All voyagers agree that for varied beauty of form and colour the Society Islands are unsurpassed in the Pacific. Innumerable rills gather in lovely streams, and, after heavy rains, torrents precipitate themselves in grand cascades from the mountain cliffs - a feature so striking as to have attracted the attention of all voyagers, from Wallis downwards.
In this respect the Society Islands have the advantage of many Polynesian islands.
Into the Society Islands Sea Island cotton was introduced about 1860-1870.
From the floor of this vast and profound depression numerous isolated volcanic cones rise with abrupt slopes, and even between the islands of the Hawaiian group there are depths of more than 2000 fathoms. The Society Islands and Tahiti crown a rise coming within 150o fathoms of the surface, two similar rises form the foundation of the Paumotu group where Agassiz found soundings of.
A short time afterwards the British government presented a small schooner to the king, and this afforded an opportunity for the Rev. William Ellis, the well-known missionary, to visit Honolulu with a number of Christian natives from the Society Islands.
