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INDIGNITIES OFFERED TO TREES.

69

any thing in the form of woods that I have seen since

leaving America.

there was a

fine grove

of large

Six or seven years ago green Kou-trees in the opposite part of the town, near where the King lives, covering an acre and a half or two acres, and so ancient and shady as to afford ample covering for all the canoes in Lahaina, and all the people too. But before any one knew it, and not until it was too late to remonstrate against such a piece of savageism, the King took a freak to have them all cut down to make into bowls, and spittoons, and poundingboards for kalo. Could the outraged trees have wept like the sacred grove in the Ænead, they would have dropped tears of blood at the indignity.

So, on the island of Molokai, there was a fine forest of Kamani-trees, the only ones at the Islands. It is a tree of slow growth, and of great value for its beautiful wood. But the chiefs a few years ago had them all mercilessly cut down, without any care to propagate young ones, happening to want the timber to repair some vessels. It was a fair specimen of ordinary barbarism: how unlike the wisdom of Kamehameha the Great, who, when birds were caught for him to pluck certain feathers for his leis and kahilis, would not let them be killed, but set loose again, to give feathers, he said, to his sons. And when they cut young sticks of sandal-wood, he remonstrated with them, and said, “Is it, indeed, that you do not know my sons? To them the young sandal-wood belongs."

A sure sign of thrift and civilization, which I have

seen a very few times in Hawaiians, is the planting of trees. Ask them why they don't do it more in a land where shade is such a blessing, and they will answer, it will do them no good; they would never enjoy them; it is a mea lapuwale for them. But such improvidence is not at all to be wondered at, when we consider the uncertain tenure upon which they have hitherto held their lands. Any improvements made by a common man would have been only a premium to covetousness and injustice on the part of his chief, and would be likely to insure the alienation of property whose enhanced value made it a Naboth's vineyard to some Hawaiian Ahab.

The planting of trees anywhere indicates the possession of a freehold, and the beginning of a prosperous and sound state, in which the rights of property are respected, and justice is rendered between man and man. It is what Washington Irving, speaking of the English fondness for trees, calls "the heroic line of husbandry, worthy of liberal, free-born, and aspiring men. He who plants an oak looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. He cannot expect to sit in its shade, nor enjoy its shelter; but he exults in the idea that the acorn he has buried in the earth shall grow into a lofty pile, and shall keep on flourishing, and increasing, and benefiting mankind, long after he shall have ceased to tread his paternal hills."

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The laws framed within three or four years nominally secure the right of property to Hawaiians; but in their administration justice was far from being even, espe

CHARACTER OF THE FUTURE RACE.

71

cially on the Island of Hawaii, under the management of Governor Adams, who was averse to quitting the ancient régime, or waiving any of the privileges of the chiefs. But liberty and law are everywhere gaining force, and a revolution is in progress which will insure good government and equal rights, if the people only survive to enjoy them. The philanthropist and Christian cannot help ardently desiring it, and deprecating as most melancholy the decay of the race, just as it might be beginning to enjoy the liberty and all the benign ameliorations of the Gospel.

But if, in the all-wise providence of God, the event be contrary to what we naturally desire, they who have been laboring sincerely to save the nation will not lose their reward. They are laying the foundations for many generations, and the good of their labors shall redound for ages. Their reward is with them, and their work before them. The church they have planted shall continue so long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. The Lord shall have here a seed to serve him to the end of time.

And though the nation's blood run out, and there be left a mongrel race of self-glorifying Anglo-Americans and other foreigners, that like the Jews of Nehemiah's day, "married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab, and their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod," yet it shall be not less a people to serve God, to reap the benefit of, and to be moulded by, the institutions of the Gospel planted now. Meanwhile, although the Hawaiians melt away, and it be sad to see a nation

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