362 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES* 
a desk, a boarded floor throughout, constructed of 
the tough planks of the reva, and filled with pews 
and seats, but, by the invention and ingenuity of 
the Missionaries, it was subsequently furnished with 
a rustic set of chandeliers. 
By this contrivance it could be lighted up for an 
evening congregation, while we were under the 
necessity of concluding all our public services 
before the sun departed. These chandeliers, as 
they may perhaps with propriety be called, were 
not indeed of curious workmanship or dazzling 
brilliancy, in polished metal or cut-glass, but of 
far more common materials, and simplicity of 
structure. The frame was of light tough wood, 
and the lamps, instead of being coloured and 
transparent, were opaque cocoa-nut shells. They 
were, however, the only inventions of the kind the 
natives had ever seen ; and on the night when the 
chapel was first illuminated by their aid, as they 
came in one after another, and saw the glare of 
such a number of lights suspended from the roof 
in a manner that they could not at first understand, 
they involuntarily stopped to gaze as they entered 
the door, and few proceeded to their seats without 
an exclamation of admiration or surprise. Their 
astonishment was probably greater than would 
be experienced by an English peasant from a 
retired village, on beholding, for the first time, 
a spacious public building splendidly lighted up 
with gas. 
Although we were pleased with the effect pro¬ 
duced on the minds of the natives, and a thousand 
delightful associations revived in our bosoms the 
first time we mingled with a crowded evening con¬ 
gregation, we did not recommend our people to 
follow the example their ingenious neighbours had 
