326 
MISSIONARY TOUR 
infants where they have spared one. But even sup¬ 
posing that not more than half the children were thus 
cut off, what an awful spectacle of depravity is pre¬ 
sented ! how many infants must have been annually 
sacrificed to a custom so repugnant to all the tenderest 
feelings of humanity, that, without the clearest evi¬ 
dence, we should not believe it would be found in the 
catalogue of human crimes. 
The reasons they give for this practice manifest a 
degree of depravity no less affecting. Among the Mar- 
quesians, who inhabit a group of islands to the south¬ 
east of Hawaii, we are told that children are some¬ 
times, during seasons of extreme scarcity, killed and 
eaten by their parents, to satisfy hunger. With the 
Society Islanders, the rules of the Areoi institutions, 
and family pride, were the principal motives to its 
practice. If the rank or family of the mother was 
inferior to that of the father, his relations or friends 
usually destroyed the child. More frequently, how¬ 
ever, the mother’s rank was superior to that of the 
father. In this case, her relations, in order to avoid 
the degradation which they supposed it w ould entail 
on their family or class in society, almost invariably 
murdered the child. The regulations of the Areoi 
society were not only abominable and vicious, but 
exceedingly cruel, and, excepting the chiefs, the mem¬ 
bers usually destroyed their offspring; and the rearing 
of any was considered a degradation. The reason 
generally assigned for this was, that nursing children 
quickly diminished the personal charms of the mother. 
Excepting the latter, which operates in a small degree, 
none of these motives actuate the Sandwich Islanders; 
those, however, by which they are influenced are equally 
