_vMARE’S ADMIRATION OF THE BLACKSMITH. 11 
who were interested in the success of the important 
enterprise. 
The departure of the Duff did not occasion any 
diminution in the attention of the natives to the 
Missionaries in Tahiti. Pomare, Otu, Haamane- 
mane, Paitia, and other chiefs, continued to mani- 
fest the truest friendship, and liberally supplied 
them with such articles as the island afforded. As 
soon, therefore, as they had made the habitation 
furnished by the people for their accommodation 
in any degree comfortable, they commenced with 
energy their important work. 
Their acquaintance with the most useful of the 
mechanic arts, not only delighted the natives, but 
raised the Miscionanies in em estimation, al led 
them to desire their friendship. This was strikingly 
evinced on several occasions, when they beheld 
them use their carpenters’ tools, cut with a saw 
a number of boards out of a tree, which they had 
never thought it possible to split into more than 
two, and make, with these, chests, and articles of 
furniture. They beheld with pleasure and surprise 
the daily progress in the building of a boat, up- 
wards of twenty feet long, and six tons burden, 
which was ultimately finished ; but when the black- 
smith’s shop was erected, and the forge and anvil 
were first employed on their shores, they were filled 
with astonishment. They had long been acquainted 
with the properties and uses of iron, having pro- 
cured some from the natives of a neighbouring 
island,* where a Dutch vessel, the African Galley, 
* Probably King George’s, or one of the islands in its 
immediate vicinity, as Commodore Byron found at this 
- place a piece of iron and of brass, which were supposed 
to have been procured from the wreck.—Hawkesworth’s 
Voyage, vol. i. p. 102. 
