that he passed in the open air.* His majesty did not materially alter his line of conduct towards the missionaries, whom he had all along rather tolerated than encouraged. These patient men, nevertheless, persevered in their efforts to instruct all the children who were allowed to attend them, and to prepare their own minds for more extensive duties whenever an opportunity should occur for discharging them. As yet, all their labours were received with ridicule, and rewarded with scorn. Early in 1805, they printed a catechism in the native alphabet, or rather adapted the Roman character, so far as was practicable, to the sounds in which the language of Otaheite was expressed. The king, fascinated and the pen with the power conferred by the press, came a diligent student; and delighted with his acquirements, he suggested to the brethren that they should build for him a small plastered house near their own, that he might attend to his writing uninterrupted by the avocations to which he was exposed at home.t

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But a crisis was at hand which for a time interrupted the labours of the mission, and threw Otaheite into great confusion. On the 6th of November 1807, a vast number of men appeared in arms, near Matavai, and Pomare,

His tent, we are informed by Mr Ellis, was pitched in an exposed situation; a heavy dew fell among the mountains; he took cold, and the next morning was affected with a cough. This led some of his adherents to designate the preceding night by the appellation of po-mare, night of cough, from po, night, and mare, cough. The chief was pleased with the sound of the words thus associated, adopted them as his name, and was ever afterwards called Pomare. Vol. ii. p. 70.

The letter of Pomare the Second to the Missionary Society in London is truly characteristic: "Friends, I wish you every blessing, friends, in your residence in your country, with success in teaching this bad land, this foolish land, this wicked land, this land which is ignorant of good, this land that knoweth not the true God, this regardless land. Friends, I wish you health and prosperity, may I also live, and may Jehovah save us all! I wish you to send a great number of men, women, and children here. Friends, send also property, and cloth for us, and we also will adopt English customs. Friends, send also plenty of muskets and powder, for wars are frequent in our country, &c. &c. &c. (Signed) "POMARE, King of Tahiti."

apprehending that his camp, stationed in the neighbourhood, would be immediately attacked, recommended that the wives and children of the Europeans should take shelter on board a ship in the harbour. The next morning, a letter was addressed by the missionaries to the captain, begging that he would delay his departure forty-eight hours, that they might deliberate on the steps necessary to be taken. The king advised the married ones to leave the island; who, being unanimously of opinion that there was no prospect of usefulness, even should the rebels retire, and discouraged by the little success which had attended the exertions of so many years, resolved to remove. Four offered to remain with their royal pupil, that they might be on the spot should any favourable change occur; the others, with most of the Europeans who happened to be resident in the district, sailed from Otaheite to Huaheine, where they were hospitably received.

As the fortune of war turned against the king, he found it necessary to retreat to Eimeo, whither he was accompanied by the few preachers who had remained at Matavai. Finding that the door of usefulness was not likely to be soon opened again in the Georgian Islands, the refugees, in the course of the following year, determined to avail themselves of the first conveyance suitable for removing their households to Port Jackson. Accordingly, on the 26th October 1809, they embarked for New Holland, leaving only Mr Haywood, who chose to continue in Huaheine, and Mr Holt, who still resided with Pomare in Eimeo. It was already known, that after a victory gained by them in the previous December, the rebels had plundered the districts of Matavai and Pare, and, devoting every house to destruction, had reduced the whole country to a state of absolute desolation. The dwellings attached to the mission were ransacked and burnt; and whatever they were not able to carry off, they utterly wasted. Every implement of iron was converted into a weapon of war. The most valuable books were either committed to the flames, or distributed to

the warriors, for the purpose of making cartridges, and the printing types were converted into musket balls.*

This catastrophe was the occasion of deep sorrow and regret to many whose hopes had been fixed on a very different result. Seldom had any enterprise commenced under auspices more favourable, or that could promise more certain or speedy success to its authors; and yet, after the labours, sacrifice, and anxiety of twelve years, it arrived at a termination alike disastrous and fruitless. The missionaries had left their native land to save the remnant of an interesting people from destruction, and to promote their temporal as well as spiritual welfare. But, notwithstanding their utmost endeavours, they had seen the process of depopulation urged on with a fearful rapidity, by causes which, though they regretted them, they could neither diminish nor control; and amidst anarchy, bloodshed, and all the other horrors of barbarian warfare, they were ultimately driven from the field where they had trusted to gain a triumph for the gospel and the benign spirit of civilisation. There were many grounds to conclude that, during the time the mission had existed in Otaheite, the experiment of raising a savage people to the rank of a christian community had been tried and completely failed; and the result, according to the ordinary grounds of calculation, might be supposed to demonstrate the impropriety of expending more labour or money upon an object for the accomplishment of which it might be asserted that the time had not yet come.

But as the darkest hour of night is that which precedes the dawn of a new day, so the gloom now cast over the missionary cause was about to be followed by a brighter light than had yet shone upon their exertions in the South Sea. Pomare, who felt that when the European settlers left his shores, one of the principal means of improvement had been withdrawn from his people, no sooner saw affairs in a somewhat more settled

state, than, in the most earnest manner, he invited them to return. He was still, indeed, an exile in Eimeo, excluded from his paternal dominions, and, consequently, had less power than formerly either to protect them from danger, or to aid their endeavours for spreading civilisation among his subjects. It is doubtful, too, whether his favourable thoughts towards the christian brethren ought to be ascribed to his late reverses, and to an impression thereby produced in regard to the inefficacy of idol-worship for obtaining supernatural aid; or whether adversity did not lead him to reflect on the declarations he had so often heard respecting the true God, and to connect his present condition with a sinful life, of which he had not yet seriously repented. But whatever may have been the motive, there is no doubt that his fallen estate had subdued his spirit, and, at the same time, weakened the influence which his native superstition had till then exercised over his heart. In the autumn of 1811, the missionaries left their retreat in New Holland, and set sail for the Georgian Isles, the original scene of their labours. They joined the king in Eimeo, where they now established a school, and, so far as circumstances would permit, resumed their wonted course of instruction in public and in private.

It was not long before their pious efforts were rewarded by a signal triumph of the christian faith over the absurdities of idolatry. In July 1812, the king publicly professed his belief in Jehovah, and his desire to be baptized into the sublime doctrines and hopes revealed by the gospel. For some time he was observed to manifest a feeling of indifference towards the superstition of his ancestors; and his people, who watched this change with great anxiety, had their doubts removed by the following occurrence. A turtle was sent to him as a present, which being, according to the notions of the Otaheitans, a sacred animal, is always dressed with consecrated fire, within the precincts of a temple, and a portion offered to the image of the presiding deity. The attendants were proceeding to the marai with the gift,

when he called them back, and told them to prepare an oven in his own kitchen, and to present it at his table without any oblation to the god. His servants, overwhelmed with astonishment and fear, obeyed the injunction; the turtle was baked, and served up at the very next repast. The royal household stood around in mute expectation that some fearful token of divine anger would be manifested so soon as he should partake of the impious feast. The king, after carving the dish, began to eat, inviting some who sat with him to do the same; but no one could be induced to touch the unhallowed meal, dreading that such a daring insult to the national divinity would be punished by a frightful death before the entertainment should be completed.

By this act he loosened the hold whereby the false notions of early life had enthralled his own mind and the imaginations of his people, though a considerable time elapsed before the effect could be duly appreciated. When Pomare offered himself for baptism, he stated that he had endeavoured to persuade his father-in-law, and the King of Raiatea to renounce idolatry and become the disciples of Jesus Christ; but that in reply they had assured him, whatever he might do, they would adhere to Oro. Nor did he confine his exertions to private admonition. In public council he urged upon the two chiefs now mentioned the propriety of adopting the christian religion; manifesting at least his own sincerity, and also his determination to abide by the choice he thus openly vindicated.

Though the missionaries had good reason to believe that he was sincere in the desire he expressed to become a Christian, they resolved, before proceeding to the solemn rite of baptism, to wait for additional evidence of corresponding reformation in his conduct. They accordingly proposed that he should defer his formal initiation into the church until after receiving more ample instructions; an arrangement to which he acceded with a good grace, requesting that all necessary knowledge should be placed within his reach. He was soon recalled to