that, Mormons they are, but of the earlier sowing: the so-called
Josephites, the followers of Joseph Smith, the opponents of Brigham
Young.

Grant, then, the Mormons to be Mormons. Fresh points at once
arise: What are the Israelites? and what the Kanitus? For a long
while back the sect had been divided into Mormons proper and so-
called Israelites, I never could hear why. A few years since there
came a visiting missionary of the name of Williams, who made an
excellent collection, and retired, leaving fresh disruption
imminent. Something irregular (as I was told) in his way of
'opening the service' had raised partisans and enemies; the church
was once more rent asunder; and a new sect, the Kanitu, issued from
the division. Since then Kanitus and Israelites, like the
Cameronians and the United Presbyterians, have made common cause;
and the ecclesiastical history of the Paumotus is, for the moment,
uneventful. There will be more doing before long, and these isles
bid fair to be the Scotland of the South. Two things I could never
learn. The nature of the innovations of the Rev. Mr. Williams none
would tell me, and of the meaning of the name Kanitu none had a
guess. It was not Tahitian, it was not Marquesan; it formed no
part of that ancient speech of the Paumotus, now passing swiftly
into obsolescence. One man, a priest, God bless him! said it was
the Latin for a little dog. I have found it since as the name of a
god in New Guinea; it must be a bolder man than I who should hint
at a connection. Here, then, is a singular thing: a brand-new
sect, arising by popular acclamation, and a nonsense word invented
for its name.

The design of mystery seems obvious, and according to a very