THE PELEW ISLANDS. 
3 2 5 
tian world an unerring path to happinefs and peace, yet 
they might, from the light of reafon only, have difcovered 
the efficacy of virtue, and. the temporal advantages arifing 
from moral redtitude.—The reader will, by this time, have 
met with fufficient occurrences to convince him, that the 
inhabitants of thefe new-difcovered regions had a fixed and 
rooted fenfe of the great moral duties; this appeared to go¬ 
vern their conduct, glow in all their actions, and grace their 
lives.—Arifing from fuch principles, we fee them laborious, 
induftrious, benevolent. In moments of danger firm, and 
prodigal of life ; under misfortunes patient; in death re- 
figned.—And if, under all thefe circumftances, he can 
conceive that the natives of Pelew pafied their exifience 
away, without fome degree of Confidence, fome degree of 
Hope, I have only to fay, his idea of mankind muft widely 
differ from my own. 
Superftition is a word of great latitude, and vaguely de¬ 
fined; though it hath, in enlightened ages, been called the off- 
fpring of ignorance, yet in no times hath it exified without 
having fome connexion with religion.—Now the people of 
Pelew had, beyond all doubt, fome portion of it, as ap¬ 
peared in the with expreffed by the King, when he faw the 
fhip building, that the Engli/h would take out of it fome par¬ 
ticular wood, which he perceived they had made ufe of, and 
which he obferved to them was deemed to be of ill omen? or 
unpropilious . 
They 
