But, mainly under the influence of the early English missionaries who held ideas of theoretical morality totally alien to those of the inhabitants of the islands, the Tahitians have become the stock example of a population given over to licentiousness and all its awful results.

Thus, in his valuable _Polynesian Researches_ (second edition, 1832, vol.i, Ch.

IX) William Ellis says that the Tahitians practiced "the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be guilty," though not specifying them.

When, however, we carefully examine the narratives of the early visitors to Tahiti, before the population became contaminated by contact with Europeans, it becomes clear that this view needs serious modification.

"The great plenty of good and nourishing food," wrote an early explorer, J.R.Forster (_Observations Made on a Voyage Round the World_, 1778, pp.