Such was the state of this beautiful island and its interesting and fascinating natives at the time when Captain Wallis first discovered and Lieutenant Cook shortly afterwards visited it.  What they now are, as described by Captain Beechey, it is lamentable to reflect.  All their usual and innocent amusements have been denounced by the missionaries, and, in lieu of them, these poor people have been driven to seek for resources in habits of indolence and apathy:  that simplicity of character, which atoned for many of their faults, has been converted into cunning and hypocrisy; and drunkenness, poverty, and disease have thinned the island of its former population to a frightful degree.  By a survey of the first missionaries, and a census of the inhabitants, taken in 1797, the population was estimated at 16,050 souls; Captain Waldegrave, in 1830, states it, on the authority of a census also taken by the missionaries, to amount only to 5000—­and there is but too much reason to ascribe this diminution to praying, psalm-singing, and dram-drinking.[3]

The island of Otaheite is in shape two circles united by a low and narrow isthmus.  The larger circle is named Otaheite Mooe, and is about thirty miles in diameter; the lesser, named Tiaraboo, about ten miles in diameter.  A belt of low land, terminating in numerous valleys, ascending by gentle slopes to the central mountain, which is about seven thousand feet high, surrounds the larger circle, and the same is the case with the smaller circle on a proportionate scale.  Down these valleys flow streams and rivulets of clear water, and the most luxuriant and verdant foliage fills their sides and the hilly ridges that separate them, among which were once scattered the smiling cottages and little plantations of the natives.  All these are now destroyed, and the remnant of the population has crept down to the flats and swampy ground on the sea shore, completely subservient to the seven establishments of missionaries, who have taken from them what little trade they used to carry on, to possess themselves of it; who have their warehouses, act as agents, and monopolize all the cattle on the island—­but, in return, they have given them a new religion and a parliament (risum teneatis?) and reduced them to a state of complete pauperism—­and all, as they say, and probably have so persuaded themselves, for the honour of God, and the salvation of their souls!  How much is such a change brought about by such conduct to be deprecated! how lamentable is it to reflect, that an island on which Nature has lavished so many of her bounteous gifts, with which neither Cyprus nor Cythera, nor the fanciful island of Calypso, can compete in splendid and luxuriant beauties, should be doomed to such a fate,—­in an enlightened age, and by a people that call themselves civilized!

CHAPTER II

THE BREAD-FRUIT

—­The happy shores without a law,