383 
WANT OF CLOCKS, OR BELLS. 
with which places for public worship were erected, 
that at the close of 1818, twelve months only after 
the battle of Narii, near Bunaauia, there were 
sixty-six in the island of Tahiti alone. 
Since the establishment of the stations in Hua- 
hine and the other islands, the number has been 
greatly diminished ; the people in many parts have 
resorted to the Missionary settlement, particularly 
on the Sabbath; and the places formerly used as 
chapels have been converted into schools. Places 
now used for worship in the islands, although not 
so numerous as formerly, are much more conve¬ 
nient and substantial. The walls are either of 
plank or plaster, the floors are boarded, and the 
area within is fitted up with a pulpit, desk, and 
pews, or seats. Some have neat and commodious 
galleries ; and in the island of Eimeo, on the site 
of the temple in which Patii was priest, a neat 
and substantial chapel has been built with white 
hewn coral. 
I have not heard that glass windows have been 
introduced into the chapels of any of the stations. 
Cushions have not yet intruded into any of the 
pews, and only into one of the pulpits. 
No native chapel is yet furnished with a public 
clock; and although it would be a valuable article, 
there is not such a thing in the South Sea Islands. 
The stations have also been hitherto but indif¬ 
ferently supplied with a far more useful appendage 
to their places of public worship than even a dial, 
namely, a bell. Whatever may be said of the 
inutility of bells in churches or chapels in civilized 
countries, where public clocks are numerous, and 
watches almost universal—the same objections will 
not apply to a people destitute of these, and hav¬ 
ing no means of denoting the hour of the day, 
