in his heathenism, and very hastily, the character of his death was violent and horrible; for he was carried away by a poison which caused the flesh to fall from his body in pieces.  Another man was continually ill, and, fearing that any day he might die, he asked me to baptize him.  Upon summoning him one day for instruction, he failed to appear, having abandoned his purpose.  Soon afterward he embarked for a neighboring island, where he died in his paganism.  One day, the children of a village came together to be baptized, but one of the pagans refused to allow her child to receive the sacrament; neither entreaties nor arguments availing to soften her.  Accordingly, we had to give her up—­our Lord taking charge of this obdurate one, as He did, suddenly deprived her one night of life.”

But the event which caused among these Indians the greatest surprise and terror, was the death of two of their most esteemed and respected chiefs.  The first was an Indian who in former days had married six wives.  He was so arrogant and cruel that whenever he made a journey he sent Indians ahead of him to cut the branches of the trees, in order that he might pass without bending his body; and if any of his followers neglected to clear away a branch he paid for his carelessness with his life.  This chief became sick, and a father entreated him with much earnestness to receive baptism.  This he refused, and, having no fear of death, said:  “Father, as yet I have sufficient strength in my eyes to see, in my hands to work, and in my feet to walk.  Leave me for the present, for, since thou art near by, I will send one of my slaves for thee if I find that I am in distress.”  The father left him, seeing that he would do nothing for us; and within two days was told that this man was dead, having gone where he must expiate his obstinacy as well as his pride and cruelty.

For the better understanding of the second case, we must assume that one of the ways in which God has been best served in that mission is in persuading the Indians who have two or three wives to abandon them and to content themselves with one.  The means used to accomplish this end was to condemn polygamy, to the assembled natives, as a state unworthy of the nobility of man, saying that they ought not to make themselves beasts and brutes by having so many wives.  Our Lord granted a fortunate outcome to this effort, for the men were thus persuaded to give up their wives.  The Indians were so impressed by this teaching that once when a swarm of locusts lit in the grain-fields of a certain village, they accounted for it by saying that God had sent this pest on the people of that village, because the men were wont to keep two wives.  There was an Indian chief of high rank in the island of Leite, by the name of Umbas, one of the most prominent among the chiefs on account of his riches and the good government which he maintained in the villages under his rule, and the thoroughness with which he