542 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
with the Missionary establishments in this part of Poly¬ 
nesia. It had long been required by the circumstances 
of the European families^ and the peculiar state of Tahi¬ 
tian Society; and the establishment of the Academy 
was designed to meet their peculiar necessities in this 
respect. 
There are many trials and privations inseparable from 
the situation of a Christian Missionary among a heathen 
people. The latent enmity of the mind familiar with 
vice^ to the moral influence of the gospel; the prejudices 
against his message, the infatuation of the pagan in 
favour of idolatry, and the pollutions connected there¬ 
with—originate trials common to every Missionary ; but 
there are others peculiar to particular spheres of labour. 
The situation of a European in India, where, although 
surrounded by pagans, he yet can mingle with civilized 
and occasionally with Christian society, is very different 
from that of one pursuing his solitary labours, year after 
year, in the deserts of Africa, or the isolated islands of 
the South Sea, where they have been five years without 
hearing from England—where there is but one European 
family in many of the islands—and where I have been 
twelve or fifteen months without seeing a ship, or hear¬ 
ing a word of the English language, except what has 
been spoken by our own families. 
There are disadvantages, even where the Missionary is 
in what is called civilized society, but they are of a dif¬ 
ferent kind from those experienced from a residence 
among a rude uncultivated race. In either barbarous 
or civilized countries, the greatest trials the Missionaries 
experience are those connected with the bringing up of a 
family in the midst of a heathen population; and it pro¬ 
bably causes more anxious days, and sleepless nights, 
