Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/220

 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