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She replied that she could not exactly describe them, but that the missionary Bengham, who understood reading and writing perfectly well, had assured her that the Christian faith was the best; and that, seeing how far the Europeans and Americans, who were all Christians, surpassed her compatriots in knowledge, she concluded that their belief must be the most reasonable.
The regents were thus nominally the same; but Karemaku was too ill to take an active share in the government, and the missionary Bengham found means to obtain such an acendency over the imperious Kahumanna, and, through her, over the nation, that in the course of only seven months an entire change had taken place: we might have imagined ourselves in a different country.
Stewart, also a missionary, but more recently settled here than Bengham, is a judicious and well-informed man, and would remedy many of the evils incident to the present state of affairs; but Bengham, who has usurped the absolute control of the spiritual administration, will have every thing accommodated to his whims.
Near it is the abode of the missionary Bengham. Kahumanna, as well as Nomahanna, has the date of Tameamea's death marked upon her arm; otherwise they are not tattooed, which indeed few are, and those only the most aged people.
Bengham had undertaken the education of the young monarch, and was keeping him under the strictest surveillance.
Bengham had concluded a discourse in the O Wahi language, which might possibly have been highly edifying, but that it was addressed to little else than empty benches, for I did not understand him, and the minds of the few other persons present were evidently occupied with very different matters, we returned to the palace in the same style that we had left it.
He sought her presence, implored her compassion for his destitute condition, and represented the impossibility of learning to read at his age. But in vain! The Queen replied with an angry gesture, "If you will not learn to read, you may go and drown yourself." To such tyranny as this, has Bengham urged the Queen, and perhaps already esteems himself absolute sovereign of these islands.
Lord Byron had brought with him from England a variety of magic lanterns, puppet-shows, and such like toys, and was making preparations to exhibit them in public, for the entertainment of the people, when an order arrived from Bengham to prevent the representation, because it did not become God-fearing Christians to take pleasure in such vain amusements.
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