i, found here a large wooden cross
on which was inscribed in Latin:

Christ conquered
Charles the Third Emperor
1774

It was plain that Spaniards had erected the cross, for Charles III was
King of Spain. These English tars hated the dons, with whom they had
but recently been embattled. When they were convinced that a Spanish
ship had been at Tautira twice since they had departed, and that the
builders of the cross had earned the respect and affection of the
natives, the Britons, in their old way of fair and assertive dealing,
left the cross standing after carving on the reverse in good Latin
as a claim of prediscovery:

George III King
1767, 1769, 1773, 1774, 1777.

Two Spanish priests, they learned, had lived in the village between
the arrival and return of the Spanish ships from Peru. They left no
imprint of their Catholic religion except the cross and a memory
of kindness; and why they resigned their mission to Tahiti is not
known. The British missionaries did not come until 1797, on the
Duff. They planted gardens and worked diligently and prayed. They
had vast patience, and confidence in their all-powerful and avenging
God, and a rapt devotion to his son, who forgave the sins of those
who adopted His faith. Their ideals were as fixed as the stars, and
their courage superior to the daily discouragements of their lives and
continuous hardships of separation from home. But they could not break
the strength of the superstitions of the pagans. A dozen years these
English ecclesiastics delved in their gardens, built their houses, and
begged Jehovah and Jesus to give them victory. Five years they mourned
without message or aid from England. Their clothes were in tatters,
and as covering their whole bodies with European garments from feet to
scalp, except face and hands, was a rigid prescription of their own
morals' and an example to the almost nude Tahitians, they suffered
keenly from shame. When, after half a decade, a brig arrived, its
supplies were found ruined by salt water and mold. The poor clerics,
in an earthly paradise, but hostile atmosphere, with little to report
to an unheeding England save the depths of the untilled field of
heathenry and depravity, might not have been blamed if they, too,
had given up their mission. The fruits of twelve years of gardening
and horticulture were destroyed in a day by ravaging