Chapter 23

THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND PUGET SOUND--HINTS TO TOURISTS.

In less than forty-eight hours after you leave San Francisco you find yourself crossing the bar which lies at the mouth of the Columbia River, and laughing, perhaps, over the oft-told local tale of how a captain, new to this region, lying off and on with his vessel, and impatiently signaling for a pilot, was temporarily comforted by a passenger, an old Californian, who "wondered why Jim over there couldn't take her safe over the bar."

"Do you think he knows the soundings well enough?" asked the anxious skipper; and was answered,

"I don't know about that, captain; but he's been taking all sorts of things 'straight' over the bar for about twenty years, to _my_ knowledge, and I should think he might manage the brig."

The voyage from San Francisco is almost all the way in sight of land; and as you skirt the mountainous coast of Oregon you see long stretches of forest, miles of tall firs killed by forest fires, and rearing their bare heads toward the sky like a vast assemblage of bean-poles--a barren view which you owe to the noble red man, who, it is said, sets fire to these great woods in order to produce for himself a good crop of blueberries.

When, some years ago, Walk-in-the-Water, or Red Cloud, or some other Colorado chief, asserted in Washington the right of the Indian to hunt buffalo, on the familiar ground that he _must_ live, a journalist given to figures demolished the Indian position by demonstrating that a race which insisted on living on buffalo meat required about sixteen thousand acres of land per head for its subsistence, which is more than even we can spare. One wonders, remembering these figures, how many millions of feet of first-class lumber are sacrificed to provide an Indian rancheria in Oregon with huckleberries.

On the second morning of your voyage you enter the Columbia River, and stop, on the right bank, near the mouth, at a place famous in history and romance, and fearfully disappointing to the actual view--Astoria. When you have seen it, you will wish you had passed it by unseen. I do not know precisely how it ought to have looked to have pleased my fancy, and realized the dreams of my boyhood, when I read Bonneville's "Journal" and Irving's "Astoria," and imagined Astoria to be the home of romance and of picturesque trappers. Any thing less romantic than Astoria is to-day you can scarcely imagine; and what is worse yet, your first view shows you that the narrow, broken, irreclaimably rough strip of land never had space for any thing picturesque or romantic.

Astoria, in truth, consists of a very narrow strip of hill-side, backed by a hill so steep that they can shoot timber down it, and inclosed on every side by dense forests, high, steep hills, and mud flats. It looks like the rudest Western clearing you ever saw. Its brief streets are paved with wood; its inhabitants wear their trowsers in their boots; if you step off the pavement you go deep into the mud; and ten minutes' walk brings you to the "forest primeval," which, picturesque as it may be in poetry, I confess to be dreary and monotonous in the extreme in reality.

There are but few remains of the old trapper station--one somewhat large house is the chief relic; but there is a saw-mill, which seems to make, with all its buzz and fuzz, scarcely an appreciable impression upon the belt of timber which so shuts in Astoria that I thought I had scarcely room in it to draw a full breath; and over to the left they pointed out to me the residence of a gentleman--a general, I think he was--who came hither twenty-six years ago in some official position, and had after a quarter of a century gained what looked to me from the steamer's deck like a precarious ten-acre lot from the "forest primeval," about enough room to bury himself and family in, with a probability that the firs would crowd them into the Columbia River if the saw-mill should break down.

On the voyage up I said to an Oregonian, "You have a good timber country, I hear?" and his reply seemed to me at the time extravagant. "Timber?" he said; "timber--till you can't sleep." When I had spent a day and a half at anchor abreast of Astoria, the words appeared less exaggerated. Wherever you look you see only timber; tall firs, straight as an arrow, big as the California redwoods, and dense as a Southern canebrake. On your right is Oregon--its hill-sides a forest so dense that jungle would be as fit a word for it as timber; on the left is Washington Territory, and its hill-sides are as densely covered as those of the nearer shore. This interminable, apparently impenetrable, thicket of firs exercised upon my mind, I confess, a gloomy, depressing influence. The fresh lovely green of the evergreen foliage, the wonderful arrowy straightness of the trees, their picturesque attitude where they cover headlands and reach down to the very water's edge, all did not make up to me for their dreary continuity of shade.

Astoria, however, means to grow. It has already a large hotel, which the timber has crowded down against the tide-washed flats; a saw-mill, which is sawing away for dear life, because if it stopped the forest would doubtless push it into the river, on whose brink it has courageously effected a lodgment; some tan-yards, shops, and "groceries;" and if you should wish to invest in real estate here, you can do so with the help of a "guide," which is distributed on the steamer, and tells you of numerous bargains in corner lots, etc.; for here, as in that part of the West which lies much farther east, people live apparently only to speculate in real estate.

An occasional flash of broad humor enlivens some of the land circulars and advertisements. I found one on the hotel table headed "Homes," with the following sample:

221 ACRES,

Four miles east of Silverton; frame house and a log house (can live in either); log barn; 20 acres in cultivation; 60 acres timber land; balance pasture land; well watered. We will sell this place for $1575. Will throw in a cook stove and all the household furniture, consisting of a frying-pan handle and a broomstick; also a cow and a yearling calf; also one bay heifer; also 8400 lbs. of hay, minus what the above-named stock have consumed during the winter; also 64 bushels of oats, subject to the above-mentioned diminution. If sold, we shall have left on our hands one of the driest and ugliest-looking old bachelors this side of the grave, which we will cheerfully throw in if at all acceptable to the purchaser. Old maids and rich widows are requested to give their particular attention to this special offer. Don't pass by on the other side.

* * * * *

HOME, SWEET HOME!

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home!

We still have a few more "Sweet Homes" for sale, consisting of, etc., etc., etc.

For ten miles above Astoria the river is so wide that it forms really a vast bay. Then it narrows somewhat, and the channel approaches now one and then the other of its bold, picturesque shores, which often for miles resemble the Palisades of the Hudson in steepness, and exceed them in height. But even after it becomes narrower the river frequently widens into broad, open, lake-like expanses, which are studded with lovely islands, and wherever the shore lowers you see, beyond, grand mountain ranges snow-clad and amazingly fine.

The banks are precipitous nearly all the way to the junction of the Willamette, and there is singularly little farming country on the immediate river. Below Kalama there are few spots where there is even room for a small farmstead. But along this part of the river are the "salmon factories," whence come the Oregon salmon, which, put up in tin cans, are now to be bought not only in our Eastern States, but all over the world. The fish are caught in weirs, in gill nets, as shad are caught on the Hudson, and this is the only part of the labor performed by white men. The fishermen carry the salmon in boats to the factory--usually a large frame building erected on piles over the water--and here they fall into the hands of Chinese, who get for their labor a dollar a day and their food.

The salmon are flung up on a stage, where they lie in heaps of a thousand at a time, a surprising sight to an Eastern person, for in such a pile you may see many fish weighing from thirty to sixty pounds. The work of preparing them for the cans is conducted with exact method and great cleanliness, water being abundant. One Chinaman seizes a fish and cuts off his head; the next slashes off the fins and disembowels the fish; it then falls into a large vat, where the blood soaks out--a salmon bleeds like a bull--and after soaking and repeated washing in different vats, it falls at last into the hands of one of a gang of Chinese whose business it is, with heavy knives, to chop the fish into chunks of suitable size for the tins. These pieces are plunged into brine, and presently stuffed into the cans, it being the object to fill each can as full as possible with fish, the bone being excluded.

The top of the can, which has a small hole pierced in it, is then soldered on, and five hundred tins set on a form are lowered into a huge kettle of boiling water, where they remain until the heat has expelled all the air. Then a Chinaman neatly drops a little solder over each pin-hole, and after another boiling, the object of which is, I believe, to make sure that the cans are hermetically sealed, the process is complete, and the salmon are ready to take a journey longer and more remarkable even than that which their progenitors took when, seized with the curious rage of spawning, they ascended the Columbia, to deposit their eggs in its head waters, near the centre of the continent.

I was assured by the fishermen that the salmon do not decrease in numbers or in size, yet in this year, 1873, more than two millions of pounds were put up in tin cans on the Lower Columbia alone, besides fifteen or twenty thousand barrels of salted salmon.

From Astoria to Portland is a distance of one hundred and ten miles, and as the current is strong, the steamer requires ten or twelve hours to make the trip. As you approach the mouth of the Willamette you meet more arable land, and the shores of this river are generally lower, and often alluvial, like the Missouri and Mississippi bottoms; and here you find cattle, sheep, orchards, and fields; and one who is familiar with the agricultural parts of California notices here signs of a somewhat severer climate, in more substantial houses; and the evidence of more protracted rains, in green and luxuriant grasses at a season when the pastures of California have already begun to turn brown.

Portland is a surprisingly well-built city, with so many large shops, so many elegant dwellings, and other signs of prosperity, as will make you credit the assertion of its inhabitants, that it contains more wealth in proportion to its population than any other town in the United States. It lies on the right bank of the Willamette, and is the centre of a large commerce. Its inhabitants seemed to me to have a singular fancy for plate-glass fronts in their shops and hotels, and even in the private houses, which led me at first to suppose that there must be a glass factory near at hand. It is all, I believe, imported.

From Portland, which you can see in a day, and whose most notable sight is a fine view of Mount Hood, obtainable from the hills back of the city, the sight-seer makes his excursions conveniently in various directions; and as the American traveler is always in a hurry, it is perhaps well to show what time is needed:

To the Dalles and Celilo, and return to Portland, three days.

To Victoria, Vancouver's Island, and return to Portland, including the tour of Puget Sound, seven days.

To San Francisco, overland, by railroad to Roseburg, thence by stage to Redding, and rail to San Francisco, seventy-nine hours.

Thus you may leave San Francisco by steamer for Portland, see the Dalles, the Cascades, Puget Sound, Victoria, the Willamette Valley, and the magnificent mountain scenery of Southern Oregon and Northern California, and be back in San Francisco in less than three weeks, making abundant allowance for possible though not probable detentions on the road. The time absolutely needed for the tour is but seventeen days.

Of course he who "takes a run over to California" from, the East, predetermined to be back in his office or shop within five or six weeks from the day he left home, can not see the Columbia River and Puget Sound. But travelers are beginning to discover that it is worth while to spend some months on the Pacific coast; some day, I do not doubt, it will be fashionable to go across the continent; and those whose circumstances give them leisure should not leave the Pacific without seeing Oregon and Washington Territory. In the few pages which follow, my aim is to smooth the way for others by a very simple account of what I myself saw and enjoyed.

And first as to the Cascades and the Dalles of the Columbia. You leave Portland for Dalles City in a steamboat at five o'clock in the morning. The better way is to sleep on board this steamer, and thus avoid an uncomfortably early awakening. Then when you do rise, at six or half past, you will find yourself on the Columbia, and steaming directly at Mount Hood, whose splendid snow-covered peak seems to bar your way but a short distance ahead. It lies, in fact, a hundred miles off; and when you have sailed some hours toward it the river makes a turn, which leaves the snowy peak at one side, and presently hides it behind the steep bank.

The little steamer, very clean and comfortable, affords you an excellent breakfast, and some amusement in the odd way in which she is managed. Most of the river steamers here have their propelling wheel at the stern; they have very powerful engines, which drive them ahead with surprising speed. I have gone sixteen miles an hour in one, with the current; and when they make a landing the pilot usually runs the boat's head slantingly against the shore, and passengers and freight are taken in or landed over the bow. At the wood-pile on the shore you may generally see one of the people called "Pikes," whom you will recognize by a very broad-brimmed hat, a frequent squirting of tobacco-juice, and the possession of two or three hounds, whom they call hereabouts "hound-dogs," as we say "bull-dog." And this reminds me that in Oregon the country people usually ask you if you will eat an "egg-omelet;" and they speak of pork--a favorite food of the Pike--as "hog-meat."

The voyage up the river presents a constant succession of wild and picturesque scenery; immense rocky capes jut out into the broad stream; for miles the banks are precipitous, like the Hudson River Palisades, only often much higher, and for other miles the river has worn its channel out of the rock, whose face looks bare and clean cut, as though it had been of human workmanship. The first explorer of the Columbia, even if he was a very commonplace mortal, must have passed days of the most singular exhilaration, especially if he ascended the stream in that season when the skies are bright and blue, for it seems to me one of the most magnificent sights in the world. I am not certain that the wildness does not oppress one a little after a while, and there are parts of the river where the smoothly cut cliffs, coming precipitously down to the water's edge, and following down, sheer down, to the river's bottom, make you think with terror of the unhappy people who might here be drowned, with this cold rock within their reach, yet not affording them even a momentary support. I should like to have seen the rugged cliffs relieved here and there by the softness of smooth lawns, and some evidences that man had conquered even this rude and resisting nature.

But for a century or two to come the traveler will have to do without this relief; nor need he grumble, for, with all its rugged grandeur, the scenery has many exquisite bits where nature has a little softened its aspect. Nor is it amiss to remember that but a little way back from the river there are farms, orchards, cattle, and sheep. At one point the boat for a moment turned her bow to the shore to admit a young man, who brought with him a wonderful bouquet of wild flowers, which he had gathered at his home a few miles back; and here and there, where the hill-sides have a more moderate incline, you will see that some energetic pioneer has carved himself out a farm.

Nevertheless it is with a sense of relief at the change that you at last approach a large island, a flat space of ten or twelve hundred acres, with fences and trees and grain fields and houses, and with a gentle and peaceful aspect, doubly charming to you when you come upon it suddenly, and fresh from the preceding and somewhat appalling grandeur. Here the boat stops; for you are here at the lower end of the famous Cascades, and you tranship yourself into cars which carry you to the upper end, a distance of about six miles, where again you take boat for Dalles City.

The Cascades are rapids. The river, which has ever a swift and impetuous current, is nearly two miles wide just above these rapids. Where the bed shoals it also narrows, and the great body of water rushes over the rocks, roaring, tumbling, foaming--a tolerably wild sight. There is nowhere any sudden descent sufficient to make a water-fall; but there is a fall of a good many feet in the six miles of cascades.

These rapids are considered impassable, though I believe the Indians used sometimes to venture down them in canoes; and it was my good fortune to shoot down them in a little steamer--the _Shoshone_--the third only, I was told, which had ever ventured this passage. The singular history of this steamboat shows the vast extent of the inland navigation made possible by the Columbia and its tributaries. She was built in 1866 on the Snake River, at a point ninety miles from Boise City, in Idaho Territory, and was employed in the upper waters of the Snake, running to near the mouth of the Bruneau, within one hundred and twenty-five miles of the head of Salt Lake.

When the mining excitement in that region subsided there ceased to be business for her, and her owner determined to bring her to Portland. She passed several rapids on the Snake, and at a low stage of water was run over the Dalles. Then she had to wait nearly a year until high water on the Cascades, and finally passed those rapids, and carried her owner, Mr. Ainsworth, who was also for this passage of the Cascades her pilot, and myself safely into Portland.

We steamed from Dalles City about three o'clock on an afternoon so windy as to make the Columbia very rough. When we arrived at the head of the Cascades we found the shore lined with people to watch our passage through the rapids. As we swept into the foaming and roaring waters the engine was slowed a little, and for a few minutes the pilots had their hands full; for the fierce currents, sweeping her now to one side and then to the other, made the steering extraordinarily difficult. At one point there seemed a probability that we should be swept on to the rocks; and it was very curious to stand, as General Sprague and I, the only passengers, did, in front of the pilot-house, and watch the boat's head swing against the helm and toward the rocks, until at last, after half a minute of suspense, she began slowly to swing back, obedient to her pilot's wish.

We made six miles in eleven minutes, which is at the rate of more than thirty miles per hour, a better rate of speed than steamboats commonly attain. Of course it is impossible to drive a vessel up the Cascades, and a steamboat which has once passed these rapids remains forever below.

At the upper end of the Cascades a boat awaits you, which carries you through yet more picturesque scenery to Dalles City, where you spend the night. This is a small place, remarkable to the traveler chiefly for the geological collection which every traveler ought to see, belonging to the Rev. Mr. Condon, a very intelligent and enthusiastic geologist, the Presbyterian minister of the place. You have also at Dalles City a magnificent view of Mount Hood, and Mr. Condon will tell you that he has seen this old crater emit smoke since he has lived here.

There is no doubt that both Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens have still internal fires, though both their craters are now filled up with ashes. There is reason to believe that at its last period of activity Mount Hood emitted only ashes; for there are still found traces of volcanic ashes, attributable, I am told, to this mountain, as far as one hundred miles from its summit. Of Mount St. Helens it is probable that its slumbering fires are not very deeply buried. A few years ago two adventurous citizens of Washington Territory were obliged, by a sudden fog and cold storm, to spend a night near its summit, and seeking for some cave among the lava where to shelter themselves from the storm, found a fissure from which came so glowing and immoderate a heat that they could not bear its vicinity, and, as they related, were alternately frozen and scorched all night--now roasting at the volcanic fire, and again rushing out to cool themselves in the sleet and snow.

The rocks are volcanic from near the mouth of the Willamette to and above the Dalles, and geologists suppose that there have been great convulsions of nature hereabouts in recent geological times. The Indians have a tradition, indeed, that the river was originally navigable and unobstructed where now are the Cascades, and that formerly there was a long, natural tunnel, through which the Columbia passed under a mountain. They assert that a great earthquake broke down this tunnel, the site of which they still point out, and that the debris formed the present obstructions at the Cascades.

Oregon, if one may judge by the fossil remains in Mr. Condon's collection, seems once to have been inhabited by a great number and variety of pre-adamite beasts; but the most singular object he has to show is a very striking ape's head, carved with great spirit and vigor out of hard lava. This object was found upon the shore of the Columbia by Indians, after a flood which had washed away a piece of old alluvial bank. The rock of which it is composed is quite hard; the carving is, as I said, done with remarkable vigor; and the top of the head is hollowed out, precisely as the Indians still make shallow depressions in figures and heads which they carve out of slate, in which to burn what answers in their religious ceremonies for incense.

But supposing this relic to belong to Oregon--and there is, I was told, no reason to believe otherwise--where did the Indian who carved it get his idea of an ape? The Indians of this region, poor creatures that they are, have still the habit of carving rude figures out of slate and other soft rocks. They have also the habit of cutting out shallow, dish-like depressions in the heads of such figures, wherein to burn incense. But they could not give Mr. Condon any account of the ape's head they brought him, nor did they recognize its features as resembling any object or creature familiar to them even by tradition.

The Dalles of the Columbia are simply a succession of falls and rapids, not reaching over as great a distance as the Cascades, but containing one feature much more remarkable than any thing which the Cascades afford, and indeed, so far as I know, found nowhere else.

The Columbia above the Dalles is still a first-class river, comparable in depth and width, and in the volume of its water, only with the Lower Mississippi or the Amazon. It is a deep, rapidly-flowing stream, nearly a mile wide. But at one point in the Dalles the channel narrows until it is, at the ordinary height of the river, not over a hundred yards wide; and through this narrow gorge the whole volume of the river rushes for some distance. Of course water is not subject to compression; the volume of the river is not diminished; what happens, as you perceive when you see this singular freak of nature, is that the river is suddenly turned up on its edge. Suppose it is, above the Dalles, a mile wide and fifty feet deep; at the narrow gorge it is but a hundred yards wide--how deep must it be? Certainly it can be correctly said that the stream is turned up on its edge.

The Dalles lie five or six miles above Dalles City; and you pass these rapids in the train which bears you to Celilo early the next morning after you arrive at Dalles City. Celilo is not a town; it is simply a geographical point; it is the spot where, if you were bound to the interior of the continent by water, you would take steamboat. There is here a very long shed to shelter the goods which are sent up into this far-away and, to us Eastern people, unknown interior; there is a wharf where land the boats when they return from a journey of perhaps a thousand miles on the Upper Columbia or the Snake; there are two or three laborers' shanties--and that is all there is of Celilo; and your journey thither has been made only that you may see the Dalles, and Cape Horn, as a bold promontory on the river is called.

What I advise you to do is to take a hearty lunch with you, and, if you can find one, a guide, and get off the early Celilo train at the Dalles. You will have a most delightful day among very curious scenery; will see the Indians spearing salmon in the pools over which they build their stages; and can examine at leisure the curious rapids called the Dalles. A party of three or four persons could indeed spend several days very pleasantly picnicking about the Dalles, and in the season they would shoot hare and birds enough to supply them with meat. The weather in this part of Oregon, east of the Cascade range, is as settled as that of California, so that there is no risk in sleeping-out-of-doors in summer.

There is a singularly sudden climatic change between Western and Eastern Oregon; and if you ask the captain or pilot on the boat which plies between the Cascades and Dalles City, he can show you the mountain range on one side of which the climate is wet, while on the other side it is dry. The Cascade range is a continuation northward of the Sierra Nevada; and here, as farther south, it stops the water-laden winds which rush up from the sea. Western Oregon, lying between the Cascades and the ocean, has so much rain that its people are called "Web-feet;" Eastern Oregon, a vast grazing region, has comparatively little rain. Western Oregon, except in the Willamette and Rogue River valleys, is densely timbered; Eastern Oregon is a country of boundless plains, where they irrigate their few crops, and depend mainly on stock-grazing. This region is as yet sparsely settled; and when we in the East think of Oregon, or read of it even, it is of that part of the huge State which lies west of the Cascades, and where alone agriculture is carried on to a considerable extent.

You will spend a day in returning from the Dalles to Portland, and arriving there in the evening can set out the next morning for Olympia, on Puget Sound, by way of Kalama, which is the Columbia River terminus for the present of the Northern Pacific Railroad. It is possible to go by steamer from Portland to Victoria, and then return down Puget Sound to Olympia; but to most people the sea-voyage is not enticing, and there are but slight inconveniences in the short land journey. The steamer leaving Portland at six A.M. lands you at Kalama about eleven; there you get dinner, and proceed about two by rail to Olympia. It is a good plan to telegraph for accommodations on the pretty and comfortable steamer _North Pacific_, and go directly to her on your arrival at Olympia.

Puget Sound is one of the most picturesque and remarkable sheets of water in the world; and the voyage from Olympia to Victoria, which shows you the greater part of the Sound, is a delightful and novel excursion, specially to be recommended to people who like to go to sea without getting sea-sick; for these land-encircled waters are almost always smooth.

When, at Kalama, you enter Washington Territory, your ears begin to be assailed by the most barbarous names imaginable. On your way to Olympia by rail you cross a river called the Skookum-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and Toutle; and if you seek further, you will hear of whole counties labeled Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsap, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium, and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What man, having the whole American continent to chose from, would willingly date his letters from the county of Snohomish, or bring up his children in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think twice before he established himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle is sufficiently barbarous; Steilacoom is no better; and I suspect that the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma--if it is fixed there--because that is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire horror and disgust.

Olympia, which lies on an arm of Puget Sound, and was once a town of great expectations, surprises the traveler by its streets, all shaded with magnificent maples. The founder of the town was a man of taste; and he set a fashion which, being followed for a few years in this country of abundant rains, has given Olympia's streets shade trees by the hundred which would make it famous were it an Eastern place.

Unluckily, it has little else to charm the traveler, though it is the capital of the Territory; and when you have spent half an hour walking through the streets you will be quite ready to have the steamer set off for Victoria. The voyage lasts but about thirty-six hours, and would be shorter were it not that the steamer makes numerous landings. Thus you get glimpses of Seattle, Steilacoom, Tacoma, and of the so-called saw-mill ports--Port Madison, Port Gamble, Port Ludlow, and Port Townsend--the last named being also the boundary of our Uncle Samuel's dominions for the present, and the port of entry for this district, with a custom-house which looks like a barn, and a collector and inspectors, the latter of whom examine your trunk as you return from Victoria to save you from the sin of smuggling.

From Port Townsend your boat strikes across the straits of San Juan de Fuca to Victoria; and just here, as you are crossing from American to English territory, you get the most magnificent views of the grand Olympian range of mountains and of Mount Regnier. Also, the captain will point out to you in the distance that famous island of San Juan which formed the subject or object, or both, of our celebrated boundary dispute with great Britain, and you will wonder how small an object can nearly make nations go to war, and for what a petty thing we set several kings and great lords to studying geography and treaties and international law, and boring themselves, and filling enterprising newspapers with dozens of columns of dull history; and you will wonder the more at the stupid pertinacity of these English in clinging to the little island of San Juan when you reach Victoria, and see that we shall presently take that dull little town too, not because we want it or need it, but to save it from perishing of inanition.

It is something to have taste and a sense of the beautiful. Certainly the English, who discovered the little landlocked harbor of Victoria and chose it as the site of a town, displayed both. It is by natural advantages one of the loveliest places I ever saw, and I wonder, remote as it is, that it is not famous. The narrow harbor, which is not so big as one of the big Liverpool docks, is surrounded on both sides by the prettiest little miniature bays, rock-bound, with grassy knolls, and here and there shady clumps of evergreens; a river opening out above the town into a kind of lake, and spanned by pretty bridges, invites you to a boating excursion; and the fresh green of the lawn-like expanses of grass which reach into the bay from different directions, the rocky little promontories with boats moored near them, the fine snow-covered mountains in the distance, and the pleasantly winding roads leading in different directions into the country, all make up a landscape whose soft and gay aspect I suppose is the more delightful because one comes to it from the somewhat oppressive grandeur of the fir forests in Washington Territory.

In the harbor of Victoria the most conspicuous object is the long range of warehouses belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, with their little trading steamers moored alongside. These vessels bear the signs of traffic with a savage people in the high boarding nettings which guard them from stem to stern, and which are in their more solid parts pierced for musketry. Here, too, you see a queer little old steamboat, the first that ever vexed the waters of the Pacific Ocean with its paddle-wheels. And as your own steamer hauls up to the wharf, you will notice, arrayed to receive you, what is no doubt the most shocking and complete collection of ugly women in the world.

These are the Indians of this region. They are very light-colored; their complexion has an artificial look; there is something ghastly and unnatural in the yellow of the faces, penetrated by a rose or carmine color on the cheeks. They are hideous in all the possible aspects and varieties of hideousness--undersized, squat, evil-eyed, pug-nosed, tawdry in dress, ungraceful in every motion; they really mar the landscape, so that you are glad to escape from them to your hotel, which you find a clean and comfortable building, where, if you are as fortunate as the traveler who relates this, you may by-and-by catch a glimpse or two of a fresh, fair, girlish English face, which will make up to you for the precedent ugliness.

Victoria hopes to have its dullness enlivened by a railroad from the mainland one of these days, which may make it more prosperous, but will probably destroy some of the charm it now has for a tourist. It can hardly destroy the excellent roads by which you may take several picturesque drives and walks in the neighborhood of the town, nor the pretty views you have from the hills near by, nor the excursions by boat, in which you can best see how much Nature has done to beautify this place, and how little man has done so far to mar her work.

Silks and cigars are said to be very cheap in Victoria; and those who consume these articles will probably look through the shops and make a few purchases, not enough to satisfy, though sufficient to arouse the suspicions of the Collector of Customs at Port Townsend. If you use your time well, the thirty-six hours which the steamer spends at Victoria will suffice you to see all that is of interest there to a traveler, and you can return in her down the Sound, and make more permanent your impressions of its scenery.

You will perhaps be startled, if you chance to overhear the conversation of your fellow-passengers, to gather that it concerns itself chiefly with millions, and these millions run to such extraordinary figures that you may hear one man pitying another for the confession that he made no more than a hundred millions last year. It is feet of lumber they are speaking of; and when you see the monstrous piles of sawdust which encumber the mill ports, the vast quantities of waste stuff they burn, and the huge rafts of timber which are towed down to the mills, as well as the ships which lie there to load for South America, Tahiti, Australia, and California, you will not longer wonder that they talk of millions.

Some of these mills are owned by very wealthy companies, who have had the good fortune to buy at low rates large tracts of the best timber lands lying along the rivers and bays. A saw-mill is the centre of quite a town--and a very rough town too, to judge from the appearance of the men who come down to the dock to look at the steamer, and the repute of the Indian women who go from port to port and seem at home among the mill men.

Having gone by sea to Oregon, I should advise you to return to California overland. The journey lies by rail through the fertile Willamette Valley, for the present the chief agricultural country of Oregon, to Roseburg, and thence by stage over and through some of the most picturesque and grand scenery in America, into California. If you are curious in bizarre social experiments, you may very well stop a day at Aurora, thirty miles below Portland, and look at some of the finest orchards in the State, the property of a strange German community which has lived in harmony and acquired wealth at this point.

Salem, too, the capital of Oregon, lying on the railroad fifty miles below Portland, is worth a visit, to show you how rich a valley the Willamette is. And as you go down by stage toward California you will enjoy a long day's drive through the Rogue River Valley, a long, narrow, winding series of nooks, remote, among high mountains, looking for all the world as though in past ages a great river had swept through here, and left in its dry bed a fertile soil, and space enough for a great number of happy and comfortable homes.

May and June are the best months in which to see Oregon and Puget Sound. With San Francisco as a starting-point, one may go either to Portland or to Victoria direct. If you go first to Victoria, you save a return journey across Puget Sound, and from Olympia to Kalama, but you miss the sail up the Columbia from Astoria to Portland. The following table of fares will show you the cost of traveling in the region I have described:

Time. Fare. From San Francisco to Portland................... 3 days $30 00 From San Francisco to Victoria................... 3 " 30 00 From Portland to Celilo.......................... 1 day 7 00 Excursion tickets, good from Portland to Celilo and back............................................. 3 days 10 00 From Portland by Olympia to Victoria............. 3 " 12 25 From Portland to San Francisco by railroad and stage............................................ 79 hours 42 00

Meals on these journeys are extra, and cost from half a dollar to seventy-five cents. They are generally good. All these rates are in coin. On the steamer from San Francisco to Portland or Victoria meals are included in the fare.

When you are once in Portland, a vast region opens itself to you, if you are an adventurous tourist. You may take boat at Celilo, above the Dalles, and steam up to Wallula, where you take stage for Elkton, a station on the Pacific Railroad, in Utah; this journey shows you the heart of the continent, and is said to abound in magnificent scenery. I have not made it, but it is frequently done. If you have not courage for so long an overland trip, a journey up to the mouth of Snake River and back to Portland, which consumes but a week, will give you an intelligent idea of the vastness of the country drained by the main body of the great Columbia River.

The great plains and table-lands which lie east of the Cascades, and are drained by the Columbia, the Snake, and their affluents, will some day contain a vast population. Already enterprising pioneers are pushing into the remotest valleys of this region. As you sail up the Columbia, you will hear of wheat, barley, sheep, stock, wool, orchards, and rapidly growing settlements, where, to our Eastern belief, the beaver still builds his dams, unvexed even by the traps and rifle of the hunter.

APPENDIX.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF A VENERABLE SAVAGE TO THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.[A]

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. JULES REMY, BY WILLIAM T. BRIGHAM.

[I am indebted to Mr. William T. Brigham, of Boston, the translator of the following "Contributions of a venerable Savage," and the author of a valuable treatise on the volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands, as well as of several memoirs on the natural history of the Islands, for his kind permission to use this very curious fragment, with his additions, in my volume. The original I have not been able to lay my hands on. It gives a picturesque account of the Hawaiian people before they came into relations with foreigners. It should be remembered by the reader that Mr. Remy is a Frenchman, and that his relations with the Roman Catholic missionaries somewhat colored his views of the labors of the American missionaries on the Islands.

The "contributions" in this translation of Mr. Brigham were privately printed by him some years ago, and the following note by him explains their origin. It will be seen that Mr. Brigham translated the Mele, or chant of Kawelo, from the original.]

One evening, in the month of March, 1853, I landed at Hoopuloa, on the western shore of Hawaii. Among the many natives collected on the beach to bid me welcome and draw my canoe up over the sand, I noticed an old man of average size, remarkably developed chest, and whose hairs, apparently once flaxen, were hoary with age. The countenance of this old man, at once savage and attractive, was furrowed across the forehead with deep and regular wrinkles. His only garment was a shirt of striped calico.

A sort of veneration with which his countrymen seemed to me to regard him only increased the desire I at first felt to become acquainted with the old islander. I was soon told that his name was Kanuha, that he was already a lad when Alapai[1] died (about 1752), that he had known Kalaniopuu, Cook, and Kamehameha the Great. When I learned his name and extraordinary age, I turned toward Kanuha, extending my hand. This attention flattered him, and disposed him favorably toward me. So I resolved to take advantage of this lucky encounter to obtain from an eye-witness an insight into Hawaiian customs before the arrival of Europeans.

A hut of pandanus had been prepared for me upon the lava by the care of a missionary. I made the old man enter, and invited him to partake of my repast of poi,[2] cocoa-nut, raw fish, and roast dog. While eating the poi with full fingers, Kanuha assured me that he had lived under King Alapai, and had been his runner, as well as the courier of Kalaniopuu, his successor. So great had been Kanuha's strength in his youth that, at the command of his chiefs, he had in a single day accomplished the distance from Hoopuloa to Hilo, more than forty French leagues. When Cook died, in 1779, the little children of Kanuha's children had been born. When I spoke of Alapai to my old savage, he told me that _it seemed to him a matter of yesterday_; of Cook, _it was a thing of to-day_.

From these facts it may be believed that Kanuha was not less than one hundred and sixteen years old when I met him on this occasion. This remarkable example of longevity was by no means unique at the Hawaiian Islands a few years since. Father Maréchal knew at Ka'u, in 1844, an aged woman who remembered perfectly having seen Alapai. I had occasion to converse at Kauai with an islander who was already a grandfather when he saw Captain Cook die. I sketched, at this very Hoopuloa, the portrait of an old woman, still vigorous, Meawahine, who told any who would hear her that her breasts were completely developed when her chief gave her as wife to the celebrated English navigator.

Old Kanuha was the senior of all these centenaries. I took advantage of his willing disposition to draw from him the historical treasures with which his memory was stored. Here, in my own order, is what he told me during a night of conversation, interrupted only by the Hawaiian dances (_hulahula_), and by some pipes of tobacco smoked in turn, in the custom of the country.

OF GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY WITH THE ANCIENT HAWAIIANS.

The soil was the property of the king, who reserved one part of it for himself, assigning another to the nobles, and left the rest to the first occupant. Property, based on a possession more or less ancient, was transmitted by heritage; but the king could always dispose, according to his whims, of property of chiefs and subjects, and the chiefs had the same privilege over the people.

Taxes were not assessed on any basis. The king levied them whenever it seemed good to him, and almost always in an arbitrary way. The chiefs also, and the priests, received a tribute from the people. The tax was always in kind, and consisted of:

Kalo, raw and made into poi; Potatoes (_Convolvulus batatas_, L.) many varieties; Bananas (_maia_) of different kinds; Cocoa-nuts (called _niu_ by the natives); Dogs (destined for food);[3] Hogs; Fowls; Fish, crabs, cuttle-fish, shell-fish; Kukui nuts (_Aleurites moluccana_) for making relishes, and for illumination; Edible sea-weed (_limu_); Edible ferns (several species, among others the _hapuu_); Awa (_Piper methysticum_, Forst.); Ki roots (_Cordyline ti_, Schott.), a very saccharine vegetable; Feathers of the _Oo_ (_Drepanis pacifica_), and of the _Iiwi_ (_Drepanis coccinea_): these birds were taken with the glue of the _ulu_ or bread-fruit (_Artocarpus incisa_); Fabrics of beaten bark (_kapa_) and fibre of the _olona_ (_Boehmeria_), of _wauke_ (_Broussonetia papyrifera_), of _hau_ (_Hilasens tiliasens_), etc.; Mats of Pandanus and of Scirpus; Pili (grass to thatch houses with); Canoes (_waa_); Wood for building; Calabashes (serving for food vessels, and to hold water); Wooden dishes; Arms and instruments of war, etc., etc.

A labor tax was also enforced, and it was perhaps the most onerous, because it returned almost regularly every moon for a certain number of days. The work was principally cultivating the _loi_, or fields of kalo, which belonged to the king or chiefs.

The Hawaiian people were divided into three very distinct classes; these were:

1. The nobility (_Alii_), comprising the king and the chiefs of whatever degree;

2. The clergy (_Kahuna_), comprising the priests, doctors, prophets, and sorcerers;

3. Citizens (_Makaainana_), comprising laborers, farmers, proletaries, and slaves.

THE NOBILITY. NA'LII.

The chiefs or nobles were of several orders. The highest chief bore the title of _Moi_, which may best be rendered by the word majesty. In a remote period of Hawaiian history, this title was synonymous with _Ka lani_, heaven. This expression occurs frequently in ancient poems: _Auhea oe, e ka lani? Eia ae_. This mode of address is very poetic, and quite pleasing to the chiefs.

The Moi was still called _kapu_ and _aliinui_. To tread on his shadow was a crime punished with death: _He make ke ee malu_. The chief next the throne took the title of _Wohi_. He who ranked next, that of _Mahana_. These titles could belong at the same time to several chiefs of the blood-royal, who were called _Alii kapu, Alii wohi_. The ordinary nobility furnished the king's aids-de-camp, called _Hulumanu_ (plumed officers).

By the side of the nobility were the _Kahu alii_, literally guardians of the chiefs, of noble origin by the younger branch, but who dared not claim the title of chief in the presence of their elders. The Kahu alii of the male sex might be considered born chamberlains; of the female, ladies of the bed-chamber.

There were five kinds of Kahu alii, which are: Iwikuamoo, Ipukuha, Paakahili, Kiaipoo, Aipuupuu.

These titles constituted as many hereditary charges reserved for the lesser nobility. The functions of the Iwikuamoo (backbone of the chief) were to rub his lord on the back, when stretched on his mat. The Ipukuha had charge of the royal spittoons. The Paakahili carried a very long plume (_kahili_), which he waved, around the royal person to drive away the flies and gnats. The duties of this officer were continual and most fatiguing, for he must constantly remain near the person of his master, armed with his kahili, whether the king was seated or reclining, eating or sleeping. The Kiaipoo's special charge was to watch at the side of his august chief during sleep. The Aipuupuu was the chief cook, and, besides, performed functions similar to those of steward or purveyor.

There were, besides, other inferior chiefs, as the _Puuku_, attendants of the house or palace; _Malama ukana_, charged with the care of provisions in traveling; _Aialo_, who had the privilege of eating in the presence of the chief; and, at the present day, the _Muki baka_, who had the honor of lighting the king's pipe and carrying his tobacco-pouch.

Although the people considered these last four orders as belonging to the nobility, it seems that they were of lower rank than the citizens favored by the chiefs.

Finally, the king had always in his service the _Hula_, who, like the buffoon or jester of the French kings, must amuse his majesty by mimicry or dancing. The _Kahu alii_, or _Kaukaualii_, as they are now styled, are attendants or followers of the high chiefs by right of birth. They accompany their masters everywhere, almost in the same manner that a governess follows her pupil.[4] From the throne down nobility was hereditary. The right of primogeniture was recognized as natural law. Nobility transmitted through the mother was considered far superior to that on the father's side only, even if he were the highest of chiefs. This usage was founded on the following proverb: _Maopopo ka makuahine, aole maopopo ka makuakane_ (It is always evident who the mother is, but one is never sure about the father). Agreeably to this principle, the high chiefs, when they could not find wives of a sufficiently illustrious origin, might espouse their sisters and their nieces, or, in default of either of these, their own mother. Nevertheless, history furnishes us several examples of kings who were not noble on the maternal side.[5]

THE CLERGY. NA KAHUNA.

The priests formed three orders:

1. The _Kahuna_ proper. 2. The _Kaula_, or prophets. 3. The _Kilo_, diviners or magicians.

The priesthood, properly so called (_Kahuna maoli, Kahuna pule_), was hereditary. The priests received their titles from their fathers, and transmitted them to their offspring, male and female, for the Hawaiians had priestesses as well. The priest was the peer of the nobility; he had a portion of land in all the estates of the chiefs, and sometimes acquired such power as to be formidable to the alii. In religious ceremonies, the priests were clothed with absolute power, and selected the victims for the sacrifices. This privilege gave them an immense and dangerous influence in private life, whence the Hawaiian proverb: The priest's man is inviolable, the chief's man is the prey of death, _Aole e make ko ke kahuna kanaka, o ko ke 'lii kanaka ke make_.

The kahuna, being clothed with supreme power in the exercise of his functions, alone could designate the victim suitable to appease the anger of the gods. The people feared him much for this prerogative, which gave the power of life and death over all, and the result was that the priest had constantly at his service an innumerable crowd of men and women wholly devoted to him. It was not proper for him to choose victims from a people who paid him every imaginable attention. But among the servants of the alii, if there were any who had offended the priest or his partisans, nothing more was necessary to condemn to death such or such an attendant of even the highest chief. From this it may be seen how dangerous it was not to enjoy the good graces of the kahuna, who, by his numerous clan, might revolutionize the whole country. History affords us an example in the Kahuna Kaleihokuu of Laupahoehoe, who had in his service so considerable a body of retainers that he was able in a day, by a single act of his will, to put to death the great chief Hakau, of Waipio, and substitute in his place Umi, the bastard son (_poolua_) of King Liloa, who had, however, been adopted by Kaleihokuu. Another example of this remarkable power is seen in the Kahuna of Ka'u, who massacred the high chief Kohookalani, in the neighborhood of Ninole, tumbling down upon him a huge tree from the top of the _pali_ (precipice) of Hilea.

The _Kahuna_, especially those of the race of Paao, were the natural depositaries of history, and took the revered title of _Mo'olelo_, or historians. Some individuals of this stock still exist, and they are all esteemed by the natives, and regarded as the chiefs of the historical and priestly caste. The sacerdotal order had its origin in Paao, whose descendants have always been regarded as the _Kahuna maoli_.[6] Paao came from a distant land called Kahiki. According to several chiefs, his genealogy must be more correct than that of the kings. Common tradition declares that Paao came from foreign countries, landing on the north-west shore of Hawaii (Kohala), at Puuepa, in the place where, to this day, are seen the ruins of the Heiau (temple) of Mokini, the most ancient of all the temples, and which he is said to have built. The advent of Paao and his erection of this heiau are so ancient, according to the old men, that Night helped the priest raise the temple: _Na ka po i kukulu ae la Mokini, a na Paao nae_. These sayings, in the native tongue, indicate the high antiquity of Paao.[7]

To build the temple of Mokini, which also served as a city of refuge, Paao had stones brought from all sides, even from Pololu, a village situated four or five leagues from Mokini or Puuepa. The Kanakas formed a chain the whole length of the route, and passed the stones from one to another--an easy thing in those times--from the immense population of the neighborhood.

Paao has always been considered as the first of the Kahuna. For this reason his descendants, independently of the fact that they are regarded as _Mookahuna_, that is, of the priesthood, are more like nobles in the eye of the people, and are respected by the chiefs themselves. There are, in the neighborhood of Mokini, stones which are considered petrifactions of the canoe, paddles, and fish-hooks of Paao.

At Pololu, toward the mountain, are found fields of a very beautiful verdure. They are called the pastures, or grass-plots, of Paao (_Na mauu a Paao_). The old priest cultivated these fields himself, where no one since his time has dared to use spade or mattock. If an islander was impious enough to cultivate the meadow of Paao, the people believe that a terrible punishment would be the inevitable consequence of that profanation. Disastrous rains, furious torrents, would surely ravage the neighboring country.

Some Hawaiians pretend that there exists another sacerdotal race besides that of Paao, more ancient even than that, and whose priests belonged at the same time to a race of chiefs. It is the family of Maui, probably of Maui-hope, the last of the seven children of Hina,[8] the same who captured the sea-monster Piimoe. The origin of this race, to which Naihe of Kohala pretends to belong, is fabulous. Since the reign of Kamehameha, the priests of the order of Maui have lost favor.

The second class of the clergy was composed of the prophets (_Kaula_), an inoffensive and very respectable people, who gave vent to their inspiration from time to time in unexpected and uncalled-for prophesies. The third order of the clergy is that of _Kilo_, diviners or magicians. With these may be classed the _Kilokilo_, the _Kahunalapaau_ and _Kahunaanaana_, a sort of doctors regarded as sorcerers, to whom was attributed the power of putting to death by sorcery and witchcraft.[9] The Kahunaanaana and the Kahunalapaau have never been considered as belonging to the high caste of Kahuna maoli.

The Kahunaanaana, or sorcerers, inherited their functions. They were thoroughly detested, and the people feared them, and do to this day. When the chiefs were dissatisfied with a sorcerer, they had his head cut off with a stone axe (_koipohaku_), or cast him from the top of a pali.

The doctors were of two kinds. The first, the Kahunalapaau proper, comprised all who used plants in the treatment of disease. Just as the sorcerers understood poisonous vegetables, so the doctors knew the simples which furnished remedies to work cures. The second kind comprised the spiritual doctors, who had various names, and who seem to have been intermediate between priests and magicians, sharing at once in the attributes of both. They were:

_Kahuna uhane_, the doctors of ghosts and spirits;

_Kahuna makani_, doctors of winds;

_Kahuna hoonohonoho akua_, who caused the gods to descend on the sick;

_Kahuna aumakua_, doctors of diseases of the old;

_Kahuna Pele_, doctors or priests of Pele, goddess of volcanoes.

All the doctors of the second kind are still found in the islands,[10] where they have remained idolaters, although they have been for the most part baptized. There is hardly a Kanaka who has not had recourse to them in his complaints, preferring their cures and their remedies to those of the foreign physicians. Laws have been enacted to prohibit these charlatans from exercising their art; but under the rule of Kamehameha III., who protected them, these laws have not been enforced.

THE CITIZENS. NA MAKAAINANA.

The class of _Makaainana_ comprises all the inhabitants not included in the two preceding classes; that is to say, the bulk of the people.

There were two degrees of this cast: the _kanaka wale_, freemen, private citizens, and the _kauwa_ or servants. The Hawaiian saying, _O luna, o lalo, kai, o uka a o ka hao pae, ko ke 'lii_ (All above, all below, the sea, the land, and iron cast upon the shore, all belong to the king), exactly defines the third class of the nation, called makaainana, the class that possesses nothing, and has no right save that of sustenance.

The Hawaiians honored canoe-builders and great fishers as privileged citizens. The chiefs themselves granted them some consideration; but it must be confessed that the honorable position they occupied in society was due to their skill in their calling rather than to any thing else. These builders were generally deeply in debt. They ate in advance the price of their labor, which usually consisted of hogs and fowls, and they died of starvation before the leaves ceased to sprout on the tree their adze had transformed into a canoe.

The _kauwa_, servants, must not be confounded with the _kauwa maoli_, actual slaves. A high chief, even a wohi, would call himself without dishonor _ke kauwa a ke 'lii nui_, the servant of the king. At present, their excellencies the ministers and the nobles do not hesitate to sign their names under the formula _kou kauwa_, your servant; but it is none the less true, for all that, that formerly there were among the common people a class, few in number, of slaves, or serfs, greatly despised by the Hawaiians, and still to our days so lowered in public opinion that a simple peasant refuses to associate with the descendants of this caste.

They point the finger at people of kauwa extraction, lampoon them, and touch the soles of their feet when they speak of them, to mark the lowness of their origin. If they were independent, and even rich, an ordinary islander would deem himself disgraced to marry his daughter to one of these pariahs.

The slaves were not permitted to cross the threshold of the chiefs' palace. They could do no more than crawl on hands and knees to the door. In spite of the many changes infused into Hawaiian institutions, the kauwa families remain branded with a stigma, in the opinion of the natives, and the laws, which accord them the same rights as other citizens, can not reinstate them.

It seems certain that the origin of slavery among the Hawaiians must be sought in conquests. The vanquished, who were made prisoners, became slaves, and their posterity inherited their condition.

From time immemorial the islanders have clothed themselves, the men with the _malo_, the women with the _pau_. The malo is bound around the loins, after having passed between the legs, to cover the pudenda. The pau is a short skirt, made of bark cloth or of the ki leaves, which reaches from the waist half down to the knees. The old popular songs show clearly that this costume has always been worn by the natives. To go naked was regarded as a sign of madness, or as a mark of divine birth. Sometimes the kings were attended by a man sprung from the gods, and this happy mortal alone had the right to follow, _puris naturalibus_, his august master. The people said, in speaking of him, _He akua ia_, he is a god.

_Kapa_, a kind of large sheet in which the chiefs dressed themselves, was made of the soaked and beaten bark of several shrubs, such as the wauke, olona, hau, oloa. Fine varieties were even made of the kukui (_Aleurites moluccana_). In ancient times it was an offense punishable with death for a common man to wear a double kapa or malo.

The Hawaiians have never worn shoes. In certain districts where lava is very abundant, they make sandals (_kamaa_) with the leaves of the ki and pandanus. They always go bare-headed, except in battle, where they like to exhibit themselves adorned with a sort of helmet made of twigs and feathers.

The women never wear any thing but flowers on their heads. Tattooing was known, but less practiced than at the Marquesas, and much more rudely.

The Hawaiians are not cannibals. They have been upbraided in Europe as eaters of human flesh, but such is not the case. They have never killed a man for food. It is true that in sacrifices they eat certain parts of the victim, but there it was a religious rite, not an act of cannibalism. So, also, when they ate the flesh of their dearest chiefs, it was to do honor to their memory by a mark of love: they never eat the flesh of bad chiefs.

The Hawaiians do not deny that the entrails of Captain Cook were eaten; but they insist that it was done by children, who mistook them for the viscera of a hog, an error easily explained when it is known that the body had been opened and stripped of as much flesh as possible, to be burned to ashes, as was due the body of a god. The officers of the distinguished navigator demanded his bones, but as they were destroyed,[B] those of a Kanaka were surrendered in their stead, receiving on board the ships of the expedition the honors intended for the unfortunate commander.

The condition of the women among the ancient Hawaiians was like that of servants well treated by their masters. The chiefesses alone enjoyed equal rights with men. It is a convincing proof that women were regarded as inferior to men, that they could in no case eat with their husbands, and that the kapu was often put upon their eating the most delicious food. Thus bananas were prohibited on pain of death. Their principal occupations consisted in making kapa, the malo and pau, and in preparing food.

Marriage was performed by cohabitation with the consent of the relations. Polygamy was only practiced by the chiefs. Children were very independent, and although their parents respected them so much as seldom to dare lay hands on them, they were quite ready to part with them to oblige a friend who evinced a desire for them. Often an infant was promised before birth. This singular custom still exists, but is much less frequent.

They had little regard for old men who had become useless, and even killed them to get them out of the way. It was allowable to suffocate infants to avoid the trouble of bringing them up. Women bestowed their affection upon dogs and pigs, and suckled them equally with their children. Fleas, lice, and grasshoppers were eaten, but flies inspired an unconquerable horror; if one fell into a calabash of poi, the whole was thrown away.[11]

The Hawaiians practiced a sort of circumcision, differing from that of the Jews, but having the same sanitary object. This operation _(mahele)_ consisted in slitting the prepuce by means of a bamboo. The mahele has fallen into disuse, but is still practiced in some places, unbeknown to the missionaries, upon children eight or ten years old. A sort of priest (kahuna) performs the operation.[12]

The Hawaiian women are always delivered without pain, except in very exceptional cases. The first time they had occasion to witness, in the persons of the missionaries' wives, the painful childbirths of the white race, they could not restrain their bursts of laughter, supposing it to be mere custom, and not pain, that could thus draw cries from the wives of the Haole (foreigners).

The ancient Hawaiians cared for their dead. They wrapped them in kapa with fragrant herbs, such as the flowers of the sugar-cane, which had the property of embalming them. They buried in their houses, or carried their bodies to grottoes dug in the solid rock. More frequently they were deposited in natural caves, a kind of catacombs, where the corpses were preserved without putrefaction, drying like mummies. It was a sacred duty to furnish food to the dead for several weeks. Sometimes the remains were thrown into the boiling lava of the volcanoes, and this mode of sepulture was regarded as homage paid to the goddess Pele, who fed principally on human flesh.

THE STORY OF UMI; HIS BIRTH AND YOUTH.

Liloa reigned over the island of Hawaii. In the course of one of his journeys through the province of Hamakua, he met a woman of the people named Akahikameainoa, who pleased him, and whose favors he claimed as supreme chief.

Akahikameainoa was then in her menses, so that the malo of the king was soiled with the discharge. Liloa said to the woman: "If you bring into the world a man-child, it shall belong to me; if a girl, it shall be yours. I leave with you as tokens of my sovereign will my _niho palaoa_ (whale's tooth), and my _lei_. Conceal these things from all eyes; they will one day be a souvenir of our relation, a proof of the paternity of the child who shall be born from our loves."

That would, indeed, be an unexceptionable testimony, for by the law of kapu a wife could not, under pain of death, approach her husband while in her courses. The soiled malo and the time of the child's birth would give certain indications.

Akahikameainoa carefully concealed the royal tokens of her adultery, saying nothing to any one, not even to her husband. The spot where she hid them is known to this day as _Huna na niho_, the hiding place of the teeth.

Liloa then held his court at Waipio in all the splendor of the time. Besides a considerable troop of servants, he had in attendance priests (kahuna), prophets (kaula), nobles, and his only son, Hakau. The palace was made merry night and day by the licentious motions of the dancers, and by the music of the resounding calabashes.

Nine moons after her meeting with the king, Akahikameainoa gave birth to a man-child, which she called Umi, and brought up under the roof of her husband, who believed himself the father. The child developed rapidly, became strong, and acquired a royal stature. In his social games, in the sports of youth, he always bore away the palm. He was, moreover, a great eater: _Hao wale i ka ai a me ka ia_.[13] In a word, Umi was a perfect Kanaka, and a skillful fighter, who made his comrades suffer for it. At this time he conceived a strong affection for two peasants of the neighborhood, Koi of Kukui-haole and Omakamau, who became his _aikane_.

One day his supposed father, angry at his conduct, was about to punish him: "Strike him not," exclaimed Akahikameainoa, "he is your lord and chief! Do not imagine that he is the son of us two: he is the child of Liloa, your king." Umi was then about fifteen or sixteen years old.

His mother, after this declaration, startling as a thunder-bolt, went and uncovered the tokens Liloa had left as proof, and placed them before her husband, who was motionless with fear at the thought of the high treason he had been on the point of committing.

In the mean time, Liloa had grown old, and Akahikameainoa, deeming the moment had arrived, invested Umi with the royal malo, the niho palaoa, and the lei, emblems of power, which high chiefs alone had the right to wear. "Go," said she to him then; "go, my son, present yourself at Waipio to King Liloa, your father. Tell him you are his child, and show him, in proof of your words, these tokens which he left with me."

Umi, proud enough of the revelation of his mother, at once departs, accompanied by Koi and Omakamau.

The palace of Liloa was surrounded by guards, priests, diviners, and sorcerers. The kapu extended to the edge of the outer inclosure, and no one might pass on penalty of death. Umi advanced boldly and crossed the threshold. Exclamations and cries of death sounded in his ears from all sides. Without troubling himself, he passed on and entered the end door. Liloa was asleep, wrapped in his royal mantle of red and yellow feathers. Umi stooped, and, without ceremony, uncovered his head. Liloa, awakening, said, "_Owai la keia_?--Who is this?" "It is I," replied the youth; "it is I, Umi, your son." So saying, he displays his malo at the king's feet. At this token Liloa, while rubbing his eyes, recognized Umi, and had him proclaimed his son. Behold, then, Umi admitted to the rank of high chief, if not the equal of Hakau, his eldest son, at least his prime minister by birth--his lieutenant.

The two brothers lived at court on an equal footing. They took part in the same amusements, wrestling, drawing the bow, plunged with eagerness into all the noble exercises of the country and the time. The people of Umi's suite matched themselves with those of Hakau in the combat with the long lance _(pololu)_, and the party of Umi was always victorious, compelling Hakau to retire in confusion.

Liloa, perceiving that his last hour was drawing near, called his two children to him, and said to them, "You, Hakau, will be chief, and you, Umi, will be his man." This last expression is equivalent to viceroy or prime minister. The two brothers bowed, in token of assent, and the old chief continued: "Do you, Hakau, respect your man; and do you, Umi, respect your sovereign. If you, Hakau, have no consideration for your man, if you quarrel with him, I am not disturbed at the results of your conduct. In the same way, Umi, unless you render your sovereign the homage you owe him, if you rebel against him, it will be for you two to decide your lot." Soon after, having made known his last wishes, Liloa gave up the ghost.

Umi, who was of a proud and independent character, foreseeing, no doubt, even then, the wicked conduct of his brother, would not submit to him, and refused to appear in his presence. Giving up his share of power, he departed from Waipio with his two _aikane_, and retired into the mountains, where he gave himself up to bird-catching.

Hakau then reigned alone, and ruled according to his fancy. Abusing his authority, he made himself feared, but, at the same time, detested by his people. He brought upon himself the censure of the chief attendants of his father, whom he provoked by all sorts of humiliations and insults. If he saw any one of either sex remarkable for good looks, he had them tattooed in a frightful manner for his good pleasure.

Meanwhile Umi, who had a taste for savage life, had taken leave of his favorites, and wandered alone in the midst of the forests and mountains. One day, when he descended to the shore at Laupahoehoe, in the district of Hilo, he fell in love with a woman of the people, and made her his companion without arousing a suspicion of his high birth. Devoting himself, then, to field labor, he was seen sometimes cultivating the ground, and sometimes going down to the sea to fish.

By generous offerings, he knew how to skillfully flatter an old man named Kaleihokuu, an influential priest, who at last adopted him as one of his children. Umi always kept at the head of the farmers and fishermen, and a considerable number, recognizing his physical superiority, voluntarily enrolled themselves under his orders and those of his foster-father; he was only known by the name of Hanai (foster-child) of Kaleihokuu. Meditating probably, even then, a way of acquiring supreme power, Umi exerted himself to gain the sympathies of the people, in whose labors he took an incredible part. There are seen to this day, above Laupahoehoe, the fields which Umi cultivated, and near the sea can be seen the heiau, or temple, in which Kaleihokuu offered sacrifices to the gods.

Hakau continued to reign, always without showing the least respect to the old officers of Liloa, his father. Two old men, high chiefs by birth, and highly honored under the preceding reign, had persisted in residing near the palace at Waipio, in spite of the insults to which the nearness of the court exposed them. One day when they were hungry, after a long scarcity of food, they said to one of their attendants: "Go to the palace of Hakau. Tell his Majesty that the two old chiefs are hungry, and demand of him, in our name, food, fish, and awa."[14] The attendant went at once to the king to fulfill his mission. Hakau replied with foul and insulting terms: "Go tell the two old men that they shall have neither food, fish, nor awa!" The two chiefs, on hearing this cruel reply, commenced to deplore their lot, and regret more bitterly than ever the time they lived under Liloa. Then rousing themselves, they said to their attendant, "We have heard of the foster-son of Kaleihokuu, of his activity, courage, and generosity. Lose no time; go directly to Laupahoehoe, and tell Kaleihokuu that two chiefs desire to see his adopted son." The servant went with all speed to Laupahoehoe, where he delivered his master's message. Kaleihokuu told, him, "Return to your masters, tell them that they will be welcome, if they will come to-morrow to see my foster-son." The old men, at this news, hastened to depart. Arrived at the abode of Kaleihokuu, they found no one, except a man asleep on the mat. They entered, nevertheless, and sat down, leaning their backs against the walls of the pandanus house. "At last," said they, sighing, "our bones are going to revive, _akahi a ola na iwi_." Then, addressing the slumbering man, "Are you, then, alone here?"--" Yes," replied the young man; "Kaleihokuu is in the fields."--"We are," added they, "the two old men of Waipio, come expressly to see the priest's foster-son."

The young man rises without saying a word, prepares an abundant repast--an entire hog, fish, and awa. The two old men admired the activity and skill of the youth, and said to themselves, "At all events, if the foster-son of Kaleihokuu were as vigorous a stripling as this, we should renew our life!" The young unknown served them food, and made them drunk with awa, and, according to the usage of those times,[16] gave up to them the women of Kaleihokuu, that his hospitality might be complete.

The next morning the old men saw Kaleihokuu, and said to him, "Here we have come to become acquainted with your foster-son. May it please the gods that he be like that fine young fellow who entertained us at your house! Our bones would revive."--"Ah, indeed," replied Kaleihokuu; "he who has so well received you is my _keiki hanai_. I left him at the house on purpose to perform for you the duties of hospitality." The two old men, rejoiced at what they learned, told the priest and his adopted son the ill treatment they had received at the court of Hakau. No more was needed to kindle a war at once.

At the head of a considerable troop of people attached to the service of Kaleihokuu, Umi went by forced marches to Waipio, and the next day Hakau had ceased to reign. He had been slain by the very hand of the vigorous foster-son of the priest.

THE REIGN OF UMI.

Umi ruled in place of Hakau. His two aikane, Koi and Omakamau, had joined him, and resided at his court. Piimaiwaa of Hilo was his most valiant warrior. _Ia ia ka mama kakaua_--to him belonged the bâton of war, a figurative expression denoting the general-in-chief. Pakaa was one of the favorites of Umi, and Lono was his kahuna.

While Umi reigned over the eastern shores of the island, one of his cousins, Keliiokaloa, ruled the western coast, and held his court at Kailua. It was under the reign of this prince, about two centuries before the voyage of Captain Cook, that a ship was wrecked near Keei, in the district of Kona, not far from the place where the celebrated English navigator met his death in 1779. It was about 1570[C] that men of the white race first landed in the archipelago. One man and one woman escaped from the wreck, and reached land near Kealakeakua. Coming to the shore, these unfortunates prostrated themselves on the lava, with their faces to the earth, whence comes the name Kulou, a _bowing down_, which the place which witnessed this scene still bears. The shipwrecked persons soon conformed to the customs of the natives, who pretend that there exists to our day a family of chiefs descended from these two whites. The Princess Lohea, daughter of Liliha,[16] still living, is considered of this origin. Keliiokaloa, who reigned over the coast where this memorable event took place, was a wicked prince, who delighted in wantonly felling cocoa-nut trees and laying waste cultivated lands. His ravages induced Umi to declare war against him.

He took the field at the head of his army, accompanied by his famous warrior, Piimaiwaa; his friends, Koi and Omakamau; his favorite, Pakaa; and Lono, his Kahuna. He turned the flanks of Mauna Kea, and advancing between this mountain and Hualalai, in the direction of Mauna Loa, arrived at the great central plateau of the island, intending to make a descent upon Kailua. Keliiokaloa did not wait for him. Placing himself at the head of his warriors, he marched to meet Umi. The two armies met on the high plain bounded by the colossi of Hawaii, at the place which is called _Ahua a Umi_.

Two men of the slave race, called Laepuni, famous warriors of Keliiokaloa, fought with a superhuman courage, and Umi was about to fall under their blows, when Piimaiwaa, coming to his rescue, caused the victory to incline to his side. Although history is silent, it is probable that the king of Kailua perished in the battle.

This victory completely rid Umi of his last rival; he reigned henceforth as sole ruler of Hawaii; and to transmit to posterity the remembrance of this remarkable battle, he caused to be erected on the battle-field, by the people of the six provinces, Hilo, Hamakua, Kohala, Kona, Ka'u, and Puna, a singular monument, composed of six polyhedral piles of ancient lava collected in the vicinity. A seventh pyramid was raised by his nobles and officers. In the centre of these enormous piles of stone he built a temple, whose remains are still sufficiently perfect to enable one to restore the entire plan. The whole of this vast monument is called, after the name of its builder, the Heaps of Umi--_Ahua Umi_.

Umi built another temple at the foot of Pohaku Hanalei, on the coast of Kona, called _Ahua Hanalei_. A third temple was also erected by him on the flank of Mauna Kea, in the direction of Hilo, at the place called Puukeekee. Traces of a temple built by the same king may also be recognized at Mauna Halepohaha, where are found the ruins of Umi's houses covered with a large block of lava.[17]

They give Umi the name of King of the Mountains. Tradition declares that he retired to the centre of the island, through love for his people, and these are the reasons which explain the seclusion to which he devoted himself. It was a received custom in Hawaiian antiquity that the numerous attendants of the chiefs, when traversing a plantation, should break down the cocoa-nuts, lay waste the fields, and commit all sorts of havoc prejudicial to the interests of proprietors or cultivators. To avoid a sort of scourge which followed the royal steps, Umi made his abode in the mountains, in order that the robberies of his attendants might no longer cause the tears of the people to flow. In his retreat Umi lived, with his retainers, upon the tribute in kind which his subjects brought him from all parts of the coast. In time of famine, his servants went through the forest and collected the _hapuu_, a nourishing fern which then took the place of poi.

Umi, however, did not spend all his time in the mountains. He came to live at various times on the sea-shore at Kailua. He employed everywhere workmen to cut stones, to serve, some say, in the construction of a sepulchral cave; according to others, to build a magnificent palace. Whatever may have been their destination, the stones were admirably hewn.[18] In our days the Calvinistic missionaries have used them in the erection of the great church of Kailua, without any need of cutting them anew. There are still seen, scattered in various places, the hewn stones of King Umi, _na pohaku kulai a Umi_. It is natural to suppose that they used to hew these hard, and very large stones with other tools than those of Hawaiian origin. Iron must have been known in the time of Umi, and its presence is explained by the wrecks of ships which ocean currents may have drifted ashore. It is certain that they were acquainted with iron long before the arrival of Cook, as is proved by the already cited passage from an old romance: _O luna, o lalo, kai, o uka, a o ka hao pae, ko ke'lii_.

Umi, some time before his death, said to his old friend Koi: "There is no place, nor is there any possible way to conceal my bones. You must disappear from my presence. I am going to take back all the lands which I have given you around Hawaii, and they will think you in disgrace. You will then withdraw to another island, and as soon as you hear of my death, or only that I am dangerously sick, return secretly to take away my body."

Koi executed the wishes of the chief, his _aikane_. He repaired to Molokai, whence he hastened to set sail for Hawaii as soon as he heard of Umi's death. He landed at Honokohau. On setting foot on shore, he met a Kanaka, in all respects like his dearly-loved chief. He seized him, killed him, and carried his body by night to Kailua. Koi entered secretly the palace where the corpse of Umi was lying. The guards were asleep, and Koi carried away the royal remains, leaving in their place the body of the old man of Honokohau, and then disappeared with his canoe. Some say that he deposited the body of Umi in the great pali of Kahulaana, but no one knows the exact spot; others say that it was in a cave at Waipio, at Puaahuku, at the top of the great pali over which the cascade of Hiilawe falls.

From time immemorial it was the custom at Hawaii to eat the flesh of great chiefs after death, then the bones were collected in a bundle, and concealed far out of the way. Generally it was to a faithful attendant, a devoted _kahu_, that the honor of eating the flesh of his chief belonged by a sentiment of friendship, _no ke aloha_. If they did not always eat the flesh of high chiefs and distinguished personages, they always took away their dead bodies, to bury them in the most secret caves, or in most inaccessible places. But the same care was not taken with chiefs who had been regarded as wicked during their lives. The proverb says of this: _Aole e nalo ana na iwi o ke 'lii kolohe; e nalo loa na iwi o ke 'lii maikai_--The bones of a bad chief do not disappear; those of a good chief are veiled from the eyes of all the world.

The high chiefs, before death, made their most trusty attendants swear to conceal their bones so that no one could discover them. "I do not wish," said the dying chief, "that my bones should be made into arrows to shoot mice, or into fish-hooks." So it is very difficult to find the burial-place of such or such a chief. Mausoleums have been built in some places, and it is said that here are interred the nobles and kings; but it would seem that there are only empty coffins, or the bodies of common natives substituted for those of the personages in whose honor these monuments have been raised.

THE HISTORY OF KEAWE.

Whatever the historian, David Malo, may say, it is very doubtful whether there were several chiefs of the name of Keawe. It is probable that there was only one high chief of this name, that he was the son of Umi, and was called Keawe the Great--_Keawe nui_ _a Umi_. David Malo was interested, as the natives know, in swelling the genealogy of the alii, and he wished to flatter both nobility and people by distinguishing Keawe nui, of the race of Umi, from another Keawe. There are two Keawe, as seven Maui, and nine Hina. It is not, indeed, so long a period from Umi to the present era, that we can not unveil the truth from the clouds which surround, it.

The people, in general, only speak of one Keawe, who inherited the power of his father Umi. He was supreme ruler in the island of Hawaii, and is even said to have united, as Kamehameha has since done, all the group under his sceptre. Kamehameha conquered the islands by force of arms; Keawe had conquered them by his travels and alliances. While he passed through the islands of Maui, Molokai, and Oahu, he contracted marriages everywhere, as well with the women of the people as with the highest chiefesses. These unions gave him children who made him beloved of all the high chiefs of that time. He was regarded at Maui and Oahu as supreme king. The king of Kauai even went so far as to send messengers to declare to him that he recognized his sovereignty. Such is the origin of Keawe's power.

By his numerous marriages with chiefesses and common women without distinction, this king has made the Hawaiian nobility, the present alii say, bastard and dishonored. The chiefs descended from Keawe conceal their origin, and are by no means flattered when reminded of it. From Keawe down, the genealogies become a focus of disputes, and it would be really dangerous for the rash historian who did not spare the susceptibilities of chiefs on this subject.

The principle on which those who condemn the conduct of Keawe rests is the purity of the blood of the royal stock, required by ancient usages, whose aim was to preserve the true nobility without alloy. Disdaining this rule, Keawe contracted numerous marriages, which gave him as mothers of his children women of low birth. The posterity of this chief, noble without doubt, but of impure origin, likes not to have its lame genealogy recalled. It is with the sensitiveness of the Hawaiians on this subject, as with many other things in this world: they attack bitterly the amours of Keawe, and seem to forget that Umi, their great chief, whose memory they preserve with so much care, was of plebeian blood by his mother.

It seems certain that King Keawe usually resided at the bay of Hoonaunau, in Kona. The heiau of Hoonaunau, where may still be seen the stakes of ohia (_Metrosideros_) planted by Keawe, is called _Hale a Keawe_--The house built by Keawe. It served also as a City of Refuge.[19]

VARIOUS DOCUMENTS ON THE PROVINCE OF KA'U.

The people of Ka'u are designated in the group under the name of _Na Mamo a ke kipi_--The descendants of the rebellion. The province of Ka'u has always been regarded as a land fatal to chiefs. At the present day an inhabitant of Ka'u can be distinguished among other natives. He is energetic, haughty in speech, and always ready to strike a blow when occasion presents. He is proud, and worships his liberty. Several Hawaiian chiefs have been killed by the people of Ka'u, among others Kohaokalani, Koihala, etc.

THE HISTORY OF KOHAOKALANI.

He was, according to tradition, the most important chief on the island, and reigned in royal state at Hilea. He it was who built the heiau situated on the great plain of Makanau. The sea worn pebbles may still be seen, which Kohaokalani had his people carry up on to the height, about two leagues from the shore. These pebbles were intended for the interior pavement of the temple. The people, worn out by the great difficulty of transportation, tired of the yoke of royalty, and incited by disloyal priests, began to let their discontent and discouragement show itself. A conspiracy was soon formed by these two classes leagued against the chief, and a religious ceremony offered an occasion to rid themselves of the despot.

The temple was completed, and it only remained to carry a god up there. This divinity was nothing but an ohia-tree of enormous size, which had been cut down in the forest above Ninole. At the appointed day the chief priests and people set to work to draw the god to his residence. In order to reach the height of Makanau there was a very steep pali to be ascended. They had to carry up the god on the side toward Ninole, which was all the better for the execution of their premeditated plan. Arrived at the base of the precipice, all pulled at the rope; but the god, either by the contrivance of the priests, or owing to the obstacles which the roughness of the rock presented, ascended only with great difficulty. "The god will never come to the top of the pali," said the Kahuna, "if the chief continues to walk before him; the god should go first by right of power, and the chief below, following, to push the lower end; otherwise we shall never overcome his resistance." The high chief, Kohaokalani, complied with the advice of the priests, placed himself beneath the god, and pushed the end from below. Instantly priests and people let go the cord, and the enormous god, rolling upon the chief, crushed him at once. The death of Kohaokalani is attributed chiefly to the Kahuna.

THE HISTORY OF KOIHALA.

Koihala reigned at Ka'u. He was a very great chief--perhaps the entire island recognized his authority. An abuse of power hastened his death. He had commanded the people of Ka'u to bring him food upon the plain of Punaluu, at the place known under the name of Puuonuhe. A party of men set out with pounded kalo (_paiai_, differing from poi in not being diluted), bound up in leaves of ki, called _la'i_ (a contraction for _lau-ki_). When they arrived at the top of the plateau, which is very elevated, they found that the chief had set out for Kaalikii, two leagues from Puuonuhe, and that he had left orders for them to bring him the provisions in this distant place. The bearers hastened toward Kaalikii. As soon as they came there, orders were given for them to proceed to Waioahukini, half a league's walk in the same direction, and beneath the great pali of Malilele, on the shore. They went on. Arrived at Waioahukini, they were ordered to go and join the chief at Kalae. There they had to climb again the great pali, and two leagues more to go. When they reached the cape of Kalae, the most southern point of the Hawaiian group, they were sent to seek the chief at the village of Mahana; but he had left for Paihaa, a village near Kaalualu, a little bay where the native vessels now anchor. There, at last, they must find the tyrant. Exasperated, dying of hunger, indignant at the cruel way in which the chief made sport of their pains, the bearers sat down on the grass and took counsel. First they decided to eat up the food, without leaving any thing for the chief who entertained himself so strangely in fatiguing his people _(hooluhi howa_). They moreover determined to carry to him, instead of kalo, bundles of stones. The trial of Koihala is ended, his insupportable yoke is about to fall.

The determined conspirators, after satisfying their hunger, set off, and soon arrived, with humble mien, in the presence of the chief, between Paihau and Kaalualu. "Prince," said they, "here are your servants with provisions." They humbly laid at his feet their bundles wrapped in la'i. The wrappers were opened, and the scene changes. These people, apparently half dead, became in an instant like furious lions, ready to devour their prey. They armed themselves with stones, and showered them upon Koihala and his company, who perished together.

Two other high chiefs of the island were exterminated by the same people. One was killed at Kalae, beaten to death by the paddles of fishermen; the other was stoned at Aukukano.

These revolts against the chiefs have given birth, to several proverbial expressions, applied to the district of Ka'u. Thus it is called _Aina makaha_--Land of torrents: a nation which removes and shatters every thing like a torrent; _Ka'u makaha_--Ka'u the torrent; _Ka lua kupapau o na'lii_--The sepulchre of the high chiefs; _Aina kipi_--The rebellious land.

LEGEND OF KALEIKINI.

He was a chief of the olden time.

On the sea-shore, between Kaalikii and Pohue, the waves were ingulfed beneath the land, and shot into the air by a natural aperture some fifty feet from the shore. The water leaped to a prodigious height, disappeared in the form of fine rain, and fell in vapor over a circuit of two leagues, spreading sterility over the land to such an extent that neither kalo nor sweet-potatoes could be grown there. The chief Kaleikini closed the mouth of the gulf by means of enormous stones, which he made the natives roll thither. It is plainly seen that this blow-hole has been closed by human hands. There still remains a little opening through which the water hisses to the height of thirty or forty feet.

Kaleikini closed at Kohala, on the shore of Nailima, a volcanic mouth like that of Ka'u.

On the heights of Honokane, he silenced the thunders of a water-fall by changing its course. At Maui Hikina, he secured the foundations of the hill of Puuiki, which the great tides had rendered unstable. To do this, he put into the caverns of Puuiki a huge rock, which stopped the tumults of the sea, and put an end to the trembling of the hill.

For these feats of strength, and many others like them, Kaleikini was called _Kupua_--Wizard.[D]

DOCUMENTS ON THE PROVINCE OF PUNA.

According to common tradition, the district of Puna was, until two centuries ago, a magnificent country, possessing a sandy soil, it is true, but one very favorable to vegetation, and with smooth and even roads. The Hawaiians of our day hold a tradition from their ancestors, that their great-grandparents beheld the advent of the volcanic floods in Puna. Here, in brief, is the tradition as it is preserved by the natives:

LEGEND OF KELIIKUKU.

This high chief reigned in Puna. He journeyed to the island of Oahu. There he a prophet of Kauai, named Kaneakalau, who asked him who he was. "I am," replied the chief, "Keliikuku of Puna." The prophet then asked him what sort of a country he possessed. The chief said: "My country is charming; every thing is found there in abundance; everywhere are sandy plains which produce marvelously."--"Alas!" replied the prophet, "go, return to your beautiful country; you will find it overthrown, abominable. Pele has made of it a heap of ruins; the trees of the mountains have descended toward the sea; the ohia and pandanus are on the shore. Your country is no longer habitable." The chief made answer; "Prophet of evil, if what you now tell me is true, you shall live; but if, when I return to my country, I prove the falsity of your predictions, I will come back on purpose, and you shall die by my hand."

Unable, in spite of his incredulity, to forget this terrible prophecy, Keliikuku set sail for Hawaii. He reached Hamakua, and, landing, traveled, home by short stages. From the heights of Hilo, at the village of Makahanaloa, he beheld in the distance all his province overwhelmed in chaotic ruin, a prey to fire and smoke. In despair, the unfortunate chief hung himself on the very spot where he first discovered this sad spectacle.

This tradition of the meeting of Keliikuku and Kaneakalau is still sometimes chanted by the Kanakas. It was reduced to metre, and sung by the ancients. It is passing away in our day, and in a few years no trace of it will remain.

Whether the prediction was made or not, the fact is that Puna has been ravaged by volcanic action.

LEGEND OF THE CHIEF HUA.

The high chief Hua, being in Maui, said to Uluhoomoe, his kahuna, that he wished for some _uau_ from the mountains (a large bird peculiar to the island of Hawaii). Uluhoomoe replied that there were no uau in the mountains--that all the birds had gone to the sea. Hua, getting angry, said to his priest: "If I send my men to the mountains, and they find any uau there, I will put you to death."

After this menace, the chief ordered his servants to go to bird-hunting. They obeyed; but instead of going to the mountains (_mauka_), they set snares on the shores (_makai_), and captured many birds of different kinds, among others the uau and ulili. Returning to the palace, they assured the chief that they had hunted in the mountains.

Hua summoned his kahuna, and said to him: "There are the birds from the mountains; you are to die." Uluhoomoe smelled of the birds, and replied: "These birds do not come from the mountains; they have an odor of the sea." Hua, supported by his attendants, persisted in saying, as he believed truly, that they came from the mountains, and repeated his sentence: "You are to die." Uluhoomoe responded: "I shall have a witness in my favor if you let me open these birds in your presence." The chief consented, and small fish were found in the crops of the birds. "Behold my witness," said the kahuna, with a triumphant air; "these birds came from the sea!"

Hua, in confusion, fell into a terrible rage, and massacred Uluhoomoe on the spot. The gods avenged the death of the priest by sending a distressing famine, first on the island of Maui, then on Hawaii. Hua, thinking to baffle the divine vengeance, went to Hawaii to escape the scourge; but a famine more terrible yet pursued him there. The chief vainly traversed every quarter of the islands; he starved to death in the temple of Makeanehu (Kohala). His bones, after death, dried and shrunk in the rays of the burning sun, to which his dead body remained exposed. This is the origin of the Hawaiian epigram always quoted in recalling the famine which occurred in the reign of Hua, an epigram which no one has understood, and which has never been written correctly:

_Koele na iwi o Hua i ka la_--The bones of Hua are dry in the sun.[E]

On the island of Hawaii are many places called by the name of this celebrated chief. At Kailua, in the hamlet of Puaaaekolu, a beautiful field, known by the name of Mooniohua, recalls one episode of Hua's misery. Here it was that, one day, running after food which he could never attain, he fell asleep, weary with fatigue and want. The word Mooniohua is probably a corruption of _Moe ana o Hua_--The couch of Hua.

THE STORY AND SONG OF KAWELO.

Kawelo, of the island of Kauai, was a sort of giant; handsome, well made, muscular, his prodigious strength defied animate and inanimate nature. In his early youth, he felt a violent passion kindle in his bowels for the Princess Kaakaukuhimalani, so that he sought in every way to touch her heart. But the princess, too proud, and too high a lady, did not deign to cast her eyes upon him.

Despairing of making her reciprocate his love, Kawelo poured into his mother's bosom his grief and his tears. "Mother," said he, "how shall I succeed in espousing this proud princess? What must I do? Give me your counsel."

"My son," replied his mother, "a youth who wishes to please ought to make himself ready at labor, and skillful in fishing; this is the only secret of making a good match."

Kawelo too eagerly followed his mother's advice, and soon there was not on the island a more indefatigable planter of kalo, nor a more expert fisherman. But what succeeds with common women is not always the thing to charm the daughters of kings. Kaakaukuhimalani could make nothing of a husband who was a skillful farmer or a lucky fisherman; other talents are required to touch the hearts of nobles, and hers remained indifferent, insensible to the sighs of Kawelo. Nobles then, as to-day, regarded pleasure above all things; and a good comedian was worth more to them than an honest workman.

In his great perplexity, Kawelo consulted an old dancing-master, who told him, "Dancing and poetry are the arts most esteemed and appreciated by those in power. Come with me into the mountains. I will instruct you, and if you turn out an accomplished dancer, you will have a sure means of pleasing the insensible Kaakaukuhimalani." Kawelo listened to the advice of the poet dancing-master, and withdrew into the mountains to pursue his duties.

He soon became a very skillful dancer, and an excellent reciter of the mele; so the fame of his skill was not slow in extending through all the valleys of the island.

One day when Kaakaukuhimalani desired to collect all the accomplished dancers of Kauai, her attendants spoke to her of Kawelo as a prodigy in the art, who had not his equal from one end to the other of the group, from Hawaii to Niihau. "Let some one bring me this marvel!" cried the princess, pricked with a lively curiosity. The old and cunning preceptor of the mountains directed his pupil not to present himself at the first invitation, in order to make his presence more ardently desired. Kawelo, understanding the value of this advice, did not obey until the third request; he danced before the princess with a skill so extraordinary that she fell in love with him, and married him. So Kawelo found himself raised to princely rank.

The happy parvenu had three older brothers. They were: Kawelomakainoino, with fierce look and evil eye; Kawelomakahuhu, with unpleasant countenance and angry expression; Kawelomakaoluolu, with a lovable and gracious face. All three were endued with the same athletic strength as their younger brother.

Jealous of the good fortune which a princely marriage had brought their brother, they resolved to humble him for their pleasure. Taking advantage of the absence of Kaakaukuhimalani, they seized Kawelo and poured a calabash of poi over his head. Poor Kawelo! The paste ran down from his head over all his body, and covered him with a sticky plaster which almost suffocated him. Overwhelmed with shame at having to undergo so humiliating a punishment, Kawelo fancied that he could no longer live at Kauai; he determined to exile himself, and live in Oahu.

He had already embarked in his canoe and prepared to set sail with some faithful friends, when he saw his wife on the shore. Seated beneath the shade of a kou (_Gordia sebestena_) Kaakaukuhimalani waved her hand to Kawelo, crying:

Hoi mai Toi mai kaua! Mai hele aku oe!

Return, Return with me! Go not away from me!

Kawelo, touched with love for his wife, but immovably determined to leave his island, chants his adieu, which forms the subject of the first canto.

PAHA AKAHI.

Aloha kou e, aloha kou; Ke aloha mai kou ka hoahele I ka makani, i ka apaapaa Anuu o Ahulua. Moe iho uei au I ka po uliuli, Po uliuli eleele. Anapanapa, alohi mai ana ia'u Ke aa o Akua Nunu. Ine ee au e kui e lei Ia kuana na aa kulikuli. Papa o hee ia nei lae. E u'alo, e u'alo Ua alo mai nei ia'u Ka launiu e o peahi e; E hoi au e, e hoi aku.