A HISTORY OF TAHITI 



409 



Woods in Hamuta Valley, Tahiti. 



sionaries, as elsewhere in the Pacific, south to strengthen their position 

 through diplomacy and political activity, hoping thereby to gain the 

 ascendency of power and thus cause their doctrines to become more 

 acceptable to the natives. 



Many things have been said and will be said both for and against 

 the missionary, and we must grant that he has done both good and evil, 

 or, perhaps better, we may say out of the evident good he has accom- 

 plished some harm has come, for the missionary must needs have had 

 the sympathy of a St. Augustine, the political wisdom of a Pitt, the 

 leadership of a Bismarck, and the Christian spirit of the old bishop in 

 "Les Miserables " to check the reign of death he found around him. 

 What wonder, then, that, being in general but an ordinary man of good 

 intentions, he in some measure failed. There have, indeed, been grand 

 men among the missionaries — such were William Ellis of Tahiti, the 

 Gulicks of Hawaii, and the great John Williams who after twenty-three 

 years of wandering and privation was martyred upon the New Hebrides 

 in 1839. Certainly before they came all was ripening to ruin, and if 

 ruin has come despite their zealous efforts it indicates only that the 

 problem was too complex perhaps for the mastery of any man however- 

 good or wise. 



Be these things as they may, the nobler and in the end the wiser 

 course would have been attained had these early Tahitian missionaries 

 labored on for years simplv to help and to win the respect and love of 

 those around them; and through kindness to gain the hearts of willing, 

 converts to their faith. 



But reports must be written and sent to London, and upon the im- 



VOL. LXXXVI.— 28. 



