I have consulted the Rev. S. Dibble's History (Lahainala, in 1843) in which is embodied the information derived directly from the native pupils at the Government Seminary, Lahaina.

I have found useful information scattered through the volumes on the Sandwich Islands by Mr. Cheever, Mr. Hill, and some other travellers.

Sir George Simpson's 'Overland Journey round the World' contains some chapters devoted to the Hawaiian Archipelago. The views of that acute observer relative to the then and the future condition of the islands are important and enlightened. Sir George sent me his M.S. to see through the press, and I published it, in two volumes, with the late Mr. Colburn, in 1847. The arrival in England during the progress of my work, of my brother, after a residence in Hawaii of sixteen years, was very opportune. His emendations have been valuable, and I have embodied in my pages some original information he has given me on subjects of which they treat.

His office of Director of the Government Press at Honolulu, and, latterly, the part which he has himself taken in public affairs, as a member of the House of Nobles, qualify him to speak with distinctness, as he has been able to observe from a central point of view.

The archives of my own office and the official and unofficial communications I constantly receive from the islands enable me to give statistical and other information down to the latest date.

The Rev. William Ellis, author of Polynesian Researches,' A Journey through Hawaii, and a more recent work on Madagascar, to which island he has just returned, very kindly sent me his most interesting Narrative, published in the year 1825. It is a sort of text-book, to all subsequent writers, of the earliest history of the islands, their traditions and old customs, collected by Dibble and the first American missionaries, assisted by the natives themselves. Though a dissenter from the Church of England, Mr. Ellis's large and liberal mind shows itself in every line of his writing, and in the personal intercourse with which he obliged I have to thank the London Missionary Society for supplying me with the Reports of the Boston Board of Foreign Missions; and I own my obligations to the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company for permitting me to read in their library the early editions of oceanic explorers.

me.

I have not, of course, omitted to examine the splendid volumes of the United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Commodore Wilkes,-an officer whose reputation will depend more on the scientific than the belligerent part of his profession.

For earlier events I have also gleaned from the agreeable pages of my friend the late Admiral Beechey, in his interesting 'Narrative of the Voyage of the "Blossom."

After such preparations, my book will appear but a slight sketch of the subject on which it treats. It was

THE FIRST EDITION.

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intended for nothing more. Its design is to give a popular but connected account of an interesting and imperfectly known group of islands, which have had, during eight decades, an association with our own country, unusually close and frequent for so small and distant a nation. If one word may be permitted as to the execution of my task, I have to own, and that with regret, that owing to the unceasing nature of other occupations, I have not been able to expend on my book so much of the labor lima as a writer would desire for his own satisfaction, or the public would have a right to expect in every printed work which solicits its notice.

LONDON: May 1862.