eighteen months, seeing and learning our manners and customs and listening to the many long yarns spun to him by our signal quartermaster, old Tom Piner, a converted sailor, such a wonderful change was wrought in him that the sailors used to call him "The old Christian, cannibal, man-eater." He died soon afterward.
The situation of the missionaries and their families here was a most trying one. They lived in constant fear of their lives. Their worst enemies, however, were not the heathen Fijians, but the civilized English runaway convicts from Australia. While cruising among these cannibal islands and during our intercourse with these savages, we witnessed many scenes and incidents so unnatural and shocking that the mere mention of them would offend the moral sensibilities of my readers, therefore I refrain from speaking of them.
"It has been said that the Fijian is not deficient in intelligence; that he is shrewd, apt to learn, skilful, and cunning. But his soul is uninformed by that moral beauty which might conceal the dark and repulsive features of his character. In this respect how great is the contrast between him and the matchless scenery by which he is surrounded, whose purity he has desecrated, and whose beauty sullied by crimes the most odious and customs the most abhorrent. In the midst of all that can please the taste, charm the fancy, or gratify the imagination; where everything is fair, and bright, and beautiful; where the dreamy haze of a tropical clime rests lovingly on hilltop and valley; where the sun smiles in gladness upon landscapes as picturesque and charming as the sweetest spots, buried in foliage and flowers, that
