PREFACE.

THIS book is called "The Heart of the Pacific," for two reasons; first, because the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands, which form its subject-matter, hold about the same relation to other parts of the Pacific as the heart does to the rest of the human body. Secondly, because these Islands bid fair to become the religious Protestant Heart of the great Ocean, whose pulsations at different times we have herein marked and interpreted.

Although independent and whole of itself, it has a connection which will be seen with "The Island-World of the Pacific." The writer believes it may fulfil a useful part, in directing the general interest now felt in the young Island-Kingdom of Hawaii. The perpetuity of the pure Hawaiian race there is daily becoming more and more doubtful; but, as it has been remarked of New Zealand, the natives, though melting away, are not lost. They are emerging into another and a better class. In this process there lacketh not sin on man's part; but Providence will overrule it for good, and

bring forth an order of things which shall be far better for the world, for the Church of Christ, and for the

new race.

Perhaps it is in the providential plan of the world's great Ruler, that the Sandwich Islands should yet be adopted into the great American Confederacy. Won as they have been from the lowest barbarism by American missionaries-having had expended upon them in the process, nearly a million and a half of dollars (upwards of £300,000) from America, and the services of fifty families now possessing valuable homesteads thereharbouring a permanent American population, foremost in energy and influence, now little short of one thousand, besides a floating American population that touch and recruit annually to the number of fifteen thousand, in whale-ships and merchantmen,-and consuming yearly a million of dollars (upwards of £200,000) worth of American merchandise ;-on all these grounds there would seem to be a propriety in their enjoying an American Protectorate, if not an admission under the flag of the American Republic.

"American enterprise," says a writer who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, "both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance, bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, civilization—and will soon add to these gifts lan

* J. J. Jarves.

guage; for the English tongue is rapidly superseding the Hawaiian."

Events will soon determine whether they are to retain their independence, or to be merged in the nation that has civilized them. In either event they are to constitute no mean portion of the kingdom of Christ; and if this book shall be found to have helped at all to the production of that better order of things, when HE WHOSE RIGHT IT IS SHALL REIGN, the labour bestowed on it at a time when the decay of health, and circumstances not to be controlled, precluded the exercise of the Ministry, will be amply rewarded. It is one man's mission in this world to do; it is another's to record and perpetuate the memory of worthy deeds. And, in John Newton's judgment, it would make little difference to an angel who should visit our earth, upon which of the two he were sent by the angel's Lord.

Next, at least in our view, to the honour of being one's self a laborious and successful foreign missionary, is that of being permitted to describe and preserve the achievements of other missionaries, and to portray the benign results to society at large, which have been realized by good men and true, on the noble field of Protestant Missionary benevolence in the Pacific. Having steadily aimed to present to his readers none other than the real, which is the hopeful aspect of the missionary life and enterprise in the Sandwich Islands, the author believes that this Volume will gain a grateful echo from the great Heart of Christian Philanthropy, as it is a true report

from that portion of common humanity whence it purports to issue.

The Appendix will supply to men of business and travellers, as well as to seamen, those reliable statistics respecting the government, resources, commerce, growth, and prosperity of the Hawaiian Islands, which all visitors, or any persons who are seeking accurate information respecting a country, desire to have at hand. In lieu of something more perfect, it is hoped that this may answer as a guide-book and vade-mecum to tourists in the Pacific.

OCTOBER, 1851.