34 THE CRUISE OF THE ' CUBAQOA. 



offered. ' Instead,' says Mr. Hood in his interesting notes of 

 the cruise of that sliip, ' of the uncouth ferocious savages we 

 had expected, we found them pleasant good-looking fellows, 

 of a light olive complexion, with well-shaped features, clean, 

 quite sufficiently attired for the climate, merry and happy, 

 but quiet and well-behaved.' ^ But how then, it will be asked, 

 are we to account for the ferocity displayed by these people 

 for which Cook gave their island the bad name? The 

 missionaries can help us to the explanation, thougli they 

 make no ethnological use of it. ' The natives,' says Mr. 

 Murray,^ ' had a great dread of disease, and they had an 

 idea that if foreigners were admitted among them they would 

 introduce disease, and when any of themselves left the island 

 and returned, they were regarded in much the same light as 

 foreigners, and the consequence was, were nearly in as much 

 danger.' Now this pecuhar prejudice is merely mentioned 

 to enhance the difficulties the missionaries have had to con- 

 tend with ; but it is of much more use, as showing why, 

 when this notion was in fidl vigour, there must have been 

 intense excitement whenever any foreigners attempted to 

 land, and that their ferocity towards strangers no more 

 implies a social ferocity of disposition and manners than did 

 the cruel persecution of witches imply a general barbarism 

 among om- ancestors in the days of the dread of witch- 

 craft. Since Cook's time the prejudice has evidently abated; 

 and a^^, since then, there has been a sort of invasion by tlie 



' Hood, p. 24. 2 Murray, p. 360. 



