| 53 at Tahiti for a season; but if we were left free to pursue our voyage, we should take it as a sign that God had ordained that the Reorganization here, should be started without placing itself under any obligations, either directly or indirectly, to the Papacy.
We passed through Papeete the cynosure of all eyes, for the proceedings of yesterday had been blazed abroad; the gens d'armes stared; but nobody troubled us. We had two hours of time yet before we needed to go on board, and we went to the house of Bro. Parato, to rest and refresh ourselves. Here we learned that information had been duly laid against us at the proper tribunal; but upon consultation it was determined not to prosecute. The fact was, they were glad enough to get rid of us without creating any further excitement.
Well, so much for our visit to Tahiti. We leave with an improved opinion of the native Society Islanders, and particularly of the Latter Day Saints; and we have a clearer illustration of the innate power of their faith, in their isolated condition, than we have seen elsewhere.
The Saints had many questions to ask us, one of which was with regard to the proper day to observe as Sunday. We at first thought that the Seventh-day Baptists had been there; but it appeared that when the Protestant missionaries first came, they came via Cape Horn; that is, they sailed westwardly from England; and as Tahiti is in the Western Hemisphere, in longitude one hundred forty-nine degrees twenty-eight minutes twenty-one seconds west from Greenwich, they had no occasion to change the day of the week in order to keep their reckoning right. The protectorate, of course acknowledges this, and the Protestant and civil Sunday are the same.
But the first Jesuits came via the Cape of Good Hope; that is, they sailed eastwardly from Paris. Now, as in the other case, the true time from which to reckon was from either Greenwich or Paris; and when they crossed the one hundred eightieth degree of east longitude they should have added one day to their reckoning to preserve the true time. But they persisted in keeping their reckoning just as it was, and, consequently, when they arrived at Tahiti they found their time one day behind that already established. They stupidly refused to change their reckoning, and so the Tahitians to this day have two Sundays to every week.
The fact is, the Papal church has never given up the "plane theory" of the earth's surface. At the trial of Galileo before the Roman Inquisition the Pope, cardinals, and clergy, were so emphatic in their denunciation of the "globe theory," that the present clergy will not admit the truth of the astronomer's theory, without questioning the infallibility of the church of Rome. We showed the Saints that the Protestant Sunday was an astro-theological truth, and to regard it as such. At this point in our narrative, we commenced a demonstration of the "globe theory" of the earth's surface, based upon the fact that the Thursday on which we left San Francisco was Friday in Sydney; but it was so much like a labored
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