SCHOOLS OF CRIME.

95

nity of devils let loose on a vacation from hell, and eager for all the pleasure of sense they could get before being cast out again into the deep, than a society of immortal men. "That time was very different from the present. Now the aged men and women walk safely, and sleep in the path. Reader, you know the customs of this country in days past. The land was full of darkness, folly, iniquity, oppression, pain, and death. A pit of destruction, dark, polluted, deadly, and ever-burning, was the dwelling of the Hawaiians in ancient times."*

There is a Welshman living at Hilo, Hawaii, who stopped at the islands in the days of Kamehameha the Great, and has been there ever since. He told me that nothing was more common in those days than for a whole village to get drunk all together and go to fighting; and for any spite they would set fire to each other's houses, burn their canoes, and pull up their growing food, and steal from each other as they could. Killing men (pepehi kanaka) was an art into which they were schooled; and there were those among them who taught how to strangle, and break men's bones, and how to dispatch a man at one blow of the fist without bruising him.†

* Translated from Moolelo Hawaii.

"In former times, among this people, no man knew when he was safe. At any and every moment he was liable to be murdered, and that, too, by his supposed friends. Often, in standing together in familiar conversation, the first warning a man would have of any evil would be to see his own bowels falling to the earth. As they wore no clothing, or only the kihei, the operation was instantly performed by an instrument made of a hog's tusk, which the murderer conceal ed under his kapa."-Rev. L. Andrews, Hawaiian Spectator, vol. ii., p. 125.

This Welshman was himself once passing through a ravine, where he met a company of men who spoke to him peaceably; but he had no sooner passed them by a few feet, when a rolled kapa fell over his breast and enveloped his head; two of the men at once pulled him down and were about to kill him, when a friendly chief appeared in sight, on the opposite pali or ridge of the ravine, and forbade his death.

Those robbers by trade were usually men of great physical prowess, and their way was to lie in wait at a pass near the trodden path, and have a child stationed on some eminence near by, instructed to call out carelessly, as if in sport, kaikoo (heavy surf), if there were several in company, so that it would be unsafe to venture an attack; or kai make (low tide), if there were but one or two, so that he could venture. A robber in Puna, the southern country of Hawaii, had in this way killed the brother of a man living in Kohala, the northern section of the same island, who was determined to have revenge. He therefore came all the way round through Kona and Kau, and when he had arrived near the spot in Puna where the robber was supposed to lurk, he shaved his head close, and smeared his arms and whole body with some oil of old kukui nuts, so as to make his person slippery as an eel. Then taking a staff, and slinging something upon it after the fashion of the Hawaiians, he arranged his kapa so that it could be slipped off in a moment, and went limping along like a sick and lame

man.

As he reached the place of ambush, the robber suddenly appeared and hailed him, "Sick, eh?" "Ay!"

THE TIGER STRIFE.

97

was the answer, with a cough, and one hand placed, as if in pain, on his stomach. So he passed on until he had got a little beyond the robber, with an eye over his shoulder on the look-out; and when the robber stepped up from behind to grasp him and break his bones, he suddenly dropped his kapa, turned, and grappled with his foe. The slipperiness of his arms and whole body made it impossible for this notable villain so to keep hold of him as to break his bones in the professional way. They struggled and rolled, neither successful, until, both alike weary, they paused and couched upon their haunches opposite each other like tired tigers.

The robber pointed to his wife on the hill, and said, "You may have her, and we'll be quit." But not so thought the brother of the dead, and again began the mortal strife, till the avenger at length forced the head of the robber into a fissure of the rock, which the natives, who tell the story, point out to the traveler and sailors, and there trampled upon him until he was dead.

At the present time the perpetrators of deeds like these, and even the memory of them, are fast dying away; but here and there is a man to tell you tales of the times of Naaupo (darkness). There is a member of Mr. Coan's church who confesses to have killed two men with his own hands; and the grandfather of one of the school-girls at that station of Hilo was the murderer of nine.

Now we say, without the possibility of contradiction, that the agency which could so soon transforın such a race of savages into the inoffensive, quiet peo

E

ple they are now, must be no less than divine; and the benevolence of Americans is richly paid back in the improvement effected in society, and the amelioration of man's temporal condition there, to say nothing of the souls we believe to have been saved, and the revenue of glory to God and the Lamb, from thousands of ransomed Hawaiians. History, in all its annals, shows nothing like this; compared with all other progressive improvements, it is A NATION BORN

IN A DAY.

Thus when Religion bids her spirit breathe,
And opens bliss above and woe beneath;

When God reveals his march through Nature's night,

His steps are beauty, and his presence light:

His voice is life-the dead in conscience start;

They feel a new creation in the heart.

And then, Humanity, thy hopes, thy fears,

How changed, how wond'rous! On this tide of years,
Though the frail barks in which thine offspring sail,
Their day, their hour, their moment with the gale,
Must perish, shipwreck only sets them free.

With joys unmeasured as eternity,

They ply on seas of glass their golden oars,
And pluck immortal fruits along the shores:
Nor shall THEIR cables fail, THEIR anchors rust,
Who wait the resurrection of the just.
Moor'd on the Rock of Ages, though decay
Molder the weak terrestrial frame away,
The trumpet sounds, and lo! wherever spread,
Earth, air, and ocean render back their dead;
And souls with bodies, spiritual and divine,
In the new heavens, like stars, forever shine.
TAWNY HAWAIIANS THEN THE IMAGE WEAR

OF HIM WHO ALL THEIR SINS ON HIS OWN CROSS DID Bear.

CATALOGUE OF PRODUCTS.

99

CHAPTER V.

NATURAL PRODUCTIONS AND PHYSICAL PHENOMENA.

In placid indolence supinely bless'd,

A feeble race these beauteous isles possess'd;
Untamed, untaught, in arts and arms unskill'd,
Their patrimonial soil they rudely till'd,
Chased the free rovers of the savage wood,
Ensnared the wild bird, swam the scaly flood:
Or when the halcyon sported on the breeze,
In light canoes they skimm'd the rippling seas.
The passing moment all their bliss or care,
Such as their sires had been the children were:
From age to age, as waves upon the tide
Of stormless time, they calmly lived and died.
MONTGOMERY.

THE nutrimental products indigenous to the Sandwich Islands are simple and few in number; but the list of naturalized exotics is large, and constantly increasing by fresh imports from other lands, inasmuch as there is scarcely a plant of the torrid or temperate zones that will not readily make its home on the Hawaiian soil. The kalo, of several species, sweet potato, yam, brake-root, pia or arrow-root, and a plant which the natives call ki, were the only edible roots of consequence to be found at the time of their discovery. The two former, kalo and sweet potato, still constitute the Hawaiian staple for food. The natives, indeed, do not allow the name of ai, or food, to