THROUGH HAWAII. 
029 
to take care of their offspring; even the savage tiger 
roams the forest to provide for her young, or fearlessly 
meets death in their defence. But here, where so many 
advantages combine to increase the comforts of the 
inhabitants, infants are destroyed by a parent’s hand. 
How great are the obligations of those whose lot is 
cast in countries favoured with the Bible, to whose 
domestic society Christianity imparts so much happi¬ 
ness. And how consoling to know, that its principles, 
wherever imbibed, will produce, even in the most bar¬ 
barous communities, such a delightful transformation 
of character, that the lion and leopard shall become 
harmless as the lamb and the kid, “ and they shall 
neither hurt nor destroy.” 
When the natives of the Society Islands embraced 
the Christian religion, they immediately refrained from 
this practice. The infants spared, as they grew up, 
kindled and cherished in their parents’ bosoms emo¬ 
tions they had never before experienced. They became, 
in general, exceedingly fond of their children. I have 
seen a mother or a father, who have been known to 
have murdered several children, fondling and nursing a 
little babe with a degree of tenderness, that, without 
witnessing it, I could not believe would have been felt 
by individuals so hardened and insensible as they had 
formerly been. As parental affection increased, they 
began to view with abhorrence a crime, their former 
familiarity with which, was now surprising even to 
themselves; and, in order to mark their sense of its 
enormity, the very first article in the code of laws 
proposed by the chiefs, and adopted by the people in 
most of the Society Islands, shortly after their recep¬ 
tion of Christianity, is a prohibition of infanticide, 
2 u 
