about eight o'clock
in the evening
Since then , however , a great change has taken place . The king and all his court have embraced Christianity ; of the heathen temples , which by their pyramidical form gave such a peculiar local colouring to old pictures of the place , only the foundations remain ; the sacred groves in the neighbourhood are cut down ; and in the great square , where formerly cannibal feasts took place , a large church has been erected . Not without emotion did I land on this blood-stained soil , where probably greater iniquities were perpetrated than ever disgraced any other spot on earth . It was about eight o'clock in the evening ; and , instead of the wild noise which greeted former visitors , family prayer was heard from nearly every house . `` To bring about such a change has indeed required no slight efforts , and many valuable lives had to be sacrificed ; for although no missionary in Fiji has ever met with a violent death , yet the list of those who died in the midst of their labours is proportionately great . The Wesleyans , to whose disinterestedness the conversion of these degraded beings is due , have , as a society , expended 75,000 pounds on this object ; and if the private donations of friends to individual missionaries and their families be added , the sum reaches to the respectable amount of 80,000 pounds . '' Dr Seemann describes a visit to the island of Lakemba , hallowed as the spot on which the first Christian mission was established .