ascended the throne, the Rev. Mr. Richards, American missionary, addressed the throne of grace, after which the king ordered his assembly to be seated, and then read his speech:-" We have called you together to deliberate on matters connected with the good of our kingdom. In the exercise of our prerogative, we have appointed Gerrit P. Judd, Esq., to be our Minister for the Interior Affairs of our kingdom; Robert C. Wyllie, Esq., to be our Minister for Foreign Relations; and John Ricord, Esq., to be our Law Adviser in all matters relating to the Administration of Justice. We have ordered our Ministers to lay before you reports of their several departments. The independence of our kingdom has been most explicitly recognised by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Belgium. From each of these powers we have received the most friendly assurances."

The main income of the Government, it is added, is derived from the whalers of different nations which put into Honolulu and Lahaina for refreshment. In the year 1844, no less than three hundred and fifty-three ships and barks put into these ports, registering one hundred and twenty-four thousand, three hundred and forty tons, and navigated by seven thousand one hundred and sixty-three American, and two thousand four hundred and forty-eight other seamen; and the value of whose cargoes was seventeen million, seven hundred and thirty-three thousand, four hundred and eleven dollars. The imports for the year amount in value to three hundred and fifty thousand, three hundred and forty-seven dollars of which one hundred and twenty-one thousand and sixty-one dollars were from the United States; from Sydney, thirty-eight thousand, two hundred and thirtytwo dollars; from England, thirty-four thousand and five

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dollars; and the remainder from other foreign ports. Of this amount sixty thousand and fifty-four dollars were re-exported; the remainder, amounting to two hundred and eighty-nine thousand, nine hundred and sixty-nine dollars, being consumed in the country. The estimated value of domestic produce exported is given as fortynine thousand, one hundred and eighty-seven dollars; and of produce supplied to shipping, sixty thousand and four hundred dollars. The total net amount from all sources received at the Honolulu custom-house is stated at twelve thousand, six hundred and sixty dollars, thirty cents. There are two packets now running between Oregon and Honolulu, an American brig, and a bark of the Hudson's Bay Company; the voyage averaging from twenty-five to thirty days.

The Society Islands, and their dependencies, the Georgian Islands, the next best known in England, are two thousand seven hundred miles south of the Sandwich Islands. They were first seen by the Spaniards in 1605; but it was not for a century and a half afterwards that they began to be visited by the French and English navigators, including Cook and Bougainville. In 1788, the ship Bounty, fatally for its crew, and perhaps for the natives, reached the lovely shores of Tahiti; and from that epoch may be dated the unfortunate celebrity of the Society Islands. The country, with its fruits and flowers, its gorgeous woods and trickling waters, looked like a heaven upon earth to the sea-worn mariners. The very air around seemed laden with Sabæan odours; and as they drew nigh,

Upon their startled ear,

What unaccustomed sounds came from those shores,

Charming the lone Pacific!

But Tahiti possessed another kind of enchantment, to

which the roving monks of the sea are necessarily still more sensitive than other men. The houris of this southern paradise have been often described; but we prefer the portrait of the sterner and truer missionaries to that of observers who were more likely to allow their imaginations to be governed by the conventionalisms of Europe.

"Those who carefully clothe themselves and avoid the sunbeams, are but a shade or two darker than a European brunette; their eyes are black and sparkling; their teeth white and even; their skin soft and delicate; their limbs finely turned; their hair jetty, perfumed, and ornamented with flowers; they are in general large and wide over the shoulders; we are, therefore, disappointed in the judgment we had formed from the report of preceding travellers; and though here and there was to be seen a young person who might be esteemed comely, we saw few who, in fact, could be called beauties, yet they possess eminent feminine graces; their faces are never darkened by a scowl, or covered with a cloud of sullenness or suspicion. Their manners are affable and engaging; their step easy, firm, and graceful; their behaviour free and unguarded; always boundless in generosity to each other and to strangers; their tempers mild, gentle, and unaffected; slow to take offence, easily pacified, and seldom retaining resentment or revenge, whatever provocation they may have received. Their hands and arms are very delicately formed; and though they go bare-foot, their feet are not coarse and spreading."

In fact (for beauty here becomes an historical question), these savages of the Pacific were "fearful fair," not because of their chiselled features and harmonious forms, but of their exquisite womanliness of nature,-a quality which makes

ugliness itself divine, and without which beauty has no witchery but for boys and fools. The result is well known. The crew of the Bounty mutinied, seized the ship, and returned to Tahiti. Some were re-taken, some executed, some drowned, some murdered; and two, the sole survivors, founded a colony on Pitcairn's Island, which, in 1830, numbered about eighty persons, speaking the English language, worshipping God in Christ, combining the energy of Europe with the simplicity of the Pacific, and exhibiting in their graceful persons the mingled blood of the two races.

In 1795,

Ever since the visit of Captain Cook, the savages of the South Sea had found favour in the eyes of the English; and the religious public, more especially, yearned after the eternal welfare of human beings so engaging yet so ignorant, so beautiful yet so unholy. the Missionary Society was formed; and in the following year it despatched thirty preachers to carry the sublime Message to Tahiti. Some of these persons had secular callings like the first apostles; and the simple islanders gazed at the wonders they performed, and more especially by means of the forge, as if they had been true miracles. But this favourable impression was destroyed by the conscientiousness of the ministers, who, in order to prevent a traffic in arms and ammunition, supplied themselves a ship, which had nothing else to offer, with provisions. Then came civil war; and after twelve years spent in unremitting toil, and in the midst of anarchy and bloodshed, the last of these missionaries withdrew in despair to Australia.

But they were speedily recalled by the king, who had found the gods of his country of no use in his troubles; in 1812, he publicly broke the taboo, and professed his belief in Jehovah; and in 1817 he threw off with his own

The

hands the first page printed in the native press. work of conversion now went on rapidly under the auspices of the chiefs themselves, who formed societies for assisting in it by contributions; and in 1819 the Royal Mission Chapel was opened,—a wooden building of so extravagant a size, that three preachers, holding forth simultaneously from three several pulpits, were not within hearing of each other's voices! A code of written laws was now published, seminaries of education established, and even trial by jury introduced: but the seeds of evil germinated at the same moment with those of good. Tahiti became a great rendezvous for ships, particularly for whaling vessels; and drunkenness, licentiousness, and disease, followed in the track of Europeans, and neutralized the benefits of that gospel which they professed and yet profaned. Nay, a wild and yet natural heresy sprang from the new faith itself. The blessed climate-the food and fruits offered spontaneously by nature to man-the evergreen hills and groves-the music of woods and waters the softness and loveliness of the women-all wrought upon imaginations already heated by religious zeal; till visionaries arose, who announced that the millenium was come, that the obligation of the ten commandments had ceased, and that the requirings of the heart were the only law. Then came the usual struggle between the two great sections of Christianity; then a minority, followed by the accession of a girl to the throne; and finally, the fierce jealousies of France and England, both of which nations maintain a regular naval force in the Pacific.

The Protestant missionary rule was perhaps not well adapted to the gentle, light-hearted savages of Tahiti ; and its stringency increasing with its power gave rise, it may be suspected, to much open profligacy on the one