------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. "Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Pacific," by Captain J Elphinstone Erskine, RN, page 100. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 2. The _Quarterly Review_, 1853, in noticing accounts of voyages in the Pacific, after quoting the favourable testimonies of some writers, thus refers to others: "There is one circumstance which produces a very painful impression: it is the extreme unfairness which has been brought to bear against the missionaries and their proceedings, even by reporters whose substantial good intentions we have no right to controvert. Surely their work was one which, whatever exception we may take against particular views or interests, ought to have excited the sympathies, not only of those who belong to the religious party, as it is commonly called, but of all who do not take a perverse pleasure in contemplating human degradation as a kind of moral necessity. The object of these devoted men was to redeem the natives from no mere speculative unbelief, but from superstitions the most sanguinary and licentious. Even those who were careless as to the great truths which the Polynesians had to learn, must feel, upon reflection, that merely to unteach the brutal and defiling lesson of ages of darkness was to confer a priceless blessing. Every prejudice should surely be in favour of the men who have by general confession accomplished the first and apparently most laborious part of this task; instead of which a large class of writers find a species of satisfaction in thinking nothing but evil." CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. A HAZARDOUS EXPLOIT. Mr Bent had been waiting for my recovery to restore Alea to her father, and to revisit the newly-established Christian community in her native island. It was important to lose no time in doing this. Mary Bent would have accompanied us; but as her father proposed being absent only a short time, and as the inconveniences of voyaging in a native canoe were very great, he wished her to remain at home. She was, however, not alone; for the widow of a missionary resided with her, and shared her onerous duties in instructing the native girls, an occupation in which both ladies took the greatest delight. All the inhabitants of the island now, it must be understood, professed Christianity, and might justly be called thoroughly civilised. Many also were true and sincere believers; so that these two English ladies, left alone on a small island of the Pacific, felt as secure as they would have done in the centre of civilised England.