230 NATURAL HISTORY OP 



still cannibals, embraced Christianity with ardour, and 

 now hold it with an intelligent sincerity, that enables 

 converts of a late date to become messengers of peace 

 to other tribes, and open the path for more educated 

 teachers. They alone have shown examples of chiefs, 

 quitting the pleasures and prejudices of local conside- 

 ration, who, for the pure love of benefiting their native 

 land, have entered as common sailors on board British 

 ships, that they might visit England, see, learn, and 

 adopt improvements in ship building, navigation, and 

 agriculture; procure seeds of tritica and leguminous 

 plants, and advance civilization. Others used the pleni- 

 tude of power to encourage the same object, to learn 

 the alphabet to read, write, and cypher ; they set up 

 a printing press, and had the honour to throw off the 

 first printed words of the native language. They have 

 shown, when at war with the white men of Europe, 

 instances of romantic forbearance and valour, under 

 impressions of unjustly suffering a public wrong. All 

 these seeds of human progress have developed in the 

 first generation, since they have become acquainted with 

 better things, and are going on notwithstanding the 

 evil examples but too commonly held out to them. If 

 therefore, Frederick Cuvier, when descanting on the 

 trifling external characters of some mammalia, nearly 

 allied in structure, be right to recommend rigorous 

 researches in their relative moral instincts and intel- 

 ligence, in order, by their aid, to establish a primseval 

 unity of a genus, how much more important must the 

 same method prove in researches after the aboriginal 



