DECREASE IN POPULATION. 169 
tred and contempt of all other modes of faith, 
which was once foreign to the open and_be- 
nevolent character of the Tahaitian. It has 
put and end to avowed human sacrifices, but 
many more human beings have been actually 
sacrificed to it, than ever were to their heathen 
gods. 
The elder Forster estimated, as we have 
already seen, the population of Tahaiti at 
one hundred and thirty thousand souls. AlI- 
lowing that he over-calculated it, by even as 
much as fifty thousand, still eighty thousand 
remained :—the present population amounts to 
only eight thousand; so that nine-tenths must 
have disappeared. The diseases introduced 
by the ardent spirits, the manufacture of Eu- 
rope and America, may, indeed, have much in- 
creased the mortality, but they are also known 
in many islands in the South Seas, without 
having caused any perceptible diminution in 
the population. It is not known that plague 
of any kind has ever raged here: it was, 
therefore, the bloody persecution instigated 
by the Missionaries which performed the of- 
fice of a desolating infection. I really believe 
VOL... 1. I 
