The manners of the people whom Ledyard had now an opportunity of contemplating indicated a character nearly the reverse of that of the New-Zealanders. In what circumstances those extraordinary differences originated it is foreign to the present purpose to inquire. To account for them, as some writers have done, by the influence of climate, is wilfully to sport with facts and experience. Within the same degrees of latitude, pursuing our researches round the globe, we have black men and white; cannibals, and races remarkable for humanity; men so gross in their intellects that they retain nothing of man but the shape, and others with a character and genius so admirably adapted to receive the impressions of laws and civilization, that they turn every natural or accidental advantage of their position to the greatest account, and run on in the career of improvement with gigantic strides. This was not Ledyard’s theory. He seemed everywhere to discover proofs of the vast influence of climate in rendering men what they are, morally as well as physically; though he could not be ignorant that while the climate of Greece and Italy remains what it was in old times, the physiognomy of the inhabitants has undergone an entire change, while their moral condition is, if possible, deteriorated still more than their features. The mind of man seems, in fact, after having borne an extraordinary crop of virtues, knowledge, and heroic deeds, to require, like the earth, to lie fallow for a season. It cannot be made to yield fruit beyond a certain point, upon which, when it has once touched, no power under heaven can prevent its relapsing into barrenness. The population scattered over the innumerable islands of the Pacific have been in a remarkably peculiar position from the time in which they were discovered up to the present moment. Civilization has, in a manner, been forced upon them. Their idols have been thrown down; the bloody or absurd rites of their religion have, in many instances, been exchanged for the blessings and the light of Christianity; and although silly or affected persons may lament for the disappearance of what they term a “picturesque superstition,” every real friend of humanity will rejoice at seeing a church occupying the site of a morai; and men, who once delighted to feed upon the limbs of an enemy, employing themselves in deriving subsistence from their own industry and ingenuity.