28 ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
The building of two houses was undertaken at once. A 
large company of natives, ordered by the king and working 
with great enthusiasm, began the work on the fourteenth 
day of the month, and on the seventeenth the missionaries, 
with their families, moved into their new homes. Posts and 
spars and reeds and leaves, all brought in great abundance, 
became, as if by magic, two houses, and books and goods 
and clothes and furniture had on the fourth day been landed 
from the vessel and carried indoors. Thus were the first 
Christian homes in Fiji made, and thus was the work of 
God begun among its benighted peoples. 
“The missionaries opened their commission by preaching 
twice out of doors, in the Tongan language, to about a 
hundred and fifty Tongans and Fijians. The king was 
invited, and came to the morning service, listening very 
attentively.”’ 
A short time after the mission thus began its work, “‘many 
of the Tongans who had hitherto roved about in Fiji in the 
unchecked indulgence of every vice, acknowledged the power 
of the gospel. Many became truly penitent, and mourned 
bitterly over their past evil ways. These converts, being de- 
sirous to lead a new life, and no longer wishing for the licen- 
tious course which was freely open to them in Fiji, returned 
home to their own land; and many a warm greeting took 
place between them and their friends, who had also received 
the blessings of Christianity since they last met. Thus it 
was difficult, for some time, to form any correct notion of 
the actual results of the new mission... . 
“Hitherto these Tongans had been notoriously wicked, 
even in Fiji. They were influential and feared... . When 
some of the most famous and stout-hearted of them became 
converted, and changed their manner of life, it had a telling 
effect on the minds of the Fijians, some of whom, in after 
years, welcomed back these men as fellow Christians... . 
The distance is great indeed from the desperate, lawless, 
and vile course which these men held, to the high standard 
