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Updated: June 10, 2025
Europe would soon have admired, perhaps have envied Tahaiti: but the religion taught by the Missionaries is not true Christianity, though it may possibly comprehend some of its doctrines, but half understood even by the teachers themselves. That it was established by force, is of itself an evidence against its Christian principle.
The air was filled with the perfume of a neighbouring orange-grove, which scattered its fruit upon the earth. The lemons and oranges, which we found delicious, the Tahaitians despised as too common. Since I could only afford to remain a very short time at Tahaiti, Dr. Eschscholz and myself immediately took possession of my new abode, and erected our little observatory.
Maidens of the highest rank were given to them for wives; and each of them was installed governor of an island. "The descendants of these strangers," said Karemaku, "may still be distinguished by their whiter colour." Here, as at Tahaiti, the Yeris differ from the lower classes in their superior size, and some also by a greater degree of fairness.
They are not all liable to this censure; and of about twenty English and Americans whom I found so naturalized in Tahaiti, some assuredly do not deserve it. Having a pilot on board, we steered direct for the extreme point of Cape Venus, where floated the national standard of Tahaiti.
He left to the conquered Kings the government of their islands, requiring from them a yearly tribute in pigs and fruits; and to consolidate his dominion by family connexion, he married a daughter of the most powerful of these royal vassals, her three sisters, according to an ancient custom, becoming at the same time his wives. Peace was thus restored to Tahaiti and the whole Archipelago.
For this reason, they resolved to confirm the title of the young Pomareh, by a solemn coronation; and to strengthen his party, all the tributary princes of the whole Archipelago were invited to be present at the ceremony. The preparations for this solemnity had long been carrying on, and as it was now soon to take place, nearly all the kings, with numerous suites, had arrived in Tahaiti.
Adams, who was now very aged and feeble, had proposed to the Missionaries to send a Tahaitian as his successor; and fearing that the population of his island might exceed the means of subsistence which their quantity of arable land afforded, he was desirous of settling some of his families in Tahaiti.
These missionaries were Protestants; but the Catholic Karemaku, having no notion of the points of doctrine in dispute between the Churches, joined without hesitation in communion with them; and the Christian religion spreading rapidly among the Sandwich Islanders, without any of the constraint or persecution which had disgraced it at O Tahaiti, promised the happiest effects.
I therefore considered it worth the trouble to complete the survey, by examining those which lay to the south of La Pérouse's track. I at first steered past the Society Islands, lying to leeward from Tahaiti, in order to rectify their longitude; and afterwards carefully endeavoured to avoid the course taken, to my knowledge, by any former navigator.
In the year 1791, the English frigate Pandora was sent, under the command of Captain Edwards, to the South Sea in pursuit of the mutineers against Bligh. Those who had remained in Tahaiti were found and carried back to England, where they were condemned to death according to the laws; the royal mercy was extended to a few only, the rest suffered the full penalty of their crime.
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