ABSTRACT
It must not, however, be supposed that Rarahu was wholly unlearned; she could read her Tahitian Bible, and write in a large and very firm hand, the soft words of her native tongue; nay, she was strong in spelling by the rules of orthography as laid down by the brothers Picpus, who constructed a conventional code of syllables in the Latin character to 20represent Polynesian sounds. Many a child in our own fields is certainly less well-educated than this little savage maid. But it cannot have cost her any great pains at the missionary school at Papeete, for she was utterly idle by nature.
