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has taken place among the natives, who appear to have lost what good qualities they once possessed, and are become so intolerably lazy, that should the bread-fruit, by any accident, fail them, a famine must ensue. Indeed, they have been very near it already; and nothing but the mountain-plantain and a species of fern saved them from the greatest distress. The cotton-grounds you mentioned to me are overrun with weeds; the looms that were sent out have been thrown aside, and weaving discontinued. The king is a child; his mother a most dissolute woman; and the chiefs divided and jealous of each other. At Tobouai,' he continues, 'the indolence of the natives since their conversion has been such, that, out of the whole population, but two hundred remain. It will scarcely be believed that this mortality has been occasioned by their being too lazy to cook their food oftener than once a week, in consequence of which it becomes sour and unwholesome, and produces complaints of the stomach, which carry them off." Captain Beechey gives many other details of the same character; but admits that the missionaries are, on the other hand, entitled to every credit for having succeeded in abolishing human sacrifices and the prevailing crime of infanticide, which had proceeded to such an extent, that the population of the island is not more than one-half of what it was when Cook first visited it.

What a pleasing contrast this officer experienced on calling at Pitcairn's Island! He there found the old patriarch Adams and his interesting family, now increased to sixty-five persons, all in vigorous health; their moral and religious sentiments, their modest and amiable manners, their industrious habits, still the same they were when visited by Sir Thomas Staines and Capain Foldger; neither of whom, Captain Beechey says, remained long enough with them fully to appreciate their excellent qualities. We were quite delighted,' he says, with their manners and conduct, and quitted them with feelings of deep regret; the more so as we were but too well satisfied that the cultivable ground in this little island, which is only two miles long by one wide, does not yield as it used to do. The wood is for the most part expended; and Adams expressed a strong apprehension that famine must soon visit the rising generation, if they are not speedily removed to some other situation; either to some larger uninhabited island in the neighbouring group, if such there be, or to New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. His most anxious wish was, that they might all settle together, to cultivate the ground, or labour, as might be required.' Our readers will not fail to recollect the strong interest that was excited by our first account of this innocent and simplehearted little people; and we do hope, and indeed are confident, that England will not suffer them to perish by want. Their strong attachment

attachment to each other, and their manners, so different from, and superior to, those of almost any population among whom they could be conveyed, seem to render it desirable that they should be kept a separate people. They were much in want of clothing, which Captain Beechey supplied, as far as his means would allow. Their only covering consisted of the wrappers made from the clothplant, which are no better than thin paper, and fall in pieces under a shower of rain. Adams appeared anxious to have a clergyman among them from the Missionary Society, who, it seems, had promised to send one a few years ago. We should deeply regret to hear of the arrival of any such person among them. The old patriarch, with his Bible, is the best possible teacher that they could possess. As to the removal of this innocent and interesting little colony to New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land, such a step would, we fear, prove fatal to their yet unsophisticated and unblemished character; unless, indeed, they could be established in some secluded spot, free from all contact with the convicts; and the Taheitan group of islands are still in so barbarous a state, that they would not be safe in any of them, whether inhabited or not.*

The following extract from a letter of Captain Beechey shows the barbarous state of the inhabitants of Bow Island, so called, from its shape, by Cook, who had no intercourse with the natives. The natives of the low coral islands are such a miserable, halfstarved set of cannibals that they furnished nothing worthy of record. You may form some idea of what they are, and of the country they inhabit, when I tell you that I consider that the miraculous manner in which they subsist is the greatest discovery we have made. When we first visited these narrow strips of coral, it was concluded that among the trees there was some cultivation, and it was not until we entered the lagoon at Bow Island that we found it otherwise, and that they derived their support almost entirely from the Pandanus, a tree very like the Doom Tree of Egypt, which bears its pithy fruit in clusters containing about twenty nuts each. This nut is, in size, nearly that of a hazel nut, but being inclosed in a thick fibrous husk, like the cocoa-nut, appears as large as an egg. But their shape is pentagonal; they consequently have no interstices between them. The labour of cracking the nut is such that it requires several hours to prepare a meal. The cluster of nuts being first divided, they are handed to the men, who suck the inner part of the rind, which is somewhat soft, and almost as good as the root of a very old cabbage, and throw them down in heaps to be pounded by the women, who take them up severally, and carefully examine if any meat is left among the fibres, and if so, they have the privilege of a second suck-if not, the nut is placed under the beater, a stone about thirty pounds weight, and, after a few hard thumps, generally exhibits a fracture. The kernels are then picked out and put together for the men, who during this festival are occupied in the laborious exercise of keeping the flies off their filthy persons. These nuts constitute the whole of their food, except such limpits and land-crabs, vermes, or slimy Holothuria, as they can pick up on the rocks, and which they devour raw.

'You may judge from this description how little would have been gained from such a race; a people destitute of clothing, of weapons excepting big sticks and clubs, and whose God is a bit of wood with a slit cut in it and a bit of hair thrust in, and then slung to a tree to point out which way the wind blows-or, more frequently, a bit of hair tied to the thigh bone of some human being.

"The natives of the islands immediately about Tahaité, being converted to Christianity, are some shades better than those of the islands lying more remote. I should, nevertheless, be sorry to be cast upon their islands, even in lent time.'

We

We have so many detailed descriptions of the Sandwich Islands, their productions, and their former state of society, that we deem it wholly unnecessary to return to the subject, which the reader will find amply treated of in the two volumes whose titles are placed at the head of this article, more especially in that of Mr. Ellis. Neither do we see anything in the return voyage of the Blonde that could have any claim to detain us, except the details of the shipwrecked crew whose few survivors they delivered, a story but too fresh, we imagine, in the recollection of our readers, and too dark and dismal for human nature to dwell on it willingly-and a notice of the supposed discovery of a new island named Mauti, whose little population seems to have highly interested the visitors. The appearance of a single person in a canoe, with a straw hat of the English fashion, and a Spanish cloak of tapa, satisfied them that they were not the first Europeans who had visited this place. Two others next came on board, who, to their sur prise, produced a written document from that branch of the London Missionary Society settled at Taheité, qualifying them to act as teachers in the island of Mauti. These were fine-looking men, dressed in cotton shirts, cloth jackets, and matted petticoats in lieu of trousers. On some of the officers landing, the whole male population assembled to greet them; and seemed unhappy until all of them had shaken hands. Among them were only two women, the wives of the two missionaries, who were decently clothed from head to foot. Proceeding about two miles through a shady wood, which improved in beauty as they advanced, they found to their surprise and pleasure, that the path terminated in a beautiful green lawn, where there were two of the prettiest white-washed cottages imaginable; these were the dwellings of the missionaries, who appeared to be the chief personages on the island.

'The inside of their habitations corresponded with their exterior neatness. The floors were boarded: there were a sofa and some chairs of native workmanship: windows, with Venetian shutters, rendered the apartments cool and agreeable. The rooms were divided from each other by screens of tapa; in one there was a bed of white tapa, and the floor was covered with coloured varnished tapa resembling oil-cloth. We were exceedingly struck with the appearance of elegance and cleanliness of all around us, as well as with the modest and decorous behaviour of the people, especially the women; all of which formed a strong contrast with the habits of the common people of the Sandwich Islands: but this is a small community, easily inspected by its teachers, and having, as yet, had no intercourse from without, to disturb the effects of their admonitions and example.'-Voyage, p. 210.

A church, capable of containing two hundred persons, stood on a hill near the cottages; the pulpit and reading-desk were

neatly

neatly carved and painted with a variety of pretty designs; and the benches for the people are arranged neatly round. Close to the church was the burying-place, and the whole had the air of modest simplicity, which delighted no less than it surprised the visitors.

The history of this little island may be found in the Evangelical Magazine. It belongs to the king of Wateeoo, (discovered by Cook, in the year 1777,) whose inhabitants, like the Taheitans, have been prevailed on by the missionaries to destroy their idols, and relinquish idolatrous worship. The king, accompanied by two English missionaries from Tahaité, proceeded shortly afterwards to Mauti, where also he prevailed on the people to destroy the morais, and burn the images, and left a native teacher to instruct them in the Christian religion. The whole population was supposed not to exceed three hundred; their food principally bread-fruit, and fish: but they had yams, cocoa-nuts, and plantains; a few tame goats, fowls, and abundance of pigs. Birds, of rich plumage, and various-tinted butterflies, were singing and fluttering in the woods, consisting of magnificent forest-treesand the climate was delicious. These,' says Mr. Bloxam, and, above all, the perfect union and harmony existing among the natives, presented a succession of agreeable pictures which could not fail to delight us.'

It is added, As Mauti has not been laid down in any chart, or described by any navigator, we used the privilege of discoverers, and named it PARRY'S Island. It lies in lat. 20° 8' S. and long. 157° 20′ W. but though we are reluctant to deprive Captain Parry of any honour that his well-earned reputation merits, we 'must use the privilege' of dissenting from the assertion of its 'not being laid down in any chart,' because in Arrowsmith's chart of America (1804) and Purdy's Chart of the World (1812), there is laid down a small island named Mahowarah, precisely on the spot assigned to Mauti. We cannot mistake, as Wateeoo lies in lat. 20° 1' S., long. 158° 15′ W., and Mahowarah is about a degree to the S. E. of it, namely, lat. 157° 15', and long. 20° 30′ W., which comes so very near, as to leave little doubt of their identity. In fact, it belongs to a group of seven or eight islands, from four to six hundred miles south-west of Taheité, called HARVEY Islands, whose names, as given by the missionaries, are Mauti, Atooi, Metioro, Manain, Aitutaki, and Ruratonga, in all of which idolatry has been abolished, Christianity introduced, and the inhabitants very generally taught to read and write their own language, by native teachers sent out from Otaheité by the missionaries of the London Evangelical Society. On their authority, the population of this group is stated to exceed that of the Society Islands, by two or three

thousand

thousand souls. On Ruratonga, a church has been built, of six hundred feet in length, by sixty in breadth, said to be capable of containing four thousand five hundred people, and to be frequently crammed quite full. The accounts sent to the Missionary Society of the comfortable situation of these islanders, their industrious habits, exhibited in their improved dwellings, cultivated lands, decent clothing, and the considerable advances made in the arts of civilized life, form a striking contrast with the details given by Captain Beechey concerning the present condition of Taheiti and the Sandwich Islands; and they lead to a hope that, through the means of these native teachers, the time is not far distant when the benefits of Christianity and civilization will find their way to all the groups of islands scattered over the vast Pacific Ocean. In furtherance of this object, it might perhaps be advisable to place the patriarch Adams, and his little family, on some one of those neighbouring islands, in which the native teachers have so well prepared the population to receive this small society, to the mutual advantage of both parties.

The dissemination of Christianity throughout the islands of the Pacific will be the less difficult, as the whole of them, from the Friendly Islands eastward, make use of dialects of the same tongue; the numerals of which, with a great multitude of words, are similar to those of the Malays. Mr. Ellis says, a number of words appear true Hebrew roots, and that, in the conjugation of the verbs, there is a striking similarity to that language. We place more weight on the fact that, exactly as with the Hindoos, their place of happiness, after death, is Meru; and think it is impossible, in the Pelé of the Sandwich Islands, not to recognise the deity, so universally worshipped in the eastern world, under the name of Pel, Bel, or Baal. In short, their customs, habits, games, and everything belonging to them are oriental, though in a state of great rudeness. Their dispersion over the Pacific is easily accounted for, by the constant easterly winds, which at various times, and in various directions, may have blown fishing canoes from the Asiatic islands to those scattered over the Pacific, and from one of these islands to another,-which last accident, indeed, is constantly happening at the present day.

ART. VI.-1. Missionary Registers. 1825, 1826.

2. Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Calcutta. By Henry Kaye Bonney, D.D., Archdeacon of Bedford.

3. A Farewell Sermon, preached in the Parish Church of Hodnet,

in

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