of the elevated condition of the natives. Thus, at Honolulu, the
capital of the Sandwich Islands, there are fine dwelling-houses,
several hotels, and barber-shops, ay, even billiard-rooms; but all
these are owned and used, be it observed, by whites. There are
tailors, and blacksmiths, and carpenters also; but not one of them is
a native.

The fact is, that the mechanical and agricultural employment of
civilized life require a kind of exertion altogether too steady and
sustained to agree with an indolent people like the Polynesians.
Calculated for a state of nature, in a climate providentially adapted
to it, they are unfit for any other. Nay, as a race, they cannot
otherwise long exist.

The following statement speaks for itself.

About the year 1777, Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti
at about two hundred thousand. By a regular census, taken some four
or five years ago, it was found to be only nine thousand. This
amazing decrease not only shows the malignancy of the evils necessary
to produce it; but, from the fact, the inference unavoidably follows
that all the wars, child murders, and other depopulating causes,
alleged to have existed in former times, were nothing in comparison to
them.

These evils, of course, are solely of foreign origin. To say nothing
of the effects of drunkenness, the occasional inroads of the
small-pox, and other things which might be mentioned, it is
sufficient to allude to a virulent disease which now taints the blood
of at least two-thirds of the common people of the island; and, in