the
American Mormons, and he declared against the least connection. "_Pour
moi_," said he, with a fine charity, "_les Mormons ici un petit
Catholiques_." Some months later I had an opportunity to consult an
orthodox fellow-countryman, an old dissenting Highlander, long settled
in Tahiti, but still breathing of the heather of Tiree. "Why do they
call themselves Mormons?" I asked. "My dear, and that is my question!"
he exclaimed. "For by all that I can hear of their doctrine, I have
nothing to say against it, and their life, it is above reproach." And
for all that, Mormons they are, but of the earlier sowing: the so-called
Josephites, the followers of Joseph Smith, the opponents of Brigham
Young.

Grant, then, the Mormons to be Mormons. Fresh points at once arise:
"What are the Israelites? and what the Kanitus?" For a long while back
the sect had been divided into Mormons proper and so-called Israelites,
I never could hear why. A few years since there came a visiting
missionary of the name of Williams, who made an excellent collection,
and retired, leaving fresh disruption imminent. Something irregular (as
I was told) in his way of "opening the service" had raised partisans and
enemies; the church was once more rent asunder; and a new sect, the
Kanitu, issued from the division. Since then Kanitus and Israelites,
like the Cameronians and the United Presbyterians, have made common
cause; and the ecclesiastical history of the Paumotus is, for the
moment, uneventful. There will be more doing before long, and these
isles bid fair to be the Scotland of the South. Two things I could never
learn. The nature of the innovations of the Rev. Mr. Williams none would
tell me, and of the meaning of the name Kanitu none had a guess. It was
not Tahitian, it was not Marquesan; it formed no part of that ancient
speech of the Paumotus, now passing swiftly into obsolescence. One man,
a priest, God bless him! said it was the Latin for a little dog. I have
found it since as the name of a god in New Guinea; it must be a bolder
man than I who should hint at a connection. Here, then, is a singular
thing: a brand-new sect, arising by popular acclamation, and a nonsense
word invented for its name.

The design of mystery seems obvious, and according to a very intelligent
observer, Mr. Magee of Mangareva, this element of the mysterious is a
chief attraction of the Mormon Church. It enjoys some of the status of
Freemasonry at home, and there is for