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MISSIONARY TOUR 
house, and, perhaps within a few yards of her bed, 
and the spot where she took her daily meals, has 
relentlessly buried, in the untimely grave, her Jielpless 
babe. 
The Society Islanders buried the infants they de¬ 
stroyed among the bushes, at some distance from their 
houses; but many of the infants in the Sandwich 
Islands are buried in the houses in which both parents 
and child had resided together. In the floors, which 
are frequently of earth or pebbles, a hole is dug, two 
or three feet deep, into which they put the little infant, 
placed in a broken calabash, and having a piece of 
native cloth laid upon its mouth to stop its cries. 
The hole is then filled up with earth, and the inhuman 
parents themselves have sometimes joined in treading 
down the earth upon their own innocent but murdered 
child 
The bare recital of these acts of cruelty has often 
filled our minds with horror, while those who have- 
been engaged in the perpetration of them, have related 
all their tragical circumstances in detail with apparent 
unconcern. 
What an affecting view does this practice exhibit 
of human nature, unaided by the light of revelation, 
uninfluenced by the mild spirit of true religion, and 
under the debasing influence of cruel superstition. To 
what an ibject state of moral degradation must a 
people, in many respects extremely interesting, be re¬ 
duced, to perpetrate, without compunction, such atro¬ 
cities ; and what a painful and humiliating demonstra¬ 
tion do they afford of the truth of the scripture decla¬ 
ration, that “ the dark places of the earth are full of 
the habitations of cruelty.” Instinct teaches animals 
