1835.] TEMPEEANCE OF THE NATIVES. 395 



our meals neither of the men would taste food, without saying 

 beforehand a short grace. Those travellers who think that a 

 Tahitian prays only when the eyes of the missionary are fixed 

 on him, should have slept with us that night on the moiTntain- 

 side. Before morning it rained very heavily ; but the good thatch 

 of banana-leaves kept us dry. 



November 19th. At daylight my friends, after their morning 

 prayer, prepared an excellent breakfast in the same manner as in 

 the evening. They themselves certainly partook of it largely ; 

 indeed I never saw any men eat near so much. I suppose such 

 enormously capacious stomachs must be the effect of a large part 

 of their diet consisting of fruit and vegetables, which contain, 

 in a given bulk, a comparatively small poition of nutriment. 

 Unwittingly, I was the means of my companions breaking, as I 

 afterwards learned, one of their own laws and resolutions : I took 

 with me a flask of spirits, which they could not refuse to partake 

 of; but as often as they drank a little, they put their fingers 

 before their mouths, and uttered the word " Missionary." About 

 two years ago, although the use of the ava was prevented, drunken- 

 ness from the introduction of spirits became very prevalent. 

 The missionaries prevailed on a few good men, who saw that 

 their country was rapidly going to ruin, to join with them in a 

 Temperance Society. From good sense or shame, all the chiefs 

 and the qiieen were at last persuaded to join. Immediately a law 

 was passed, that no spirits should be allowed to be introduced into 

 the island, and that he who sold and he who bought the forbidden 

 article should be punished by a fine. With remarkable justice, 

 a certain period was allowed for stock in hand to be sold, before 

 the law came into effect. But when it did, a general search was 

 made, in which even the houses of the missionaries were not 

 exempted, and all the ava (as the natives call all ardent spirits) 

 was poured on the ground. When one reflects on the effect of 

 intemperance on the aborigines of the two Americas, I think it 

 will be acknowledged that every well-wisher of Tahiti owes no 

 common debt of gratitude to the missionaries. As long as the 

 little island of St. Helena remained under the government of the 

 East India Company, spirits, owing to the great injury they had 

 produced, were not allowed to be imported ; but wine was supplied 

 from the Cape of Good Hope. It is rather a striking, and not very 

 gratifying fact, that in the same year that spirits were allowed to 



