dog flesh, without knife, fork, or spoon. They stretched themselves at full
length on the mats to play cards or otherwise kill time. Their water they
drank from a gourd shell; and _awa_, the juice of a narcotic root, chewed
by others and mixed with water in the chewers' mouths, they drank, as their
fathers had done, from a cocoa-nut shell, for the same purpose that other
intoxicating drinks and liquors are taken."

That the nobles as well as the common people were thus degraded and
uncivilized, we are referred to a description, given by the same writer, of
the king, who, with the royal family, was invited on board the vessel which
conveyed out the missionaries, "They came off in their double canoes, with
waving _kahalis_ and a retinue of attendants. His majesty, according to the
taste of the times, having a _maio_, or narrow girdle, around his waist, a
green silken scarf over his shoulders, instead of coat, vest, and linen,
a string of beads on his otherwise naked neck, and a feather wreath, or
corona, on his head,--to say nothing of his being destitute of hat, gloves,
shoes, stockings, and pants,--was introduced to the first company of white
women whom he ever saw."

But the speedy change from drunkenness to sobriety, from ignorance to
comparative intelligence, from theft and falsehood to honesty and truth,
from shameless indecency to purity and chastity, from the violation of
the whole ten commandments to the sacred observance of these ten, from
barbarism to civilization and refinement, from brutish idolatry to the holy
service of God, was astonishing even to those through whose instrumentality
it was brought about.

Thirty years ago there was no church, no school house, no seminary of
learning, no regard for the Sabbath, no thought of the great Jehovah: now
all of these are found. The church tower lifts itself to heaven; the school