OF THE SOUTH SEAS 487 



confidence in their all-powerful and avenging God, and 

 a rapt devotion to his son, who forgave the sins of those 

 who adopted His faith. Their ideals were as fixed as 

 the stars, and their courage superior to the daily dis- 

 couragements of their lives and continuous hardships of 

 separation from home. But they could not break the 

 strength of the superstitions of the pagans. A dozen 

 years these English ecclesiastics delved in their gardens, 

 built their houses, and begged Jehovah and Jesus to 

 give them victory. Five years they mourned without 

 message or aid from England. Their clothes were in 

 tatters, and as covering their whole bodies with Euro- 

 pean garments from feet to scalp, except face and hands, 

 was a rigid prescription of their own morals' and an 

 example to the almost nude Tahitians, they suffered 

 keenly from shame. When, after half a decade, a brig 

 arrived, its supplies were found ruined by salt water and 

 mold. The poor clerics, in an earthly paradise, but hos- 

 tile atmosphere, with little to report to an unheeding 

 England save the depths of the untilled field of heath- 

 enry and depravity, might not have been blamed if they, 

 too, had given up their mission. The fruits of twelve 

 years of gardening and horticulture were destroyed in 

 a day by ravaging parties. The fact that their lives 

 were spared and their persons not attacked, except in 

 a rare instance of an individual piece of villainy, is proof 

 of the mild dispositions of the infidels. The Tahitians 

 worshiped their gods with a superstitious awe not ex- 

 ceeded anywhere, and the outlandish white men pro- 

 claimed openly that these gods were dirty lumps of 

 v/ood and stone and fiber, and to be despised in compari- 

 son with the Christian Gods, Father and Son, which 



