Imatges de pàgina
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TRIAL OF

CHRISTIANITY.

33

once those vices had reached their acme, as it is clear they did just before their discovery by white men, and were then re-enforced for the work of destruction by all the vices of civilization.

Since that period almost every islet, and bay, and sand-bank, and coral reef throughout Polynesia has been the scene of some thrilling disaster or romantic adventure by shipwreck, or massacre, or capture, or cut-off, or rescue, or conflict, or mutiny, with the harrowing narratives of which in detail, as they have come to my knowledge, we could fill volumes. For many years the track of whale ships, merchant ships, and men-of-war, from island to island, was marked by unbridled license, treachery, butchery, bloodshed, murder, and almost every conceivable crime and outrage; the latter often found to be instigated by monsters in the shape of men, those convict vagrants from New Holland, who in some cases made themselves very giants in iniquity, obtaining a fatal ascendency over the natives by their superior intelligence and resources, and teaching them to practice all conceivable wickedness with greediness.

It was just in this crisis of their fate, tutored into all the vices of civilization without its virtues by runaway sailors and transported refugees from English justice, that missionaries found them from England and America-the mother and daughter-and effected a peaceable settlement. The fame of their successful experiment is now world-wide, and it is recorded with exultation in the annals of humanity, to the praise of God's glorious grace.

In the succeeding chapters of this work I propose

to give the true aspect of an important part of this island world of the Pacific, as it appears now to the traveler after a little more than a quarter of a century's trial of Christianity. Various threads of personal adventure, anecdote, and illustration will be freely interwoven with the warp of our narrative; and though the fabric come out in consequence party-colored, it is hoped, nevertheless, that it will not fail of curious interest and acceptance with all parties. Let us then initiate our readers into this ISLAND WORLD with a few appropriate stanzas from Dana's poem of The Buccaneer, that may serve to exemplify our plan, and be prophetic of the result we arrive at by means of this book:

Inland now rests the green, warm dell;

The brook comes tinkling down its side;
From out the trees the Sabbath bell

Rings cheerful far and wide,

Mingling its sound with bleatings of the flocks,
That feed about the vale among the rocks.

Nor holy bell, nor pastoral bleat,

In former days within the vale;
Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet;
Curses were on the gale:

Rich goods lay on the sand, and murder'd men
Pirate and wrecker kept their revels then.

But calm, low voices, words of grace,
Now slowly fall upon the ear;

A quiet look is in each face,

Subdued and holy fear:

Each motion gentle-all is kindly done:

Come listen, how from crime these isles were won!

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FIRST LAND-FALL.

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CHAPTER II.

PENGUIN ROOSTS AND ALBATROSSES OF CAPE HORN AND THE PACIFIC.

At length did cross an albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hail'd it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,

And round and round it flew:
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steer'd us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,

Came to the mariner's hollo.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

THE first introduction of my readers to the good ship Wales, whereby we pass to the Pacific, is as she is lying off and on in Berkley's Sound, at the islands called Foul Weather Group, otherwise named Falkland, after an English lord. Cape Horn weather here begins, and the ship and her company put on their Cape Horn suit; which, so far as some of our men are concerned, is quite as unique and nondescript as the notable "White Jacket."

This group is so near to the gate of the Pacific, though belonging to the Atlantic side, that an account of a ramble over the moss-covered rocks and penguin roosts of the uninhabited land, off which we now lie,

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