Captain T——, after discussing the worth of the boat as being about £80, agreed to give us £60, but in writing out the cheque, threw down the pen and shouted, “I’ll see you —— first!” Offering £50, to which we agreed, he again resiled, and declared he would not give a penny above £30. We appealed to him to regard this as a debt of honour, and to cease haggling over the price, as he well knew how we had been wronged in the matter. Finally we left him declaring, “I am building similar boats just now at £25 apiece; I will send you one of them, and you may either take that or want!” We left, glad to get away on any terms from such a character; and, though next year he did send one of his promised boats for me to Aneityum, yet the conduct of his degraded servants engaged in the sandal-wood trade had a great share in the guilt of breaking up and ruining our Mission. Thousands upon thousands were made by it yearly, so long as it lasted; but it was a trade steeped in human blood and indescribable vice, nor could God’s blessing rest on them and their ill-gotten gains. Oh, how often did we pray at that time to be delivered from the hands of unreasonable and wicked men! Sandal-wood traders murdered many of the Islanders when robbing them of their wood, and the Islanders murdered many of them and their servants in revenge. White men, engaged in the trade, also shot dead and murdered each other in vicious and drunken quarrels, and not a few put end to their own lives. I have scarcely known one of them who did not come to ruin and poverty; the money that came even to the shipowners was a conspicuous curse. Fools there made a mock at sin, thinking that no one cared for these poor savages, but their sin did find them out, and God made good in their experience His own irrepealable law, “The wages of sin is death.”