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Having left Anaa with 500 fellow-countrymen in three canoes to render homage to Pomaré III., who had just ascended the throne, Ton-Wari had been driven out of his course by westerly winds. These were succeeded by variable breezes, and provisions were soon so completely exhausted that the survivors had to feed on the bodies of those who were the first to succumb.
He did not live long enough, however, to see the completion of this design, but, dying in 1821, he left it to his daughter, who succeeded him in his sovereignty, taking her father's name Pomare.
It had long been a subject of dispute between the two nations, until a friendly understanding was at last come to in November, 1846. Queen Pomare, who had fled to another island, had returned to Papeiti five weeks before my arrival. She resides in a four-roomed house, and dines daily, with her family, at the governor's table.
Pomare treated them with great leniency, allowing no one to be injured, and even sending the body of a chief killed in battle back to his own people to be buried. So great was the effect of this conduct that the heathen party became anxious to know more of the new faith, and in a few months the idols of Tahiti were thrown to the ground.
In the far recesses of those mountains were almost inaccessible caves in which the natives laid their dead, and where one found still their moldering skeletons. M. Brault touched my shoulder. "Rumor has it that the body of Pomaré the Fifth is there," he said; "that it was taken secretly from the tomb you have seen near Papeete, and carried here at night.
Although Pomare and some of his chiefs, as well as the lower orders, had embraced Christianity in spirit as well as in name, the mass of the people remained, as might have been expected, ignorant of its principles, and indulged in habits the very reverse of those it inculcates. Still the true faith went on taking root downwards and bearing fruit upwards.
They purchased a ship, and sent out twenty-five labourers to commence missions simultaneously at the Marquesan, Tahitian, and Friendly Islands. The following is the account given of the reception of this band of Christian evangelists: "On March 7, 1797, the first missionaries from the Duff went on shore, and were met on the beach by the king, Pomare, and his queen.
If his spirit had senses, it heard the lapping of the waves upon the beach of the lagoon across which his ancestor, the first Pomaré, had come from Moorea to be a king. We left the Broom Road for Point Venus to see the monument to Captain James Cook, the great mariner of these seas. The only lighthouse on Tahiti is there.
Determined to settle down, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had brought his wife over with the idea of setting her at the head of the establishment; but when he saw the arrival of that display of gaudy draperies of Palais-Royal jewelry, and all the strange paraphernalia in her suite, he had the vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile.
They tried to embroil him, as they had already done Queen Pomare, of Tahiti, with their own government, but were unsuccessful, and with the assistance of King George the rebels were put down. King George had himself become a Christian and a preacher, and contributed greatly to the spread of the Gospel among his countrymen.
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