APPEAL TO ENGLAND FOR RELIGIOUS TEACHERS. 133

wise, they requested of Vancouver that on his return to England he would procure religious instructors to be sent to them from the country of which they now considered themselves subjects. Vancouver did not forget the earnestness of this appeal; and, on reaching England, he urged on the Minister, Mr. Pitt, the advantage of sending clergy to Hawaii. That was not a missionary age. It was not the accusation of that generation that they would compass sea and land to make a proselyte. That one prayer for religious light made to this land was unattended to and forgotten. The revolution was raging in France. Englishmen had shuddered or shed tears at the story of a monarch publicly murdered by his subjects; and the best excuse that can be offered for the cold indifference exhibited when the Hawaiian nation asked spiritual help of our country, is that England was absorbed by events nearer home, and was preoccupied in averting dangers which threatened her own stability.

The prayer for English teachers was unanswered at that time. The Hawaiian nation and its ruler continued to wear the heavy chain of paganism, and Kaméhaméha did not live to see the introduction of Christianity in his kingdom; but the desire expressed in 1793 seems to have become traditional, so that when in 1820 the first American missionaries arrived in the Sandwich Islands, it was enquired whether these were the religious instructors whom the King and chiefs expected from England. Finding that they were not, there was much opposition to their landing; and it was only on the assurance of the English settler, John Young, that these missionaries came to preach the same religion as those whom they expected, that they were permitted to come on shore.

Vancouver took his final leave in March 1794; and in 1798 this amiable man closed in death his eminent but short career.

In the year of his departure, Captain Brown, master of the English ship Butterworth,' discovered and surveyed the harbour of Honolulu. As arrivals of ships became frequent after that time, it ceases to be interesting to refer further to their visits, with the exception of the two made by Captain, afterwards Rear-Admiral, Beechey, in H.M.S. 'Blossom.' The volumes containing the interesting narrative of his voyages and discoveries in the Pacific and Behring's Strait, published in 1831, are very well known. Beechey's first visit took place in 1826. The Blossom' left Tahiti on the 26th of April, and arrived at Honolulu on the 20th of May. The rapidity of this passage had left the impressions of the former island strong on the mind and on the eye, and it was the contrasts between the two places which first struck the voyagers. They missed the green and shady forests which skirted the shores of Tahiti; and after intercourse with its effeminate inhabitants, the Hawaiians' darker complexion and coarser features, together with a wildness of facial expression, impressed them at first unfavourably; but they subsequently learned to respect these signs of a manliness and boldness which were deficient in the Sybaritic people of the more southern group. Other symptoms, indicating the footsteps of civilization upon the islands, met their eyes. The forts in the harbour, the cannon, the ensign of Kaméhaméha displayed on the ramparts of a fort mounting 40 guns, and at the gaff of a man-of-war brig and of some other vessels, rendered the distinction between the two countries still more evident. Old familiar words in their own language greeted them as

BEECHEY'S VISITS.

6

135

they walked up the town, already laid out in streets and squares. In one place was the notice, An Ordinary at One o'clock;' at another, Billiards;' here was the sign, 'The Jolly Tar;' there (and we fear at a considerable distance), The Good Woman.'

6

The reception met with from the King and the chiefs (including Madam Boki), was friendly in the extreme; and as far as possible all the wants of the ship were supplied. Some astronomical and other observations were taken, and Mr. Lay, the naturalist of the expedition, being in ill health, was left under the protection of one of the chiefs, who, in compliment to the great minister, had adopted the name of Pitt. Early in June the 'Blossom' sailed for Kamschatka. She returned to Honolulu in January 1827. By this time the etiquette of exchanging salutes had been established; and with such forms intercourse was conducted in a land where thirty years before the naked savage had struggled in deadly conflict with armed Englishmen. No doubt the contrast impressed the visitors, as Romans from the capital would have been impressed who visited Britain a century after the Julian invasion, and marked the transition taking place in our barbarian ancestors. The products of civilized nations had immediately become a passion with the Hawaiians, and they, being very imitative, instituted many things which were properly in advance of their then state. There were not only hotels at the time of Beechey's visit, but Kaahumanu's furniture numbered sofas and cushions of silk and velvet, and she had in her chests (perhaps wardrobes), the most costly silks of China. The Chief Boki had presented a service of plate to the he had given three thousand dollars. Boki had similar services himself; and his glass was from Pellatt and Green

King, for which

in London. The King was always attended by a guard under arms; soldiers paced the ramparts of the fort; and in the stillness of the night, there fell on the Englishman's ear the soothing and familiar words, 'All's Well.'

CHAPTER IX.

HISTORICAL SKETCH-A DUST OF SYSTEMS

LONELY ONE.'

THE

T would be a waste of time to give more than the

IT

merest outline of the internal history of Hawaii before its intercourse with European nations and with America. Each island had its king, its chiefs, its dissensions, its' oppressed nationalities.' To enumerate the rulers of the eight islands would be uselessly to encumber the page with native names which the reader could not pronounce, and would not try to remember. All that will be attempted here is to describe very rapidly the dynastic condition of the Archipelago; dwelling, for a few minutes, on the more salient points of its story, in order to show how the eight separate fibres of government were twisted into a single thread, by the wisdom and determination of one man, at about the beginning of the present century.

The bards, however, could recite from memory the names of seventy-seven successive kings; and if only five years be allowed to a reign, the traditionary history would extend through nearly 400 years. But the reigns were probably of greater average length; since the first three Kaméhaméhas occupied the present