and carry off a complement of women for the cruise; consider, besides,
how the whites were at first regarded in the light of demi-gods, as
appears plainly in the reception of Cook upon Hawaii; and again, in the
story of the discovery of Tutuila, when the really decent women of Samoa
prostituted themselves in public to the French; and bear in mind how it
was the custom of the adventurers, and we may almost say the business of
the missionaries, to deride and infract even the most salutary tapus.
Here we see every engine of dissolution directed at once against a
virtue never and nowhere very strong or popular; and the result, even
in the most degraded islands, has been further degradation. Mr. Lawes,
the missionary of Savage Island, told me the standard of female chastity
had declined there since the coming of the whites. In heathen time, if a
girl gave birth to a bastard, her father or brother would dash the
infant down the cliffs; and to-day the scandal would be small. Or take
the Marquesas. Stanislao Moanatini told me that in his own recollection
the young were strictly guarded; they were not suffered so much as to
look upon one another in the street, but passed (so my informant put it)
like dogs; and the other day the whole school-children of Nuka-hiva and
Ua-pu escaped in a body to the woods, and lived there for a fortnight in
promiscuous liberty. Readers of travels may perhaps exclaim at my
authority, and declare themselves better informed. I should prefer the
statement of an intelligent native like Stanislao (even if it stood
alone, which it is far from doing) to the report of the most honest
traveller. A ship of war comes to a haven, anchors, lands a party,
receives and returns a visit, and the captain writes a chapter on the
manners of the island. It is not considered what class is mostly seen.
Yet we should not be pleased if a Lascar foremast hand were to judge
England by the ladies who parade Ratcliffe Highway, and the gentlemen
who share with them their hire. Stanislao's opinion of a decay of virtue
even in these unvirtuous islands has been supported to me by others; his
very example, the progress of dissolution amongst the young, is adduced
by Mr. Bishop in Hawaii. And so far as Marquesans are concerned, we
might have hazarded a guess of some decline in manners. I do not think
that any race could ever have prospered or multiplied with such as now
obtain; I am sure they would have been never at the pains to coun