Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/463

Rh In old days beautiful bowls, pillows and seats were carved by the natives out of single pieces of wood, but these also were doomed when brought into competition with even the crudest articles of European manufacture, and moreover their symbolism was repugnant to the new regime, for it maintained the memories of old traditions.

It should be said that in 1818 the missionaries sought to introduce such civilized employments as the manufacture of cotton cloth, and the cultivation of sugar, coffee and tobacco, and the making of lime for the concrete required in the construction of the ugly, stuffy, little stone houses which were intended to supplant the well-ventilated native thatch. They even went so far as to import a Mr. Gyles from Jamaica to introduce the manufacture of sugar from the cane. He succeeded, but Pomare and the chiefs became fearful that should the industry prove commercially profitable foreign men-of-war would descend upon