70 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
from Europe and Brazil^ and studiously endeavouring to 
gain an acquaintance with the native language^ which they 
justly considered essential to the accomplishment of 
their objects. 
This was a most laborious and tedious undertaking. 
The language was altogether oral 5 consequently, neither 
alphabet, spelling-book, grammar, nor dictionary existed. 
On their arrival, they found two Swedes, Peter Hager- 
steine, and Andrew Cornelius Lind 5 the former had 
been wrecked in the Matilda, and the latter had been left 
by Captain New of the Daedalus, only a few years before 
the Missionaries arrived. Peter had a slight knowledge of 
the colloquial language of the natives | and in all their 
early communications with the chiefs and people, the 
Missionaries were glad to avail themselves of his aid 
as interpreter. He was a man of low education and 
bad principles; and if he did not intentionally misre¬ 
present the communications of the Missionaries, his 
statements must often have conveyed to the natives’ 
minds very erroneous impressions of their sentiments and 
wishes. From him, as an instructor, they could derive no 
advantage; as he seldom came near them excepting when 
he bore some message from the king, or the chief with 
whom he resided. The remarks of former voyagers, and 
the specimens of the language they had given, were of 
little service, as they could only be the names of the 
principal persons and things that had come under the 
notice of such individuals, and even in the representation 
of these, the orthography was as various as the writers 
had been numerous. In reference to their attempts to 
acquire the knowledge of Tahitian, they remarked, that 
they found all Europeans, who had visited Tahiti, had 
mistaken the language as to spelling, pronunciation. 
