which renders precautions like these necessary, was in a measure
unknown before their intercourse with the whites. The excellent
Captain Wilson, who took the first missionaries out to Tahiti,
affirms that the people of that island had, in many things, "more
refined ideas of decency than ourselves." Vancouver, also, has some
noteworthy ideas on this subject, respecting the Sandwich Islanders.

That the immorality alluded to is continually increasing is plainly
shown in the numerous, severe, and perpetually violated laws against
licentiousness of all kinds in both groups of islands.

It is hardly to be expected that the missionaries would send home
accounts of this state of things. Hence, Captain Beechy, in alluding
to the "Polynesian Researches" of Ellis, says that the author has
impressed his readers with a far more elevated idea of the moral
condition of the Tahitians, and the degree of civilization to which
they have attained, than they deserve; or, at least, than the facts
which came under his observation authorized. He then goes on to say
that, in his intercourse with the islanders, "they had no fear of
him, and consequently acted from the impulse of their natural
feeling; so that he was the better enabled to obtain a correct
knowledge of their real disposition and habits."

Prom my own familiar intercourse with the natives, this last
reflection still more forcibly applies to myself.



CHAPTER XLIX.