[Ccvssh-users] Though I could not persuade myself

[Gressler <imp...@th...>]

 trade with them for cocoa-nut oil and other articles. Several of our
men ask leave to go on shore, and the captain allows them. Just as they
have gone off, Joseph Bent comes on deck. He has, he tells me, been
living on shore here for some time, and knows the people.
Notwithstanding their pleasant manners and handsome figures and
countenances, they are treacherous in the extreme. He tells that of
which I have not before heard, that missionaries have already been sent
out to these seas; that some were landed on this very island, of whom
three were killed, and the rest driven away. Some, strange to say, were
in King George's Islands while we were there, but we heard not of them
nor they of us. Indeed, I fear that our captain would have taken but
little interest in the matter, though he might have shown those poor
banished ones, as countrymen, some of the courtesies of life. Thus I see
that people may visit a place, and fancy that they know all about it,
and yet be very ignorant of what is going on within. Other missionaries
have gone, so says Bent, to the Marquesas Islands. We heard nothing of
them; indeed, our captain laughs at the notion of such savages being
turned into Christians. "Who can this Bent