The latter hold the tenets perhaps the most widely removed from Catholicism of any Protestant sect, and are mostly not educated enough to understand the opposite point of view, so that each party would almost as soon see the natives unconverted as joining the hostile camp: and precious time is wasted in warrings the one against the other.
The most real enemies to Christianity in these seas are, however, the lawless traders, the English and American whalers and sandal-wood dealers, who bring uncontrolled vice and violence where they put in for water; while they, on the one hand, corrupt the natives, on the other they provoke them into reprisals on the next White men who fall in their way.

That the Polynesians are good sailors and not bad workmen, has proved another misfortune, for they are often kidnapped by unscrupulous captains to supply the deficiency of labour in some of the Australasian settlements.

Everywhere it seems to be the unhappy fact that Christian men are the most fatal hinderers of God's word among the heathen.
Yet most of the more accessible of the isles have a resident missionary, and keep up schools and chapels.

Their chiefs have accepted a Christian code, and the horrid atrocities of cannibalism have been entirely given up, though there is still much evil prevalent, especially in those which have convenient harbours, and are in the pathway of ships.

The Samoan islanders have a college, managed by an English minister and his wife, where teachers are educated not only to much good discipline, but to much real refinement, and go forth as admirable and self-devoted heralds of the Gospel into other isles.