POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
499 
On the 11th of May 1821, a large chapel was nearly 
filled with spectators. The school contained between 
four and five hundred children. Several from each 
class were examined, and manifested that they had 
been neither indolent nor careless. I beheld, with no 
common interest, a number of fine, healthy, and 
sprightly-looking children on that occasion assembled 
together, and saw a little boy, seven or eight years 
of age, with a little fringed mat wound round his 
waist, and a light scarf thrown over the shoulder, 
stand up on a form, and repeat aloud two or three 
chapters of one of the Gospels, and answer a variety 
of questions; and pass through the whole of his 
examination with scarcely a single mistake. This 
was the case with several on that occasion. At 
the close of the examination, the children were 
rewarded by Mr. Barff, who, on delivering the pre¬ 
sents, which were different books in the native lan¬ 
guage, accompanied each by a suitable remark to the 
favoured proprietor. Often, as the little boy has 
walked back to the seat with his prke^—perhaps a 
copy of one of the Gospels—I have seen the mother’s 
eye follow the child with all a parent’s fond emo¬ 
tion beaming in her eye, while the tear of pleasure 
has sparkled there; and, in striking contrast with 
this, the childless mother might be seen weeping 
at the recollection of the dear babes, which, under 
the influence of idolatry, she had destroyed—and which, 
but for her own murderous hands, might have min¬ 
gled in the throng she then beheld before her. On 
the occasion above alluded to, when the examina¬ 
tions in the place of worship had terminated, the 
children walked, in the same order in which they^ 
