He had the excellent quality of ready sympathy and adaptability to the persons around him, whether civilized or savage, and was so good-natured and yielding in unimportant matters, that the strength and firmness with which he would stand up for whatever he viewed as a matter of conscience, always took his opponents by surprise; but it was always long before this point was reached, and he was perhaps too ready to give up when it was judgment rather than right and wrong that came into play.

Williams's face, as given in the portrait attached to his "History of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea," curiously agrees with his history.

There is much power about the brow, much enterprise in the strong, somewhat aquiline nose, great softness and sweetness in the eyes, but the thickness of the lips and chin betray the want of cultivation; indeed, the curious manner in which the mouth is pursed up, would seem to indicate that an eager temper naturally kept it unclosed, and that the restraint of sitting for a picture rendered the expression uncomfortably prim.
The Polynesian Mission on which John Williams was sent, had been commenced in 1796 by the London Missionary Society, partly in consequence of the death-bed entreaties of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, who had been exceedingly interested by the accounts of the South Sea Islands in Captain Cook's Voyages.

The subscriptions amounted to 10,000_l._, and were sufficient to purchase a ship called the _Duff_, which was commanded by that Captain Wilson whose wonderful history has been noticed in the lives of the Serampore body.

Twenty-five missionaries were taken out, and received at Tahiti with grotesque dances and caperings.