io8 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
in Rakahaaga and Manhiki. The steady and 
lamentable decrease in their numbers is ascribed 
by the missionaries as being the result of their 
intercourse with the seamen of the whaling fleet, 
and from the fact that the women of both 
Manhiki and Rakahaaga were much sought 
after by wandering white traders from all parts 
of the North and South Pacific; but Captain 
English, of Fanning’s Island, and Major Stern- 
dale, both able authorities, ascribe their 
decadence to the introduction of European 
clothing by the missionaries, which, as in 
numberless other instances in the annals of 
missionary enterprise in Polynesia, was attended 
by the most disastrous results. By some incom¬ 
prehensible fatuity, the earlier missionaries in 
the Pacific were imbued with the idea that these 
people, who for centuries had worn nothing 
beyond a girdle or waist-cloth of native 
manufacture, could at once adapt their constitu¬ 
tions to such a violent and radical change as 
that caused by their clothing themselves in 
heavy woollen garments sent out from England 
by those interested in the spread of the Gospel. 
Not even the fearful consequences that attended 
the clothing of the people of Raratonga early in 
