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VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP, his most sanguine expectations. He, nevertheless, had an arduous task 
to perform. Besides the children to be educated, the Otaheitan women 
Dec. were to be converted; and as the example of the parents had a power- 
ful influence over their children, he resolved to make them his first 
care. Here also his labours succeeded; the Otaheitans were naturally 
of a tractable disposition, and gave him less trouble than he anticipated: 
the children also acquired such a thirst after scriptural knowledge, that 
Adams in a short time had little else to do than to answer their in- 
quiries and put them in the right way. As they grew up they acquired 
fixed habits of morality and piety ; their colony improved ; inter- 
marriages occurred ; and they now form a happy and well-regulated 
society, the merit of which in a great degree belongs to Adams, and 
tends to redeem the former errors of his life. 
