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vast fortune upon her, so that she and all her daughters were wealthy; then bade them adieu and returned to the wife and children of his young manhood.

Tho Honolulu society, owing to its peculiar cosmopolitanism, has many such romances; there is no need to deride it, for it is evolving Christian men and women, whose culture and erudition might serve as a model for those who make greater pretensions.

CHAPTER IV

MISSIONARIES

IN no country is the term "missionary" used in so broad a sense as in the Hawaiian Islands. Missionaries have been important factors in the upbuilding of the present state of society. From the very beginning of their work they were confronted by every obstacle which the unrighteous and lewd, whose dissolute habits would not be tolerated within the pale of civilization, could throw in their way. This element held the missionaries up to ridicule, and maligned them in every way possible. The anti-missionaries were a class of half-buccaneers who, it was said, hung their consciences on the Horn as they sailed around South America, and found the easy-going natives willing to put up with their own loose characThe missionaries being a stumbling-block in the way of the perfect license which they had hoped for, they began to pour out the vials of their wrath. upon their heads. One method of assailing a Christian character is to call the professed followers of the Redeemer "hypocrites." From the earliest days there was a missionary and anti-missionary party,

ters.

which have grown on to the present and developed with some modifications into two political parties. A man need not be either a teacher or a preacher to be a missionary. Some one has said that "every one who pays his honest debts, lives a sober, upright moral life, and believes in good government, is classed as a missionary." On the other hand, the Sabbath-breakers, the gamblers, the saloon-loafers, the lottery-promulgators, and opium-smugglers are anti-missionaries. On going to the islands one has his choice of parties. On one side is decency and morality, on the other the opposite.

The aboriginal Hawaiians had an elaborate mythology, and worshiped innumerable powers of nature. To the ancient Hawaiian, the volcano, the thunder, the whirlwind, the meteor, the shark, and, above all, the mysterious and dreaded diseases, largely introduced by foreigners, were each the direct work or actual embodiment of malicious spirits. It is remarkable that no sun-worshipers were found among them. They had chiefs, kings, and priests, and the common people were abject slaves. All the land belonged to the chiefs, priests, and kings.

The goddess Pele was supposed to inhabit the great volcano Kilauea, and when there were destructive eruptions, human beings were sacrificed by throwing them into the burning crater. A victim was seized, a cord placed about his neck, he was strangled, and

then thrown into the volcano.

The countless numbers of human beings that have thus been offered up to the bloodthirsty Pele will never be known.

The priests, chiefs, and kings had a system of taboos which were tyrannical and cruel. If a king or priest desired a certain kind of fish, a certain fruit, vegetable, or plot of ground, he placed his taboo on the object, and it was death to violate it. The common people owned nothing, not even their lives. If the chief took a fancy to a certain kind of fish and ordered one of his fishermen to go and bring it, it was no excuse that a storm was raging, that his canoe was leaking, or that the night was dark, he must go or be killed. The conquest of all the islands by Kamehameha I. brought about a better state of affairs. The great conqueror had two able lieutenants in Young and Davis, who were not only warriors but statesmen as well, and who showed him that the taboos were an evil; so they were abolished and the idols burned.

The first company of American missionaries to the islands embarked at Boston, October 23, 1819, in the brig Thaddeus. The company consisted of two clergymen and five laymen, with their wives, and three Hawaiian youths from the Cornwall school, who went as assistants and interpreters.

Even thus early the Hawaiians were sending their children to the United States to be educated, for there is an account of a son of one of the kings who had

They landed at Kohala,

been in an American college. Hawaii, and for the first time learned that Kamehameha I. was king, that the taboos were abolished, the idols burned, and their temples destroyed. Among these first missionaries were Messrs. Bingham, Thurston, and Richards. The missionaries were granted permission to remain one year, but at the end of that time had so ingratiated themselves in the affections of the natives that they were permitted to remain longer. In 1827 the Catholics first came to the islands, but were not permitted to land. king thought that one religion was enough, and they were sent away; but ten years later they returned, and have remained ever since.

The

The work of converting the natives commenced as soon as the first missionaries landed, and in four years more than two thousand persons had embraced the Christian religion. Nevertheless a cloud of superstition still hung over the people, which has not to this day been lifted. Pele, the goddess of the volcano, still has her priestess, and certain berries which grow near the volcano continued to be tabooed.

Professor Alexander, in his "Hawaiian Islands" mentions the following incident: “Kapiolani, a daughter of the great chief Keawemauhili, of Hilo, who was intemperate and dissolute in early life, became converted and denounced the goddess Pele, and in December, 1824, determined to break the

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