D ESI IIE TO It W R1TIN G -PAPER. 265 
one of the most acceptable presents that can be 
sent them. 
I have often been amused on beholding a native, 
who had several letters to write, sitting down to 
look over his paper, and finding perhaps that he 
possessed but one sheet, has been obliged to cut it 
into three, four, or five pieces, and regulate the size 
of his letter, not by the quantity of information he 
had to communicate, but by the extent of the paper 
he had to fill. I have recently received upwards 
of twenty letters from the natives, some of them, 
although they were to travel fifteen thousand 
miles, written on very small scraps of paper, and 
that often of an inferior kind: part of the small 
space for writing being occupied by apologies for 
the small paper, and urgent requests, that, if I do 
not return soon, I will send them some paper; and 
that, if I return, I will take them a supply. 
The art of writing is of the greatest service to 
the people in their commercial, civil, and domestic 
transactions, as well as in the pursuit of know¬ 
ledge. They are not so far advanced in civiliza¬ 
tion as to have a regular post; but a native seldom 
makes a journey across the island, and scarcely a 
canoe passes from one island to another, without 
conveying a number of letters. Writing is an art 
perfectly congenial with the habits of the people, 
and hence they have acquired it with uncommon 
facility ; not only have the children readily 
learned,but many adults, who never took pen or 
pencil in their hands until they were thirty or even 
forty years of age, hgve by patient perseverance 
learned, in the space of twelve months or two 
years, to write a fair and legible hand. Their 
comparatively small alphabet, and the simple 
structure of their language, has probably been 
