490 MYSTIC ISLES 



was formed, headed by the sovereign. For years a 

 bloody warfare over Christianity distracted the islands, 

 comparable in intensity of feeling to that between Catho- 

 lics and Huguenots in France. The Christian converts 

 were slaughtered by the hundreds, and the pagans drove 

 all the survivors to Moorea. After a season the con- 

 querors grew lonesome, and invited them to return and 

 abjure their false god, letu Kirito, whom they had de- 

 feated, and who by the Christians' own statement had 

 been hanged on a tree by the Ati-Iuda, the tribe of Jews. 

 Pomare and eight hundred men landed from Moorea, 

 and with the missionaries began a song service on the 

 beach, and "Come, let us join our friends above," and 

 "Blow ye the trumpets, blow!" echoed from the hills. 



Couriers carried all over Tahiti word of the outrage 

 to the gods, and the incensed heathens rose in immense 

 numbers and attacked the hymners. Fortunately, says 

 the missionary chronicle, the Christians had their arms 

 with them, and after prayers and exhortations by the 

 clergy, Pomare led his cohorts, men and women; and by 

 the grace of God and the whites, with a few muskets, 

 they smote the devil-worshipers hip and thigh, and 

 chased them to the distant valleys. 



Pomare, directed by the now militant missionaries, 

 sent a body of gunmen to Tautira to capture the god 

 Oro, whose principal temple was verj^ near where stood 

 my kitchen. The iconoclasts, with the zeal of neo- 

 phytes, destroyed every vestige of the magnificent 

 marae, and, unwinding the many coverings of Oro, car- 

 ried to the king the huge log which had been the national 

 god for ages. The king first used it in his cook-house 

 as a shelf, and finally for firewood. 



