Excerpt from American Samoa: A General Report by the Governor In 1830 the London Missionary Society established a mission in one of the Samoan Islands, and followed that up by extensive opera tions in all the islands. The United States exploring expedition, under the command of Lieut. Charles Wilkes, United States Navy, made the first scientific investigations in the islands, in 1839. This expedition, composed of six vessels, was equipped for the particular purpose of surveying and exploring the unfrequented islands of the South Seas. A staff of competent civilian scientists was on board, and the ships (all naval vessels) were prepared for accurate survey work. The surveys then made of the Samoan Islands, though necessarily hurried ones, were for many years the basis of our charts. The latest survey of the islands of American Samoa was completed in 1920, and charts from this survey will shortly be issued. As early as 1850 England, Germany, and the United States were represented by commercial agents in Apia, Samoa. During the next 20 years Germans and Englishmen were more forward than the Americans in establishing trading stations, acquiring land, and devel oping intimat'e relations with the natives. Americans took very little interest in Samoa at this time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.