[Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Charles Nordhoff]@TWC D-Link bookNorthern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands CHAPTER I 12/32
They came among a people so vile that they had not even a conception of right and wrong; so prone to murder and pillage that the first Kamehameha, the conqueror, gave as excuse for his conquest that it was necessary to make the paths safe; so debauched in their common conversation that the earlier missionaries were obliged for years rigidly to forbid their own children not only from acquaintance with the natives among whom they lived, but even from learning the native language, because to hear only the passing speech of their neighbors was to suffer the grossest contamination. Of those who began this good work but few now remain.
Most of them have gone to their reward, having no doubt suffered, as well as accomplished, much.
Of the first band who came out from the United States, the only one living in 1873 is Mrs.Lucy G.Thurston, a bright, active, and lively old lady of seventy-five years, who drives herself to church on Sundays in a one-horse chaise, and has her own opinions of passing events.
How she has lived in the tropics for fifty years without losing even an atom of the New England look puzzles you; but it shows you also the strength which these people brought with them, the tenacity with which they clung to their habits of dress and living and thought, the remorseless determination which they imported, with their other effects, around Cape Horn. [Illustration: DR.
JUDD.] Then there was Dr.Judd, who has died since these lines were written, who came out as physician to the mission, and proved himself in the islands, as the world knows, a very able man, with statesmanship for some great emergencies which made him for years one of the chief advisers of the Hawaiian kings.
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