 most ferocious animal on the face
of the earth.
    His remorseless cruelty is seen in many of the institutions of our own
favoured land. There is one in particular lately adopted in one of the States of
the Union, which purports to have been dictated by the most merciful
considerations. To destroy our malefactors piecemeal, drying up in their veins,
drop by drop, the blood we are too chicken-hearted to shed by a single blow
which would at once put a period to their sufferings, is deemed to be infinitely
preferable to the old-fashioned punishment of gibbeting - much less annoying to
the victim, and more in accordance with the refined spirit of the age; and yet
how feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these
wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual
solitude in the very heart of our population.
    But it is needless to multiply the examples of civilised barbarity; they far
exceed in the amount of misery they cause the crimes which we regard with such
abhorrence in our less enlightened fellow-creatures.
    The term savage is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed when I consider
the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted
atmosphere of a feverish civilisation, I am inclined to think that so far as the
relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan
islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as
an equal number of Americans dispatched to the islands in a similar capacity.
    I once heard it given as an instance of the frightful depravity of a certain
tribe in the Pacific, that they had no word in their language to express the
idea of virtue. The assertion was unfounded; but were it otherwise, it might be
met by stating that their language is almost entirely destitute of terms to
express the delightful ideas conveyed by our endless catalogue of civilised
crimes.
    In the altered frame of mind to which I have referred, every object that
presented itself to my notice in the valley struck me in a new light, and the
opportunities I now enjoyed of observing the manners of its inmates tended to
strengthen my favourable impressions. One peculiarity that fixed my admiration
was the perpetual hilarity reigning through the whole extent of the vale. There
seemed to be no cares, griefs, troubles, or vexations in all Typee. The hours
tripped along as gaily as the laughing couples down a country dance.
    There were none of those thousand sources of irritation that the ingenuity
of civilised man has created to mar his own felicity. There were no foreclosures
of mortgages
