POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
131 
some years with only one pair of shoes ; and often^ in 
many of their journeys undertaken for the purpose of 
preaching and instructing the natives, they had travelled 
barefoot. In addition to these privations, the gloom and 
discouragement that depressed their spirits, on account 
of the total want of success attending their labours, must 
have been increased, in no ordinary degree, by the un¬ 
certainty and anxiety of remaining, at that remote 
distance from home, five years without even once hearing 
by letter from their native country, or their friends. 
From this distressing state of feeling, they were in a 
great measure relieved by the arrival of the Hawkesbury, 
a colonial vessel, which anchored in Matavai bay on the 
2Gth of November, 1806. 
Since the year 1804, the Society in England had 
authorized Mr. Marsden to expend annually, for the 
support of the Missionaries, two hundred pounds, and 
had also sent out supplies. Unable to meet, in Port 
Jackson, with any vessel proceeding to Tahiti, Mr. 
Marsden had at length engaged the Hawkesbury, a small 
sloop of about twenty tons burden, to take out the letters 
and articles that had been so long delayed. The com¬ 
munications from England conveyed to the Missionaries 
the welcome assurance that they were not forgotten by 
their friends at home; but most of the articles, especially 
the clothing, from the length of time it had been lying 
at Port Jackson, and the wretched state of the vessel in 
which it was sent, were so injured as to be almost useless; 
the packages were wet with the sea-water, and their 
contents consequently spoiled. 
The repeated trials with which the Missionaries were 
exercised, the privations they endured, and the painful 
and protracted discouragements by which, at this period. 
