Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/411

Rh mission was designed to be one of mercy came to sorrowing Tahiti. She was the Duff, under Captain James Wilson, and she brought eighteen English missionaries whom the London Missionary Society had sent into the Pacific with the avowed purpose of converting the natives to Christianity. It is true that in 1772 two vessels from Peru had visited Tahiti and in 1774 Spanish priests were landed, but in the course of a year they had left without making converts.

Pomare and Idia his consort received the strangers kindly and presented them with a large house which had been built for Captain Bligh by the side of the Vaipopoo river near Point Venus. These missionaries were chiefly mechanics, artisans and small tradesmen of nonconformist turn of mind, and the natives were quick to appreciate the advantage

which might accrue to them through the maintenance of a forge and a well-equipped carpenter shop; but official enthusiasm cooled when the visitors refused to fashion weapons of war. Still they were more than tolerated for their gifts of axes, knives and cloth, although the chiefs politely requested them to refrain from "parau" (exhortation).

The time was not propitious for the immediate acceptance of Christianity. Diseases of European origin were ravaging the land, affecting almost every family, and the natives were convinced that the white man's god had brought the evils which were destroying them; so when the missionaries prayed, the natives dragged the diseased and the deformed out upon the village green, and exposing them to view, cried, "See what your god has wrought!"

During these early years when many a grave error might have been avoided, the missionaries appear to have lacked a leader whose heart was