This class is infinitely superior in personal beauty and general healthfulness to the "marenhoar," or common people; the latter having been more exposed to the worst and most debasing evils of foreign intercourse.
On Sundays, the former are invariably arrayed in their finery; and thus appear to the best advantage.

Nor are they driven to the chapel, as some of their inferiors are to other places of worship; on the contrary, capable of maintaining a handsome exterior, and possessing greater intelligence, they go voluntarily.
In respect of the woodland colonnade supporting its galleries, I called this chapel the Church of the Cocoa-nuts.
It was the first place for Christian worship in Polynesia that I had seen; and the impression upon entering during service was all the stronger.

Majestic-looking chiefs whose fathers had hurled the battle-club, and old men who had seen sacrifices smoking upon the altars of Oro, were there.

And hark! hanging from the bough of a bread-fruit tree without, a bell is being struck with a bar of iron by a native lad.

In the same spot, the blast of the war-conch had often resounded.