Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/243

 PAET II. MISSION HISTORY ■ CHAPTER I. BEGINNINGS — LAKEMBA AND EEWA. In the entire annals of Christianity, it would be difficult to find a record of any of its enterprises so remarkable, or followed by such astonishing success, as the Mission to Fiji. The reader of the forego- ing chapters will be able to form some notion of the task which was undertaken by those who first resolved to bring the old converting power of the Gospel to bear upon these far-oif islands. The portraiture already given is but an imperfect sketch, and, necessarily, most imper- fect in the most prominent features. The worst deformities, the foulest stains, disfiguring and blackening all the rest, are the very parts of Fijian nature which, while the most strongly characteristic, are such as may only be hurriedly mentioned, dimly hinted at, or passed by alto, gether in silence. The truth is just this, that within the many shores of this secluded group, every evil passion had grown up unchecked, and run riot in unheard of abominations. Sinking lower and lower in moral degradation, the people had never fallen physically or intellectually to the level of certain stunted and brutalized races fast failing, through mere exhaustion, from the mass of mankind. Constitutional vigour and mental force aided and fostered the development of every crime ; until crime became inwrought into the very soul of the people, polluted every hearth, gave form to every social and political institution, and turned religious worship into orgies of surpassing horror. The savage of Fiji broke beyond the common limits of rapine and bloodshed, and, violating the elementary instincts of humanity, stood unrivalled as a disgrace to mankind.