THE TROPICAL PACIFIC 369 



eggs, bananas, and cocoanuts, and go fishing, and their 

 canoes are very primitive. The population seems abso- 

 lutely in the hands of native missionaries of the London 

 Society, which rule them with a rod of iron, fine them 

 on all possible occasions. Why they stand it I can't see 

 — compel them to wear clothes from which they get 

 skin diseases, consumption, and children all dying ! Yes- 

 terday was Sunday, and women all came out in mother 

 hubbards and bonnets and hats ! ! You never saw such 

 guys and they went to church five times ! To-day they 

 have again cast off their fine clothes and gone back to 

 a more scanty rig. 



It 's a pity there can't be a little common sense in- 

 fused into this religious cant. As it is now, it 's sheer 

 cruelty and enforcing of arbitrary rules against health 

 and decency as the people understand it. There are three 

 Catholic priests here who are trying to make converts 

 by bribing them with tobacco, the other sects just now 

 being out of that article. Do the missionaries really 

 imagine in their heart of hearts that the native can 

 draw the line between Episcopalians, Methodists, Wes- 

 ley an, Mormons, and Catholics, etc. It 's really too 

 disgusting, and we go on spending lives and money to 

 save souls, or rather to make Christians of them. I should 

 like nothing better if I had time to enter into a crusade 

 against such barbarism and show up the mission fraud. 

 Well meant, I have no doubt, but — ! " 



Upon leaving the Ellice group, Agassiz examined the 

 principal atolls of the Gilberts. Dr. Mayer complains that 

 " going ashore in this group was not an unmixed pleas- 

 ure, for the natives insisted upon opening our jaws in 

 order to admire the gold fillings in our teeth." Here 



