Burlington Free Press

The Sandwich Islands And The Missionaries.—The American Quarterly Review for September, gives the following delightful picture of some of the benefits which the Sandwich Islands have derived from American Missionaries:

Since the establishment of the American Mission, now about sixteen years, a most material change has taken place in this people in many respects; and when we state that reading and writing—aye, and printing too—have been introduced by the missionaries and are extensively diffused, and that the natives feel the most intense interest in these precious arts, we have said all that an intelligent reader will desire to know in order to form an estimate of their future prospects. For these advantages, of which the natives are fully sensible, they have been indebted to Americans. Their curiously constructed language, of more than Italian softness, was first reduced to writing by American missionaries, according to a plan originally proposed by an American and by which their children and adults learn to read in a vastly shorter time than it is possible to learn our language in. They have their elementary books of all the most useful and necessary kinds—primers, spelling books and reading books: and among these we cannot fail to mention a book of arithmetic, the study of which is almost a passion with them, and, in the opinion of the missionaries, has done more to excite their thinking powers than has been effected by any other work ever published for their instruction. The Gospels and other parts of the New Testament have been for some time in common use among them. The types are set up, and the work done by native printers, but of course not without the aid of Americans—and what will surprise our readers—more, we have now lying before us two different newspapers, published in the language of the island: one on a whole sheet, and the other on a half sheet, of the large quarto size, and quite as respectable in their external appearance as the average of our own gazettes. Our readers, we are sure, will not be displeased to have a brief notice of these two journals, the first fruits of what we must call, however strange it may sound to our civilized ears, the literature of the Sandwich Islands.