POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
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designed, by those who had evidently prepared them 
with considerable labour and care. 
Numbers of the inhabitants of several parts of Tahiti 
and Eimeo flocked to Afareaitu, to attend the means 
of instruction, and the public ordinances of religion, as 
it was more convenient to many than Papetoai. They 
were also anxious to see this wonderful machine, the 
printing-press, in operation, having heard much of the 
facility with which, when once it should be established, 
they would be supplied with books; an article at that 
time more valuable, in their estimation, than any other. 
A few copies of the spelling-book printed in England 
had been taken to the island in the year 1811. Some 
hundred copies of a smaller spelling-book, and a brief 
summary of the Old and New Testament, the latter 
containing about seventy-five 12mo pages, had been 
printed at Port Jackson, and were in circulation; but 
many hundreds of the natives who had learned to read, 
were still destitute of a book. Others could repeat 
correctly, from memory, the whole of the books, and 
were anxious for fresh ones. In many families, where 
all were scholars, there was but one book; while others 
were totally destitute. The inhabitants of the neighbour¬ 
ing islands were in still greater need. I have seen many 
who had written out the whole of the spelling-book on 
sheets of writing paper; and others who, unable to procure 
paper, had prepared pieces of native cloth with great care, 
and then, with a reed immersed in red or purple native 
dye, had written out the alphabet, spelling, and reading 
lessons, on these pieces of cloth, made with the bark of a 
tree. It was also truly affecting to see many of them, not 
with phylacteries, but with portions of scripture, or the 
texts they had heard preached from, written on scraps of 
