Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/439

JOURNAL AND LETTERS OF DAVID DOUGLAS. 433 Honori, my guide, interpreter, purveyor, and, I may say, friend (for in every department of his omnifarious capacity he is a good sort of fellow), preached to-day, Sunday, the 26th, in his own language to an assembly of both sexes, old and young, nearly two hundred in number, both morning and evening. I did not see him, but from my tent-door I could hear him in the School-house, a low, small edifice, expounding and exhorting with much warmth. Having made so bold afterwards as to ask him where he took his text, he readily replied, that he "chose no text, but had taken occasion to say to the people a few good words concerning Paul when at Rome." He was evidently well pleased himself with his sermon, and seemed to please his audience also. I visited the school in the interval, when Honori had retired to compose his second sermon, and found the as- semblage under the direction of the chief, who appears to be a good man, though far from an apt scholar; they were reading the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, and proceeded to the third, reading verse and verse, all round. The females were by far the most attentive, and proved themselves the readiest learners. It is most gratifying to see far beyond the pale of what is called civilization, this proper sanctification of the Lord's Day, not only consisting in a cessation from the ordinary duties, but in reading and reflecting upon the purifying and consolatory doctrines of Christianity. The women were all neatly dressed in the native fashion, except the chief's wife, and some few others who wore very clean garments of calico. The hair was either arranged in curls or braided on the temples, and adorned with tortoise-shell combs of their own making, and chaplets of balsamic flowers, the pea-flowering racemes of the Maurarii-Tree, and feathers, etc. The men were all in the national attire, and looked tolerably well dressed, except a few of the old gentlemen. The schoolmaster, a little hump-backed man, about thirty years old, little] more than three feet high, with disproportionately long legs, and having a most peculiar cast in his right eye, failed not to prompt and reprove his scholars when necessary in a remarkably powerful tone of voice, which when he read, produced a trumpet-like sound, resembling the voice of a person bawling into a cask. Honori "had the people called together" by the sound of a conch- shell, blown by a little imp of a lad, perched on a block of lava, in front of the school-house, when as in the morning, he "lectured " on the third chapter of St. John. The congregation was thinner than in the morning, many who lived at a distance having retired to their homes. 1 spent the Monday (January the 27th,) in making observations and arranging matters for returning to Mouna Roa : my men cooked a stock of Taro, and I purchased a fine large goat for their use.