12 IT IS HIGHLY PRIZED. manner as, with subsequent professional instruction, will qualify them to become useful missionaries, physicians, surgeons, schoolmasters, or interpreters; and to communicate to the heathen nations such knowledge in agriculture and the arts as may prove the means of promoting Christianity and civilization." Nine of the pupils, in 1823, were from the Sandwich Islands, fifteen from half as many Indian tribes, three were Chinese, two were Greeks, one was a New Zealander, one a Malay, one a Portuguese, one a Jew, and three were Anglo-Americans. Death of Obookiah died on the 17th of February, 1818, and no one doubted his preparation for that event. Nor had he lived in vain. Chiefly through him a general interest had been awakened in the salvation of his kindred according to the flesh, and a mission to the Islands was made certain. Seventeen of the thirty-one heathen youths ad The school highly prized. mitted to its privileges, from 1817 to 1820, gave evidence of piety which was at the time satisfactory, and from the first the school excited a lively interest in the religious community. This interest extended to foreign lands. The Baron de Campagne of Basle, in Switzerland, remitted $876 toward its support. The very high estimate that was put upon it by the Christian community is shown by the annual Report of the Board at that time, which declares that the school was regarded with peculiar favor in all parts of the country, and that it would ever be fostered by the Board with parental care. Designed, as it was, to fit young persons who should come to the United States from the darkness, corruptions, and miseries PRINCIPALS OF THE INSTITUTION. 13 the institu of paganism, to be sent back to their respective nations with the blessings of civilized and Christianized society; with the useful sciences and arts; with the purifying light of salvation, and with the hopes of immortality; the Board believed that the relative importance and eventual utility of the infant seminary could hardly be estimated too highly. Mr. Daggett discharged the duties of principal for six years, until 1824, when declining health Principals of constrained him to resign, and his place tion. was supplied by the Rev. Amos Bassett, D. D. The school stood, necessarily at that early period, on a basis that was purely theoretical; and upon that basis the question was raised, whether it Its theoretmight not be expedient to remove it to ical basis. the vicinity of some large city, where the students would be less secluded from society. In such a position, however, they would have been unfitted, by acquiring the tastes and habits of city life, for a happy and useful residence among their uncivilized countrymen. The Board discussed the question, and resolved to consider the school as permanently established at Cornwall. There appears to have been no thought at that time of its ultimate discontinuance. Yet the difficulties in working the system were gradually developing, and at length proved to be insurmountable. These were Result of exdistinctly brought out in 1825, at the meet- perience. ing of the Board in Northampton. Some of the difficulties were these. It was not found easy to decide what to do with the youths, after their education was completed. It was now known, also, that those who had returned to their native lands failed to meet the expectations of their friends. The 14 ITS DISCONTINUANCE. abundant provision for them while in this country, added to the paternal attentions they everywhere received, had been a poor preparation for encountering neglect and privations among their uncivilized brethren; and the expense of maintaining them, when returned, in any tolerable state of comfort, was much greater than it would have been had they never been habituated to the modes of life in an improved state of society. In short, the indications of Providence seemed clearly to teach, that the best education for heathen youths, and indeed the only suitable education, having reference to their success as teachers of their uncivilized brethren, must be given through the instrumentality of missionary institutions in their respective countries. The expediency of continuing the school was referred by the Board to a committee, which was to report to the Prudential Committee after visiting Cornwall; and the Prudential Committee was empowered then to act definitely on the subject. The result was a discontinuance of the school in the autumn of 1826. Its discontinuance. A simultaneous effort to train Greek and Armenian youths in this country, for the most part in the ordinary academies and schools, and some of them even in colleges, proved equally unsatisfactory; and the experiment has never been repeated. This experiment was worth much more than it Value of the cost. The school at Cornwall was the imexperiment. mediate occasion, as has been said, of the mission to the Sandwich Islands; and it served, at one period, as a convincing proof to the more intelligent Cherokees and Choctaws, of the really benevolent feelings of the whites toward the Indians. VALUE OF THE EXPERIMENT. 15 In our own community, it promoted feelings of kindness toward the heathen generally, and gave opportunity for the display of native talent, which was in a high degree interesting to the friends of human improvement. It attracted the attention of many to missionary exertions, who would otherwise have remained ignorant of them. Nor was it the least of its good influences, that it so early determined the expediency of restricting the efforts for training a native agency to the countries which were to be evangelized. Origin of the CHAPTER III. EARLY HISTORY OF THE MISSION. 1820-1823. THE mission to the Sandwich Islands was commenced in the year 1820, twenty-three years after that to the South Pacific, and more than forty years. after the discovery of the Islands by Capmission. tain Cook. The first trace of it, in the prospective plans of the Prudential Committee, occurs as early as 1816. Obookiah died in 1818. When the time came for establishing the mission, three Hawaiian youths in the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, named Thomas Hopu, William Tenui, and John Honuri, were described, in a Report of the Board, as instructed in the doctrines and duties of Christianity, and made partakers, as was charitably hoped, of spiritual and everlasting blessings. These youths became connected with the mission as native helpers. Messrs. Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston, from the Andover Theological Seminary, were ordained as missionaries at Goshen, Conn., on the 29th of September, 1819. The sermon was preached by the Rev. Heman Humphrey, afterwards President of Amherst College, from Joshua xiii. 1: "There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." Besides these, the mission contained a physician, Dr. Holman; two schoolmasters, Messrs. The missionaries. |