conception. A freemasonry, an agnostic sect, a company of artists,
its members all under oath to spread unchastity, and all forbidden
to leave offspring--I do not know how it may appear to others, but
to me the design seems obvious. Famine menacing the islands, and
the needful remedy repulsive, it was recommended to the native mind
by these trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. This is the
more probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institution
appears the more plainly, if it be true that, after a certain
period of life, the obligation of the votary was changed; at first,
bound to be profligate: afterwards, expected to be chaste.

Here, then, we have one side of the case. Man-eating among kindly
men, child-murder among child-lovers, industry in a race the most
idle, invention in a race the least progressive, this grim, pagan
salvation-army of the brotherhood of Oro, the report of early
voyagers, the widespread vestiges of former habitation, and the
universal tradition of the islands, all point to the same fact of
former crowding and alarm. And to-day we are face to face with the
reverse. To-day in the Marquesas, in the Eight Islands of Hawaii,
in Mangareva, in Easter Island, we find the same race perishing
like flies. Why this change? Or, grant that the coming of the
whites, the change of habits, and the introduction of new maladies
and vices, fully explain the depopulation, why is that depopulation
not universal? The population of Tahiti, after a period of
alarming decrease, has again become stationary. I hear of a
similar result among some Maori tribes; in many of the Paumotus a
slight increase is to be observed; and the Samoans are to-day as
healthy and at least as fruitful as before the change. Grant that
the Tahitians, the Maoris, and the Paumotuans have become inured to
the new conditions; and what are we to make of the Samoans, who