SEPT. 1770 ISLANDS NEAR SAVU 361 
islands, preventing them from entering into traffic with each 
other, or learning from mutual intercourse to plant such 
things as would be of greater value to themselves than their 
present produce, though less beneficial to the Dutch East 
India Company. The Dutch at the same time secure to 
themselves the benefit of supplying all their necessities at 
their own rates, no doubt not very moderate. This may 
possibly sufficiently account for the expense they must have 
been at in printing prayer-books, catechisms, etc., and teach- 
ing them to each island in its own language rather than in 
Dutch, which in all probability they might have as easily 
done, but at the risk of Dutch becoming the common 
language of the islands, and consequently of the natives by 
its means gaining an intercourse with each other. 
