80 rBT! CEUISE OF TBB 'CUBACOA.' 



next visit, Ave are informed by Mr. Murray/ was in 1840, by 

 a party from Samoa in a small schooner, but with no perma- 

 nent result ; for what with ' great dangers ' from the savages, 

 which are not specified, and the roughness of the weather, 

 from both which they were of course ' mercifully preserved,' 

 they returned to Samoa, taking with them an ' immense 

 quantity of weapons,' which they were glad to purchase in 

 order to ' disarm the noisy and ungovernable barbarians 

 who surrounded their little ci^aft in numbers that made them 

 feel anything but secure.' It is manifest that the mercifully 

 preserved party had been doing a little welcome barter — they 

 pleasantly call it ' disarming ' — with the savages who had been 

 so dangerous to them, and that those savages were much 

 better pleased to sell their weapons than to use them. More- 

 over, three natives had spontaneously gone on board the 

 schooner and been quietly taken away without let or 

 hindrance from the wild multitude around it. This is 

 evidently inconsistent with any notion of supreme savagery, 

 and, so far then as the testimony has gone, it is clear that 

 the inhabitants have not yet deserved the hard names they 

 have been called. 



Six years after this two missionaries visited the island, 

 and landed a teacher, a native of it, who had been many 

 years at Samoa. He was, of course, exposed to great perils ; 

 but it seems that, on the day following his arrival, after 



' ' Missions in Western Polynesia,' &c. by A. W. Murray, twenty- 

 five years a Missionary in Western Polynesia, in connection witli tlie 

 London Missionary Society, pp. 360-381. 



