The archipelago is divided between two main religions, Catholic and
Mormon. They front each other proudly with a false air of
permanence; yet are but shapes, their membership in a perpetual
flux. The Mormon attends mass with devotion: the Catholic sits
attentive at a Mormon sermon, and to-morrow each may have
transferred allegiance. One man had been a pillar of the Church of
Rome for fifteen years; his wife dying, he decided that must be a
poor religion that could not save a man his wife, and turned
Mormon. According to one informant, Catholicism was the more
fashionable in health, but on the approach of sickness it was
judged prudent to secede. As a Mormon, there were five chances out
of six you might recover; as a Catholic, your hopes were small; and
this opinion is perhaps founded on the comfortable rite of unction.

We all know what Catholics are, whether in the Paumotus or at home.
But the Paumotuan Mormon seemed a phenomenon apart. He marries but
the one wife, uses the Protestant Bible, observes Protestant forms
of worship, forbids the use of liquor and tobacco, practises adult
baptism by immersion, and after every public sin, rechristens the
backslider. I advised with Mahinui, whom I found well informed in
the history of the American Mormons, and he declared against the
least connection. 'Pour moi,' said he, with a fine charity, 'les
Mormons ici un petit Catholiques.' Some months later I had an
opportunity to consult an orthodox fellow-countryman, an old
dissenting Highlander, long settled in Tahiti, but still breathing
of the heather of Tiree. 'Why do they call themselves Mormons?' I
asked. 'My dear, and that is my question!' he exclaimed. 'For by
all that I can hear of their doctrine, I have nothing to say
against it, and their life, it is above reproach.' And for all