e to-day as healthy and at
least as fruitful as before the change. Grant that the Tahitians, the
Maoris, and the Paumotuans have become inured to the new conditions; and
what are we to make of the Samoans, who have never suffered?

Those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to be ready
with solutions. Thus I have heard the mortality of the Maoris attributed
to their change of residence--from fortified hill-tops to the low,
marshy vicinity of their plantations. How plausible! And yet the
Marquesans are dying out in the same houses where their fathers
multiplied. Or take opium. The Marquesas and Hawaii are the two groups
the most infected with this vice; the population of the one is the most
civilised, that of the other by far the most barbarous, of Polynesians;
and they are two of those that perish the most rapidly. Here is a strong
case against opium. But let us take unchastity, and we shall find the
Marquesas and Hawaii figuring again upon another count. Thus, Samoans
are the most chaste of Polynesians, and they are to this day entirely
fertile; Marquesans are the most debauched: we have seen how they are
perishing; Hawaiians are notoriously lax, and they begin to be dotted
among deserts. So here is a case stronger still against chastity; and
here also we have a correction to apply. Whatever the virtues of the
Tahitian, neither friend nor enemy dares call him chaste; and yet he
seems to have outlived the time of danger. One last example: syphilis
has been plausibly credited with much of the sterility. But the Samoans
are, by all accounts, as fruitful as at first; by some accounts more so;
and it is not seriously to be argued that the Samoans have escaped
syphilis.

These examples show how dangerous it is to reason from any particular
cause, or even from many in a single group. I have in my eye an able
and amiable pamphlet by the Rev. S.E. Bishop: "Why are the Hawaiians
Dying Out?" Any one interested in the subject ought to read this tract,
which contains real information; and yet Mr. Bishop's views would have
been changed by an acquaintance with other groups. Samoa is, for the
moment, the main and the most instructive exception to the rule. The
people are the most chaste, and one of the most temperate of island
peoples. They have never been tried and depressed with any grave
pestilence. Their clothing has scarce been tampered with; at the simple
and becoming tabard of the girls, Tartuffe, in many anothe