DEMAND FOR BOOKS. 219 
sides of the printing-office were boarded, and one 
or two glass windows introduced; probably the 
first ever seen in Eimeo. The floor was covered 
partly with the trunks of trees split in two, and 
partly paved with stone. In searching for suitable 
stones, we pulled down the remaining ruins of one 
or two maraes in the neighbourhood, and, finding 
among them a number of smooth and level-surfaced 
basaltic stones, we were happy to remove them 
from the temple, and fix them in the pavement of 
the printing-office floor; thus appropriating them 
to a purpose very different indeed from that for 
which they were primarily 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 won¬ 
derful machine, the printing-press, in operation, 
having heard much of the facility with which, when 
once it should be established, they would be sup¬ 
plied with articles 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 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 cir¬ 
culation ; 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, 
