PREFACE. 
VU 
offered, information on various subjects relative to 
the country and its inhabitants. 
Although circumscribed in geographical extent, 
and comparatively insignificant in amount of 
population, the Society and Sandwich Islands 
have been regarded with unusual interest ever 
since their discovery; and the descriptions already 
given to the public, of the loveliness of their 
general appearance, and the peculiar character 
and engaging manners of their inhabitants, have 
excited a strong desire to obtain additional infor¬ 
mation relative to the varied natural phenomena 
of the Islands themselves ; the early history; the 
moral, intellectual, and physical character of 
the people; and the nature of their ancient 
institutions. 
All their usages of antiquity having been 
entirely superseded by the new order of things 
that has followed the subversion of their former 
system, the knowledge of but few of them is 
retained by the majority of the inhabitants, while 
the rising generation is growing up in total igno¬ 
rance of all that distinguished their ancestors from 
themselves. The present, therefore, seems to be 
the only time in which a variety of facts, con¬ 
nected with the former state of the Inhabitants, 
can be secured ; and to furnish, as far as possible, 
