the numerous encircling reefs
which are found around so many of the islands of the Pacific--affording
harbours within them, and sheltering the shore from the fury of the
waves.

Many of the islands are also of volcanic origin; some contain active
volcanoes, and while the land in some instances has sunk, in others it
has risen, and is broken into the most curious and fantastic shapes,
bringing up also with it the coral rocks which were formed on it while
it lay beneath the sea.

Most of these islands are clothed with a varied and rich vegetation.
The climate of those at a distance from the equator is generally
healthy, but that of others near the line, especially to the westward,
is unhealthy in the extreme, so that even the natives of other islands
of the same ocean cannot live on them throughout the year.

The eastern groups are inhabited by a brown skinned and generally
handsome race, often not darker than Spaniards, and supposed to be
descended from a common stock, as in general appearance and language
there is a great resemblance.

The groups of the large islands to the westward on either side of the
equator are peopled by a black and savage race, in many respects
resembling the negroes of Africa, and sunk even still lower in
barbarism. Such are the inhabitants of the Fijis, New Caledonia, and
New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and others to the
northward of them.

When Captain Cook sailed over the Pacific, and till many years
afterwards, the people of these beautiful islands were sunk in the
grossest idolatry and barbarism.

Towards the end of the last century, when the Christian Churches awoke
to their responsibilities for making known the glad tidings of salvation
to their heathen fellow-creatures--societies were formed to send
missionaries to various parts of the world. A band of twenty-nine
missionaries, some of them unhappily untried, were sent out by the
London Missionary Society in 1796, to the Pacific islands. They made
slow progress, but at length, in 1815, idolatry was overthrown at
Tahiti, and the gospel firmly established in that island.

Two years afterwards, the Rev. J. Williams and the Rev. W. Ellis, two of
the most distinguished missionaries who have laboured among the islands
of the Pacific, arrived at Tahiti. The former took up his abode at
Raiatea, one of the Society islands, and afterwards going alone to the
island of Rarotonga, though not bred a shipwright, built there