, and answer our questions about names and sounds;
but they so often deceived us, and we, doubtless, misunderstood them so
often, that this course was not satisfactory, till after we had gained
some knowledge of their language and its construction, and they
themselves had become interested in helping us. Amongst our most
interesting helpers, and most trustworthy, were two aged chiefs--Nowa
and Nouka--in many respects two of Nature's noblest gentlemen, kind at
heart to all, and distinguished by a certain native dignity of bearing.
But they were both under the leadership of the war-chief Miaki, a kind
of devil-king over many villages and tribes.

The Tannese had hosts of stone idols, charms, and sacred objects, which
they abjectly feared, and in which they devoutly believed. They were
given up to countless superstitions, and firmly glued to their dark
heathen practices. Their worship was entirely a service of fear, its aim
being to propitiate this or that Evil Spirit, to prevent calamity or to
secure revenge. They deified their chiefs, like the Romans of old, so
that almost every village or tribe had its own Sacred Man, and some of
them had many. They exercised an extraordinary influence for evil, these
village or tribal priests, and were believed to have the disposal of
life and death through their sacred ceremonies, not only in their own
tribe, but over all the Islands. Sacred men and women, wizards and
witches, received presents regularly to influence the gods, and to
remove sickness, or to cause it by the _Nahak, i. e._ incantation over
remains of food, or the skin of fruit, such as banana, which the person
has eaten on whom they wish to operate. They also worshiped the spirits
of departed ancestors and heroes, through their material idols of wood
and stone, but chiefly of stone. They feared these spirits and sought
their aid; especially seeking to propitiate those who presided over war
and peace, famine and plenty, health and sickness, destruction and
prosperity, life and death. Their whole worship was one of slavish fear;
and, so far as ever I could learn, they had no idea of a God of mercy or
grace.

But these very facts--that they did worship something, that they
believed in spirits of ancestors and heroes, and that they cherished
many legends regarding those whom they had never seen, and handed these
down to their children--and the fact that they had ideas about the
invisible world and its inhabitants, made it n