520 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
most implacable hatred, and often vowed each other’s 
extermination. Offices of kindness and affection are 
performed with promptitude and cheerfulness; and though 
by some their weapons are retained as relics of past 
days, or securities against invasion, by many they are 
destroyed. Often have I seen a gun-barrel or other iron 
weapon, that has been carried to the forge, submitted to 
the fire, laid upon the anvil, and beaten, not exactly into 
a plough-share or a pruning-hook, (for the vine does 
not stretch its luxuriant branches along the sides of their 
sunny hills,) but beaten into an implement of husbandry, 
and used by its proprietor in the culture of his plantation 
or his garden. Their weapons of wood also have often 
been employed as handles for their tools; and their im¬ 
plements of war have been converted with promptitude 
into the furniture of the earthly sanctuary of Jehovah. 
The last pulpit I ascended in the South Sea Islands was 
at Rurutu. I had ministered to a large congregation, 
in a spacious and well-built chapel, of native architecture, 
over which the natives conducted me at the close of the 
service. The floor was boarded, and a considerable por¬ 
tion of the interior space fitted up with seats or forms. 
The pulpit was well, though rudely constructed; the 
stairs that led to it were guarded by rails, surmounted 
by a bannister of mahogany-coloured tamanu wood; the 
rails were of dark aito wood, and highly polished. I 
asked my companions where they had procured these 
rails; and they replied that they had made them with the 
handles of warriors’ spears ! 
