after another to assure the trader he was right.  Not many people in Europe could have done the like.  The course at Hatiheu is therefore less dispiriting to Polynesians than a stranger might have guessed; and yet how bald it is at best!  I asked the brother if he did not tell them stories, and he stared at me; if he did not teach them history, and he said, ’O yes, they had a little Scripture history—­ from the New Testament’; and repeated his lamentations over the lack of results.  I had not the heart to put more questions; I could but say it must be very discouraging, and resist the impulse to add that it seemed also very natural.  He looked up—­’My days are far spent,’ he said; ‘heaven awaits me.’  May that heaven forgive me, but I was angry with the old man and his simple consolation.  For think of his opportunity!  The youth, from six to fifteen, are taken from their homes by Government, centralised at Hatiheu, where they are supported by a weekly tax of food; and, with the exception of one month in every year, surrendered wholly to the direction of the priests.  Since the escapade already mentioned the holiday occurs at a different period for the girls and for the boys; so that a Marquesan brother and sister meet again, after their education is complete, a pair of strangers.  It is a harsh law, and highly unpopular; but what a power it places in the hands of the instructors, and how languidly and dully is that power employed by the mission!  Too much concern to make the natives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, I suppose, the explanation of their miserable system.  But they might see in the girls’ school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene of neatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation that should shame them into cheerier methods.  The sisters themselves lament their failure.  They complain the annual holiday undoes the whole year’s work; they complain particularly of the heartless indifference of the girls.  Out of so many pretty and apparently affectionate pupils whom they have taught and reared, only two have ever returned to pay a visit of remembrance to their teachers.  These, indeed, come regularly, but the rest, so soon as their school-days are over, disappear into the woods like captive insects.  It is hard to imagine anything more discouraging; and yet I do not believe these ladies need despair.  For a certain interval they keep the girls alive and innocently busy; and if it be at all possible to save the race, this would be the means.  No such praise can be given to the boys’ school at Hatiheu.  The day is numbered already for them all; alike for the teacher and the scholars death is girt; he is afoot upon the march; and in the frequent interval they sit and yawn.  But in life there seems a thread of purpose through the least significant; the drowsiest endeavour is not lost, and even the school at Hatiheu may be more useful than it seems.