A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX.
Chez Madame Brun, Papetoai, Moorea,
Saturday, 8th.
I am safely ensconced in this most charming little home, and very glad indeed to have reached it, for we have had rather a tiring day. Mrs Green most kindly gave me breakfast at five, that
I might be ready for a six o'clock start; but it was fully eight before we got away, in a Haapiti boat, which agreed to bring us to this side of the island. We rowed out of harbour, hoping to catch a breeze, but it fell dead calm, and for four long hours we lay just outside the reef, rocked by heavy rollers—the water smooth as oil, and the burning heat of the sun so intense that I almost expected that the water would really frizzle! The thermometer at this season sometimes rises to 120° in the shade. I am afraid that if the truth must be confessed, both M. Brun and I were exceeding sea-sick.
At last, to our great relief, a fresh breeze sprang up, and our little boat literally flew over the water, and in less than two hours carried us across to the pretty village of Tiaia, in the district of Teaharoa, whence one hour's rowing inside the reef, along the most lovely shore, brought us here, where we were welcomed to this sweet French home by its pretty clever little mistress, and three charmingly old-fashioned children, Lucie, Henri, and Adrien, who administered refreshing hot tea to the tired and giddy travellers; after which I, for one, yielded to peaceful sleep, and awoke to find the watchful little trio all ready to escort me in any direction, and show me such treasures of delight as only true country children can discover. This is a fairy-like nest, on the shore of the loveliest sea lake, with wooded mountains all round, and a background of mighty rock-pinnacles, which are glorified in this evening light, and seem like the towers and ramparts of some celestial city.
To me this has been a day of intense peace. A silence which may be felt seems to enfold this exquisite spot, and from morning till evening not a ripple has disturbed the perfect calm of the blue waters—only the light fronds of the cocoa-palms quiver and gleam with every faint breath of air.
The village is perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house, and lies buried in a thicket of bread-fruit and mango trees. There my hosts have spent the greater part of the day, having held four church services, and morning and afternoon school. But I have rejoiced in a day of quiet idleness, spent chiefly on the lovely shore beneath the shadow of very large trees, whose great boughs overhang the white coral beach,—shell-strewn and crab-haunted. At high tide the silvery waters creep upward till the far-spreading roots are half bathed in the brine, while the other half are buried in a tangle of lilac marine convolvulus, wherein myriads of hermit-crabs disport themselves.
Madame Valles came to breakfast. She is the daughter of that dear old lady Mrs Simpson, of whose death I told you in a former letter. Her husband is a retired French naval officer, who has settled in this beautiful valley as a planter.
This evening several members of the congregation met here to hold a prayer-meeting, after which they sang most harmonious sacred himènes—the very first I have heard since I was last on Moorea.
I have rarely in any land seen a nicer and more thoroughly respectable-looking body of people than these; so gentle and courteous in their manners, and apparently so reliable. I fancy that in this secluded isle the people have retained more of their primitive Christianity than they have done in Papeete, where French influence and utter infidelity are continually acting as a leaven of evil, and where the fervour of first love is certainly a thing of the past, as regards the mass of the population.
Such at least is my own impression, seeing only the surface of life, and naturally comparing things here with the very high standard now existing in Fiji, which has been my home for the last two years. The impulsive children of the South Seas are readily influenced for good or for evil; and as they quickly and whole-heartedly turned from their idols to embrace the purer faith taught them by devout white men, so now they are in danger of becoming even more careless than the average foreigners. I do not, however, mean to imply that the Tahitians or any of the islanders who have once adopted Christianity, have yet fallen away from its practice, so far as the bulk of the people in any European nation. In such matters as meeting for family prayer, and thanksgiving at meals, probably a much larger proportion of Tahitians than of Britons are still true to their early teaching.
It really is very difficult, in presence of such peaceful, kindly people, and such settled forms of civilised Christian life, to realise what different scenes were witnessed by the earlier visitors of this lovely isle at the time of its discovery by Captain Wallis in 1767, and Captain Cook's subsequent visit.
It was in March 1797 that the first band of missionaries arrived here in the Duff, landing on Tahiti near Point Venus, where at first they were kindly welcomed by King Pomare, Queen Idia, and the chiefs, who seem to have expected that they would prove not merely sources of wealth, by distributing barter, but also able assistants in the art of war.
But when the new-comers were found to be men of peace, and their mission that of teaching, they soon fell in the estimation of the natives, and for many years they struggled, apparently in vain, to stem the tide of idolatry and of such evil practices as infanticide and the offering of human victims to the feather-gods, as the Tahitians called their idols, because they were generally adorned either with the scarlet feathers of a small bird, or the long tail-feathers of the man-of-war or tropic bird.
As quicksilver attracts gold, so was it supposed that this gay plumage became the very incarnation of the god; therefore, when a tribe went forth to war (and of course desired that the presence of their god should be with them) they held a solemn service at the temple, and then took perhaps only one feather from off the principal idol, and placed it in the ark prepared for it on the sacred canoe, which formed part of every fleet. Then, till the close of that expedition, all worship was addressed only to the feather-symbol, and no sacrifices or prayers were offered at the marae, lest the attention of the god being divided, he should return to the land, forsaking the warriors.
At other times, however, he was present alike at every domestic shrine which possessed a feather brought from the great temple. For, as other nations have carried sacred symbolic fire from the altar, to sanctify their domestic hearth or their family temple, so did these Tahitians year by year assemble at the great national temple, bringing with them offerings of the precious feathers. These the priests deposited inside the hollow idols, distributing among the worshippers those which had lain there since the previous year, thereby imbibing such essence of sanctity as to convey the very presence of the god wherever they were carried.
Not that these were the only visible symbols of the gods. Some appeared to their worshippers in the form of sharks; others, less terrible, took the form of divers birds. Hence, as I described to you in one of my letters from Samoa, so here in Tahiti and Moorea, the herons, king-fishers, and woodpeckers which frequented the old trees round the temples, were reverenced as incarnations of the deities, and their cries were interpreted as oracles.
So strong was the hold of these superstitions, that for several years the mission seemed to make little or no progress beyond the establishment of gardens in which various imported fruits and vegetables were successfully raised, and the people were taught to cultivate them systematically for their own use. Orange-trees, limes, shaddocks, citrons, tamarinds, guavas, custard-apples, peaches, figs and vines, pine-apples and water-melons, pumpkins and cucumbers, cabbages and other vegetables, were thus first introduced to the island, where they are now so thoroughly acclimatised.
But in an evil hour a great intertribal war broke out for the bodily possession of Oro, the national idol, and this first civilising influence was swept away—the mission premises were laid waste, the garden entirely destroyed, and the work of twelve years scattered to the winds.
King Pomare, Otu his son, and all the chiefs and warriors of the isle, had assembled at the great marae at Atehuru, where many fatted pigs were offered on the altar, while the surrounding trees were adorned with the ghastly corpses of human victims, all of whom had been sacrificed to Oro. The ark containing the symbolic feather was then placed on the sacred canoe belonging to the royal fleet.
But on the following day Otu pretended to have had a revelation that the idol itself wished to be removed to Tautira; and on the chiefs of Atehuru refusing to allow this, his followers rushed to the temple, seized the idol, carried it off to the sea, and immediately set sail. As soon as they reached land a human sacrifice was ordered, lest Oro should resent this very cavalier treatment; and as no captive was at hand, one of the king's own servants was slain, and offered as an atonement. Of course the despoiled chiefs flew to arms, and prepared to revenge themselves, and recapture their god. About 300 warriors came from the isle of Eimeo, now called Moorea, to the aid of the king, and bloody battles were fought, in which the chiefs' army was almost invariably successful.
There does not appear to have been any trace of cannibalism on either side, but the bodies of the slain were offered in sacrifice to Oro by the victors; while, on the other hand, the king's party did not cease offering human sacrifices, and propitiating the idol by every means in their power. It was recaptured by the chiefs of Atehuru, who, however, with singular religious chivalry, allowed the king to land and deposit his offerings near the temple, though they naturally would not admit him within its precincts.
Happily for the mission party, it so happened that just at this crisis a trading vessel came into harbour and landed some men; and about the same time another small vessel was driven ashore, with a crew of seventeen Englishmen. Thus they mustered a force of twenty-three Europeans, who not only put the mission-house into a state of defence, but lending their aid to the king, rendered him material aid—a service which they must have regretted on seeing that all prisoners of war were immediately put to death, and their bodies savagely mutilated. Finally, the chiefs agreed to resign the custody of the idol to the king; and so, for a while, ended one of the many bloody struggles by which the various nations of the earth have drained their heart's blood for the possession of some bit of so-called sacred wood or bone.
Thenceforward the young King Otu carried the precious god with him, whenever he sailed from one isle to another; and the sacred canoe on which its ark was borne, was always deposited at some marae shaded by sombre trees, from whose boughs human victims offered sacrificially were immediately suspended.
While such scenes as these were the incidents of daily life, the mission party had hardships enough to contend with. Five whole years elapsed without either letters or supplies reaching them from England. Their clothes were worn out, boots or shoes were wellnigh forgotten superfluities; tea and sugar were among the luxuries of the past. At last a small vessel arrived, specially chartered to bring the letters and supplies which had for so long been accumulating at Port Jackson. Imagine the rapture of seeing that little vessel arrive; and then the dismay of discovering that almost everything she had brought was either useless from having lain so long at Port Jackson, or saturated with salt water owing to the wretched condition of the ship. You who live in luxury at home, with everything of the best, and plenty of it, and with so many daily posts as to be a positive nuisance, cannot possibly realise the weariness of that long waiting, or the depth of that disappointment.
Nor was there anything cheering in daily life. The mission work seemed to make no progress at all; the people openly mocked the white men, and despised their teaching.
In 1808 war broke out again more savagely than before. The altars of Oro reeked with human blood; villages were burnt, plantations destroyed, and the whole country reduced to desolation and ruin. The mission settlement was ransacked, the houses burnt, the books distributed among the warriors to be used as cartridge-paper, the printing-types melted to make musket-balls, and every implement of iron found on the place was converted into a destructive weapon. The gardens were again demolished, and the students, finding the din of war more congenial than the arts of peace, joined their brethren in arms.
Finally, feeling that their lives were in imminent danger, and that there was apparently nothing to be gained by remaining, the mission party resolved to abandon Tahiti; and taking advantage of a vessel which happily arrived in harbour, they embarked for Port Jackson, two only, Mr Hayward and Mr Nott, resolving to remain at their several posts and face the worst—the former at Huahine, the latter at Eimeo, to which King Pomare had fled from his enemies. Various attempts were made on their lives, happily without fatal result; and they continued to work as best they could till the year 1812, when, at the invitation of King Pomare, those who had been driven away from Tahiti returned, and made a fresh effort to establish the mission on Eimeo.
They were cordially welcomed by the king, and by a small number of chiefs, who, by Pomare's words and example, had been brought to look with contempt on their idols, and to incline towards the new faith; and though greatly distracted by intertribal wars, this little company resolved to build a substantial house which should be set apart for the worship of the true God. Thus in the summer of 1813 was the first Christian church in the group erected in Papetoai, the very place whence I now write.
Thirty persons came forward to make public profession of their faith, desiring to have their names enrolled as having rejected idol-worship. Among those who did so was Patii, the high priest of the district, who came to Mr Nott, and announced his intention of publicly burning all the idols in his care. It was a promise heard with thankfulness not unmingled with dread, for there was every probability that such an act would lead to wild excitement among the heathen, and might possibly result in a massacre of the Christians. However, Patii had made up his mind, and at the appointed hour he and his friends collected a heap of fuel on the seashore, near the huge marae where he had so often offered human sacrifices to these dumb idols, which he now brought forth, and tearing off the sacred cloth in which they had hitherto been draped, he exhibited them in their hideous nakedness, to the vast multitudes who had hitherto assembled at his bidding to do them homage, and who had now come to witness this act of impious sacrilege.
Some of these ugly little gods were rudely carved human figures, and some had tiny figures carved in relief all over one large image; others were shapeless logs of wood, covered with finely braided cocoa-nut fibre and scarlet feathers; while some were angular columns of basalt, quite rough, just as they had been found. One by one were these once dreaded idols cast into the flames by their former priest, who called on the people to behold their helplessness, and bewailed his own folly in having hitherto worshipped such monstrous objects.
Whatever may have been the feelings of the spectators, the dreaded tumult was averted, and the people dispersed quietly; indeed the example thus given was followed by many, both on Eimeo (it is now called Moorea) and also on Tahiti, to which two members of the mission—Messrs Scott and Hayward—now again ventured to cross. Great was their joy when they found that several of the natives had renounced idolatry and were earnest worshippers of Christ, having been awakened by some words of King Pomare to an exceeding longing for a better faith and purer life than that of their fathers. Glimmerings of light had also found their way to the Paumotu and other neighbouring isles, and by the close of 1814 there was reason to believe that a total of nearly 600 persons had renounced idol-worship and were feeling their way towards the Light.
Naturally, such a movement was not viewed with satisfaction by the great mass of the people. Everywhere the Christians were persecuted by their heathen neighbours, who burnt their houses, destroyed their gardens, spoiled their goods, and even hunted them down, that they might offer them in sacrifice to the insulted gods. At all times it was customary to tell off certain families or tribes, from which the appointed victim-hunters were to select fit subjects for sacrifice; and so numerous were those thus eligible, that on some isles about one-third of the population lived in terror for their lives, not knowing at what moment their doom might be sealed. In many cases whole families forsook their homes secretly, and started in their frail canoe to seek a new home on some unknown isle, preferring to risk the dangers of the sea, and the chance of being eaten by strangers, to the certainty that sooner or later their turn must come to be offered in sacrifice to their cruel gods.
How this terrible doom first came to be attached to any family I cannot say, but, once decided, there was no escape. From generation to generation the black shadow hung, like the sword of Damocles, over each member, from the grey grandfather to the mere stripling. As he went about his daily work, chatting with his most trusted neighbours, one of the latter might open his hand and reveal the small sacred stone which was his death-warrant, delivered by the priest to the man who craved some special boon, as a symbol that the god required a human sacrifice. Well did the doomed man know how useless was resistance. His neighbours knew no pity, and a brief struggle invariably resulted in his being clubbed and carried to the marae.
Now the supply of victims was furnished from among those known to favour the new faith; and many a pathetic story is still told of the unflinching courage with which those brave martyrs met their fate, only pleading with their murderers that they too should renounce their idols and worship the living God.
As in the early days of the Church, so now, homes were divided: the believing wife was beaten by her heathen husband, children were driven from their parents' roofs, and friends were turned to foes—all in the name of the gods.
Those who worshipped the Saviour were distinguished by the name of Bure Atua (from bure, to pray, and Atua, God).
In spite of the persecution, their numbers steadily increased, and at last three of the principal chiefs of Tahiti, who had hitherto been sworn foes, resolved to unite their forces for the total annihilation of the Bure Atua sect. A midnight meeting was appointed when the conspirators were suddenly to fall on their sleeping, unsuspecting neighbours, and slaughter great and small. Happily, a few hours before the massacre was to have taken place, the Christians received a secret hint of what was in store for them, and were able to reach the shore, launch their canoes, and sail for Eimeo. When, at the midnight hour, their foes reached the trysting-place, and found their victims flown, their rage knew no bounds, and angry recriminations commenced, which soon passed on to blows, ending in a free fight, in which one of the principal chiefs was killed, and his followers compelled to fly.
In those turbulent days, it needed but a beginning to kindle a fierce war, and so it now proved. The heathen tribes having fallen out amongst themselves, seemed to forget their enmity to the Christians, and fought blindly among themselves. Beautiful and richly cultivated districts were reduced to desolation, houses burnt and property plundered, and numbers of the vanquished fled to Eimeo, to join the king and his party. Finally the weaker tribes fled to rocky fortresses in the mountains, leaving one tribe—the Oropaa—masters of the whole island.
These presently sent messengers to those who had taken refuge in Eimeo, inviting them to return to their homes in Tahiti. This they agreed to do; but, according to native custom, King Pomare accompanied them to reinstate them in their lands. With him came a very large train of followers, who were chiefly Christians, and when they approached the shore of Tahiti, the pagan party refused to let them land. However, that point was yielded.
On the following Sunday, about 800 of the king's party assembled for divine worship. Happily they had taken the precaution of assembling armed, for in the middle of service a firing of muskets was heard, and a large body of men, bearing the flags of the gods, and all emblems of idolatry, were seen marching towards the place where they were assembled. Very striking is the story of that day's contest. When the enemy was seen approaching, King Pomare arose and bade all remember that they were under the special protection of Jehovah, and that, having met to worship Him, they must not be diverted from their purpose. So all stood up to sing the accustomed hymn, then knelt in united prayer. They then formed themselves into three columns, the women taking their place among the men, resolved, like them, to fight with spear and musket. Thus they awaited the attack of the foe. The battle-field was a strip of ground between the sea and the mountains, covered with patches of brushwood. Under cover of these, the Christians again and again throughout the day knelt by twos and by threes to crave the help of the Almighty. After some hours of desperate fighting, Upufara, the highest chief of the heathen, was killed. His party were so disheartened that a panic seized them, and they fled from the field, never pausing till they reached their strongholds in the mountains.
Thus the king's party remained in undisputed possession, and prepared, as in old days, to follow up their victory. But King Pomare had learnt a new lesson in war. He forbade any of his people to pursue the vanquished, or to enter their villages, either to plunder the gardens or molest their wives and families. He, however, selected a trustworthy force, and bade them march to Tautira, to the temple of Oro, and totally destroy both temple and idol, and everything connected with the old worship. At eventide he bade the chiefs call together the congregation which had been so ruthlessly disturbed in the morning, and all knelt together in solemn thanksgiving for their great deliverance from so strong a foe.
The party whom he had despatched on so righteous a mission of destruction, carried out his orders implicitly. They turned neither to the right hand nor the left, till they reached Tautira, where they fully expected that the priests and people would make a stand in defence of their gods. They, however, met with no opposition from the crowds, who stood silently round while they entered the temple, hitherto held so sacred, and bringing out the idol, stripped him of his coverings, and exposed a rude unhewn log, about six feet long, of casuarina wood. Having utterly destroyed the temples, altars, and other idols, they carried off the rude log which for so many years had been the national god of Tahiti, and for the possession of which the land had, during the last thirty years, been made desolate by incessant wars. It was now turned to better use as a post in the king's kitchen from which to suspend baskets of food. Eventually it was cut up for firewood.
The effect of the king's clemency to the vanquished was magical. At first it seemed to them utterly incomprehensible; but when, under cover of night, some ventured from their hiding-places, and found their homes and families all undisturbed, and learnt that the bodies of the slain had received honourable burial, instead of being given to the dogs and pigs, and that the king had proclaimed a free pardon to all, then one by one they came down from the mountains to tender their submission to the merciful conqueror, and to learn from him the secret of such new principles. Then they agreed that the faith which inspired such deeds was assuredly the best, and with one accord they determined to destroy all their idols, and desired that the king would send messengers to instruct them in the good way.
Accordingly, those who had themselves been most diligent in learning, were sent to teach these new inquirers, and proved faithful and earnest in their work. But so great was the demand for teachers, that they were altogether unable to meet it; and in many a remote village, the people, having destroyed their idol temple, built a new house of prayer, where they met together to worship the God of the Christians, concerning whom they as yet knew so little, beyond the mercy practised by His followers.
From this time forward, Christianity made steady progress; and when, in the year 1817, Mr Ellis arrived as a missionary in these isles, he found almost the entire population professing it, and apparently devout in their practice. Family worship was established in all the principal houses; and many had built in their gardens a small oratory, or, as they called it, fare bure huna—the house for hidden prayer.
Already the grosser crimes of heathenism had been abandoned—especially the practice of infanticide, which had prevailed to so frightful an extent. In every district the schools were crowded, and those who had mastered the arts of reading and writing assisted in teaching those less advanced. Strange pictures presented themselves in these classes, where bright, intelligent children were often the instructors of aged men and women, priests and warriors, to whom learning was a hard task, but one which they were determined to master, that they might read for themselves the wonderful book which had taught such wisdom to their king.
These were in truth earnest scholars. The only books that had as yet reached them, were a spelling-book, printed in England, and a summary of the Old and New Testaments, printed at Port Jackson. But of these there were few copies: and many of the people, in their anxiety to possess one, had prepared sheets of fine paper-mulberry fibre, on which, with a reed-pen, dipped in the sap of the banana-tree, they had carefully copied out whole pages of the reading-lessons, or fragments of the sacred Scriptures. Others had committed the whole to memory.
Great, therefore, was their excitement and delight when Mr Ellis arrived at Afareaitu, bringing with him a good printing-press. Crowds besieged the printing-office day and night, to watch the progress of setting up the types,—the king himself preparing the first alphabet. His delight when the first sheet was struck off, equalled that of his people; and all felt that it was a marked day in the history of Tahiti, when her king, with his own hands, printed the first page of the first book published in the South Sea Isles.
The binding of the volumes was the next interest. The supply of millboard was small; but again the fibre of the paper-mulberry was turned to account, several layers being pressed together to form a stiff pasteboard, which was then coloured with the purple dye obtained from the mountain-plantain; or else thin wooden boards were used, and covered with the skin of whatever animal could be procured,—goat, cat, or dog: and the new art of tanning was among the earliest industries of the isle.
Hitherto all books circulated in the isles had been distributed gratuitously, but it was deemed wiser for every reason, henceforth to exact a small payment in cocoa-nut oil, which was the article most easily obtained by the people. So great was their anxiety to purchase the books, that there were sometimes as many as thirty or forty canoes drawn up on the beach, having come from different remote villages, and having each brought several persons, whose sole object was to procure the precious volume, not only for themselves, but for others. Some who were thus commissioned, were the bearers of huge bundles of green plantain-leaves, each rolled up like a parchment scroll, and being, in fact, a written order for a copy of the book, payment for which was sent in the form of a bamboo measure filled with oil. Many of these messengers waited for several weeks ere the copies could be supplied; and some of the more urgent refused to leave the mission premises till the books were delivered to them, lest other men should slip in before them and carry off the coveted treasures.
When we consider that teachers were so few, and worshippers so numerous, and that many large congregations assembled in the chapels they had built for Christian prayer, firmly believing that He in whose name they had met, was there present; yet having none to lead their worship, save, perhaps, a newly converted priest of Oro, or a professional dancer, hitherto sunk in every form of vice,—we can the better understand the extreme anxiety of the people to possess the books which were the storehouses of excellent knowledge.
Have you ever realised the innumerable difficulties under which these early publishers had to contend? To begin with, they had themselves to reduce barbarous and hitherto unknown tongues to a written language,—no easy matter, considering that many of these dialects are so rich as to possess far more words to express shades of meaning than any European language.[1] So, beginning with the alphabet, they had to work out equivalents for words in which the slightest change of accent conveys totally different meanings; then they had to puzzle out very intricate grammatical structures, and, having mastered all this, had to commence the very difficult work of translating so large a book as the Bible—a book, moreover, treating of spiritual truths which it was hard indeed to render comprehensible to such very materialistic minds as these.
Yet in the short space of about thirty years, the Scriptures have been translated into about twenty different languages, all previously unknown; and there is not one group throughout Polynesia, the people of which do not now read the Scriptures in their own tongue. The same good work is now gradually extending throughout Melanesia also; and even New Guinea, which, ten years ago, was an unknown land, has already received portions of the New Testament in the language spoken by at least one of its tribes.
Considering the extremely volatile nature of these light-hearted people, the exceeding earnestness with which they seem to have entered into the requirements of a spiritual religion, is very remarkable. They had, however, been early trained to a belief in the necessity of whole-hearted attention, and reverence in the worship of their idols. It mattered not how large and costly might be the offerings, and how careful the ceremonial, should the priest omit, or even misplace, any word in the appointed prayers, or should his attention be diverted, the prayer was unavailing; other victims must be brought, and the whole ceremony repeated from the beginning.
So, too, the rigid observance of the Jewish Sabbatical laws seemed a natural requirement to a people who, from their infancy, had been taught implicit obedience to the laws of tabu, or sacred seasons, when, at the bidding of priest or chief, no fire must be kindled, no canoe launched, and neither food nor drink might be tasted, under severest penalties. When, therefore, the early missionaries declared one day in seven to be strictly tabu, and themselves gave the example by abstaining from every sort of secular employment, even preparing their own food on the previous day (which was hence called the mahana maa, or food-day), the natives willingly obeyed, and proved themselves capable of such close and continuous attention to spiritual subjects as the majority of Christians nowadays would find wellnigh impossible.
So, too, with the custom of saying grace before eating, which is so strictly practised by all the converts in Polynesia. It was the more readily adopted because, in heathen days, no morsel might pass the lips of any member of the family till the chief person present had offered a portion to the gods, adding a few words of prayer for their protection and blessing. In some instances they chanted a form of thanksgiving for the good things received, as being the gift of the gods.
I have written this story of old days somewhat at length, from a conviction that it is probably almost unknown to you, and must surely prove interesting, though I am fully aware that it cannot be so to you in the same degree as it is to me, who have heard the story for the first time on the very spot where those terrible scenes were formerly enacted, and where the marvellous change was actually wrought.
- ↑ This is emphatically true of Fijian. See 'At Home in Fiji,' vol. i p. 136.