124 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
moment of their earthly existence, but every 
department of life, destroying, by its debasing and 
unsocial dictates, every tender feeling, and all the 
enjoyments of domestic intercourse. 
To this cheerless humiliation, the female sex 
had been for ages subject, from the direct in¬ 
junctions of their false system of religion; and 
as its cumbrous fabric began to give way, this 
barbarous and arbitrary imposition was proportion - 
ably disregarded. Not only were the sacred ma¬ 
terials with which the altars, and the appendages 
of the temple, had been constructed, converted 
into fuel; but the food, considered sacred, was 
esteemed so no longer, the invidious and debasing 
distinctions attached to the females were removed, 
and both sexes, among those who professed Chris¬ 
tianity, sat down together to their cheerful meal. 
Under the influence of these encouraging pros¬ 
pects, although enfeebled by frequent indisposition, 
the Missionaries prosecuted their work; their 
scholars increased in the same degree that the 
profession of Christianity prevailed, and a supply 
of four hundred copies of their abridgment of the 
New Testament, and a thousand copies of small 
elementary books, which had been printed in New 
South Wales, arrived very opportunely about this 
time ; spelling books they were still much in want 
of, as those formerly printed in England had long 
been expended. 
Such was the pleasing state of things in the 
commencement of 1815. The importance and 
advantages of education appeared to be more 
extensively appreciated, and between forty and 
fifty, principally adults, regularly attended the 
Mission school. The agents of vice, idolatry, and 
cruelty, were not inactive. The struggle between 
