EXTENT OF INFANTICIDE. 251 
Cook, for whom they entertained the highest 
respect, had told him it ought not to be allowed ; 
and that for his part he was willing to discontinue 
it. These, however, were bare professions ; for his 
own children were afterwards murdered, as well as 
those of his subjects. 
In point of number, the disproportion between 
the infants spared and those destroyed, was truly 
distressing. It was not easy to learn exactly what 
this disproportion was ; but the first Missionaries 
have published it as their opinion, that not less than 
two-thirds of the children were murdered by their 
own parents. Subsequent intercourse with the 
people, and the affecting details many have given 
since their reception of Christianity, authorize the 
adoption of the opinion as correct. The first three 
infants, they observed, were frequently killed; and 
in the event of twins being born, both w r ere rarely 
permitted to live. In the largest families more than 
two or three children were seldom spared, while 
the numbers that were killed were incredible. 
The very circumstance of their destroying, instead 
of nursing their children, rendered their offspring 
more numerous than it would otherwise have been. 
We have been acquainted with a number of 
parents, who, according to their own confessions, 
or the united testimony of their friends and neigh¬ 
bours, had inhumanly consigned to an untimely 
grave, four, or six, or eight, or ten children, and 
some even a greater number. I feel hence, the 
painful and humiliating conviction which I have 
ever been reluctant to admit, forced upon me from 
the testimony of the natives themselves, the pro¬ 
portion of children found by the first Missionaries, 
and existing in the population at the time of our 
arrival—that during the generations immediately 
