However, I would have none of these, though the king most earnestly impressed upon my mind that my choice was wholly unrestricted.

At last, seeing my unconquerable repugnance, he ceased to importune me.
But not so some other of the savages.

Hardly a day passed but I was subjected to their annoying requests, until at last my existence became a burden to me; the pleasures I had previously enjoyed no longer afforded me delight, and all my former desire to escape from the valley now revived with additional force.
A fact which I soon afterwards learned augmented my apprehension.

The whole system of tattooing was, I found, connected with their religion; and it was evident, therefore, that they were resolved to make a convert of me.
In the decoration of the chiefs it seems to be necessary to exercise the most elaborate pencilling; while some of the inferior natives looked as if they had been daubed over indiscriminately with a house-painter's brush.

I remember one fellow who prided himself hugely upon a great oblong patch, placed high upon his back, and who always reminded me of a man with a blister of Spanish flies, stuck between his shoulders.
Another whom I frequently met had the hollow of his eyes tattooed in two regular squares and his visual organs being remarkably brilliant, they gleamed forth from out this setting like a couple of diamonds inserted in ebony.
Although convinced that tattooing was a religious observance, still the nature of the connection between it and the superstitious idolatry of the people was a point upon which I could never obtain any information.
Like the still more important system of the 'Taboo', it always appeared inexplicable to me.
There is a marked similarity, almost an identity, between the religious institutions of most of the Polynesian islands, and in all exists the mysterious 'Taboo', restricted in its uses to a greater or less extent.
So strange and complex in its arrangements is this remarkable system, that I have in several cases met with individuals who, after residing for years among the islands in the Pacific, and acquiring a considerable knowledge of the language, have nevertheless been altogether unable to give any satisfactory account of its operations.