1835. EFFECTS OF MISSIONARY EXERTION. 613 



prevented by the presence and active exertions of missionaries, 

 during the last twenty years, in which French, Russian, Ame- 

 rican, and English intercourse with the Pacific, has so much 

 increased. Under the colours of the United States, and of 

 our own country, more than five hundred sail of vessels have 

 b2en annually employed in the Pacific, during late years. To 

 obtain refreshments and supplies, such as I have mentioned, 

 only those islands on which there are white or native missio- 

 naries, are considered safe for single merchant ships. But 

 even while profiting by the influence of the missionaries, and 

 assisted by them in their intercourse with the natives, men 

 who belong to tliose very ships hesitate not, in many in- 

 stances (but not in all), to ridicule the means by which the 

 missionary has gained his influence — to encourage immorality, 

 and the use of ardent spirits, and to seek for faults in a system, 

 as well as in the behaviour of individuals according to that 

 system, because it has a tendency to limit the indulgence and 

 expose the impropriety of their own unrestrained misconduct. 

 If the opponents of missionaries could be prejudiced so far as to 

 allow no other good character to have been earned by those 

 hardworking men, they can never deny them that of peace- 

 makers. 



Many sailors have left their ships, and settled for life, upon 

 various islands. Though generally immoral, some of these 

 men have established a character among the islanders, so very 

 different from that of the convicts, that persons who understand 

 the native descriptions are seldom deceived in their estimation 

 of a man who, they hear, has recently settled in any place. 



Some of these seamen have astonished the New Zealanders, 

 and even men of the Feejee Islands, by hardy courage in war- 

 like enterprises. One, known by the name of Charles, has 

 been already mentioned as having distinguished himself so 

 much by his activity and daring in wars with other islanders, 

 that he was treated as a chief of very high rank, and allowed 

 to have a hundred wives : while the greatest chieftains had 

 from fifty to a hundred and fifty, according to their rank. 

 There are now said to be upon the southern large island or 



