Dwindling of Poimlation. — Statistics. 225 



Immediately adjoining the plantation, the river Faut^iua flows 

 past, here about five feet deep, and furnishing a most excel- 

 lent bathing-place. Johnson, like many another, lamented 

 the appalling rapidity with which the native population was 

 falling ofi", which he ascribed to the daily increasing preva- 

 lence of the vices of drunkenness and debauchery. He related 

 to us how many valleys, now lonely and abandoned, were 

 pretty densely peopled only twenty years ago ! Then the 

 population was estimated at 15,000, now it is only 5000.* 



The aspect of the sugar plantation is remarkably fine, and 

 an occasional glimpse of the surrounding hills, bathed in the 

 sunlight, imparts a sublimity that at once arrests the attention, 

 the crags rising in close proximity, and appearing much more 

 precipitous and inaccessible than they are in reality. The 

 Diadem (the name given to several peaks which have a strik- 

 ing resemblance to a crown) displays itself from this point in 

 all its wondrous loveliness, above which tower lofty mountain- 

 peaks, 6000 or 7000 feet in height, which have never been 

 trodden by the foot of the naturalist. 



(100 lbs), or about ten pence the pound, on the spot, whereas the best Costa Rica 

 cotTee costs only fi'om £2 to £2 Ss. the centum, or five pence to six pence the pound. 

 The Protectorate officials hope to supply this very perceptible lack of labour by in- 

 troducing into Tahiti, as field workers, the prisoners of war they take in New Cale- 

 donia. 



* Mr. Wilson, a missionary, estimated the population of Tahiti in 1797 at 16,000 

 souls. In 1848, when the French administration took its first census, the native 

 population amounted to 8082 (viz. 4466 males, 3616 females), the number of Eu- 

 ropeans being 475 (428 males and 47 females). In 1858 it had fallen to 5988, or 2580 

 fewer than it had been 30 years before (1829), when, according to a census taken by 

 the English missionaries, the population of Tahiti was 8568 of both sexes and all ages. 

 VOL. in. Q 



