority is transmitted from father to son, I have no doubt that one of the effects here, as elsewhere, of high birth, is to induce respect and obedience.
The civil institutions of the Marquesas Islands appear to be in this, as in other respects, directly the reverse of those of the Tahitian and Hawaiian groups, where the original power of the king and chiefs was far more despotic than that of any tyrant in civilized countries.

At Tahiti it used to be death for one of the inferior orders to approach, without permission, under the shadow, of the king's house; or to fail in paying the customary reverence when food destined for the king was borne past them by his messengers.

At the Sandwich Islands, Kaahumanu, the gigantic old dowager queen--a woman of nearly four hundred pounds weight, and who is said to be still living at Mowee--was accustomed, in some of her terrific gusts of temper, to snatch up an ordinary sized man who had offended her, and snap his spine across her knee.

Incredible as this may seem, it is a fact.

While at Lahainaluna--the residence of this monstrous Jezebel--a humpbacked wretch was pointed out to me, who, some twenty-five years previously, had had the vertebrae of his backbone very seriously discomposed by his gentle mistress.
The particular grades of rank existing among the chiefs of Typee, I could not in all cases determine.