BOWDITCH ISLANDERS AGAIN 



throw it down in anger that he should have offered him 

 a thing so worthless a mere chip. But the carpenter's 

 eye catches the writing upon it ; he takes it, looks at it 

 seriously a moment, and at once, without a word, goes 

 for the hatchet and gives it to the native. He was 

 amazed. He picked up the chip, which the carpenter 

 had dropped, and turned it over and over, eying it on 

 every side. Finally he concluded that the white man's 

 Spirit of God was in the chip that the marks of the mis- 

 sionary had put the spirit there, and that the spirit had 

 made known to the white man that the missionary wanted 

 the hatchet. He wrapped the chip carefully in a piece of 

 tapa, or native cloth, and then with loud yells and violent 

 gestures, ran off to his companions to tell them about the 

 wonderful chip. 



" I will tell you another instance to show you further 

 the ignorance of the Pacific savages before the intercourse 

 with foreigners. At a small island visited by the squad- 

 ron, some distance from the Feejees, the natives knew of 

 only two other islands in the world, and these were but 

 a few miles' distance from their own. These three little 

 spots of land, with the water around and the sun and sky 

 overhead, constituted, as they thought, the whole world. 

 It would take but a very small geography to contain all 

 they know of our earth. They would have nothing to 

 say of the continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, 

 for these do not exist, to their knowledge nothing of 

 any land but these three little islands, not over twenty- 

 five square miles in all. When our ship came, they sup- 

 posed we were from the sun. They knew that we were 

 not from either of the other two islands, for we were 

 white men, the first they had ever seen; and instead of 

 canoes, we sailed in a large ship which they called a float- 

 ing island. They thought we might have sailed off from 

 the sun, when it comes down to the water at night, or 

 leaves it when rising in the morning. They therefore 

 received us as beings from another world. The affrighted 

 people thought us gods, and brought out large numbers 

 of cocoanuts and mats, and all the little property they 

 had, as a peace offering. The chief, a venerable old man 

 of gray hairs, trembled from head to foot, and even shed 

 tears in his terror. They were glad when we left them, 

 for they dreaded us to the last, and as the boats were 



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