260 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
The family and district temples and altars, as well 
as those that were national, were demolished, the idols 
destroyed by the very individuals who had but recently 
been so zealous for their preservation, and in a very 
short time there was not one professed idolater remain¬ 
ing. Messengers were sent by those who had hitherto been 
pagans, to the king and chiefs, requesting that some of 
their men might be sent to teach them to read, and to 
instruct them concerning the true God, and the worship 
and obedience required by his word. Those who sent 
them expressed at the same time their determination 
to renounce every evil practice connected with their 
former idolatrous life, and their desire to become alto¬ 
gether a Christian people. Schools were built, and 
places for public worship erected ; the Sabbath was ob¬ 
served, divine service performed} child-murder, and the 
gross abominations of idolatry, were discontinued. 
What an astonishing and happy change must have 
taken place in the views, feelings, and pursuits of the 
inhabitants of Tahiti, in the course of a few weeks, from 
the battle of Narii, or Bunaau’ia ! A flood of light, like 
the rays of the morning, had broken in upon the in¬ 
tellectual and spiritual night, which, like a funeral pall, 
had long been spread over the inhabitants of the val¬ 
leys and hills of Tahiti, and had rendered their abodes, 
though naturally verdant and lovely as the bowers of 
Eden, yet morally cheerless and desolate as the region 
of the shadow of death ! 
If the spirits of departed prophets, from their seats of 
bliss, look down upon our globe} how must Judah’s royal 
bard have bent with rapture, to behold the accomplish¬ 
ment of triumphs, which, while he swept the hallowed 
harp of prophecy, he had foretold :—^The multitude of 
