266 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
advantageous ; their letters are bold and well form¬ 
ed, and their ideas are always expressed with 
perspicuity, precision, and simplicity.* 
The South Sea Academy, in which the young 
king was a pupil, is an important institution, in. 
connexion with the Missionary establishments in 
this part of Polynesia. It had long been required 
by the circumstances of the European families, and 
the peculiar state of Tahitian 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 therewith—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 five 
years have sometimes elapsed 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 hearing a 
* Writing apparatus and materials of every kind are in 
great demand among them ; most of the letters I have re¬ 
ceived contain a request that, if possible, I will send them 
out a writing-desk, or an inkstand, penknife, pens, a blank 
paper book,&c. The widow of Taaroarii, in her last letter, 
solicited me to bring her a writing-desk. 
