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mourners, none felt more poignantly, than the veteran chief Kalaimoku, the prime minister. He had loved Kaméhaméha the warrior, and he had transferred his love to his king's offspring. Now he saw them carried, young, to the grave:-hence those tears, which flowed freely down the old man's cheeks in spite of all his efforts to control them.

* Kamamalu was the daughter of Kaméhaméha, though not the uterine sister of Liholiho.

CHAPTER XIV.

HISTORICAL SKETCH-THE BROOK BECOMES A STREAMAN APOSTOLIC PREFECT ARRIVES THE ARGONAUTS.

DURING

URING the expedition to England, several changes had occurred in the islands. Old things were passing away. At Kailua, the memorable scene of the last battle between idolatry and the iconoclasts, a place of Christian worship had been erected, in which the average attendance each Sunday was eight hundred persons. Kapiolani had become a Christian, dismissed all her husbands except Naihe, and had thoroughly adopted the habits of civilized life. This is the female chief who descended the crater of Kilauea. She died in 1841. The ex-King of Kauai died in 1824, also a convert, and a sincere one, to the new faith. He bequeathed his possessions to Liholiho. Keeaumoku, Kaméhaméha's old warrior, and Governor of Kauai, was also dead a short time previous to the decease of the sovereign of that island. His powerful grasp of the government having ceased, the Kauaians, on learning the death of their late king, threw off restraint, and renewed many heathen practices. It cannot be a matter of surprise that the echoes of heathenism would still return at first, although the body of paganism was removed. They would be fainter, and only heard under favouring circumstances; but in the present case they

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had also a political association. The people connected the former system with their former independence; and in the anarchy which reigned for a time in the island, an armed attempt was made to throw off subjection to the central government, to expel the new governor, and to promote George Kaumualii, the late King's son, to the crown. The insurrection was, however, quelled by the usual vigour of the prime minister, Kalaimoku, after some vigorous fighting and the execution of some chiefs. A grand council was held to settle the island finally, and it was formally annexed to the kingdom of Liholiho.

The most conspicuous effect of Christianity was the change which took place in the Regent Kaahumanu. In the days of her heathenism she had been the haughtiest, the most imperious and the most cruel of her sex. When angry, her glance carried terror to her trembling vassals. No subject, however high his station, dared face her frown. Though friendly to the missionaries, her personal deportment towards them was lofty and disdainful. She possessed unusual energy, decision, and ability; which qualities, united with the experience and judgment of Kalaimoku, had often extricated the nation. from the difficulties in which it was involved. After she had sat as a disciple at the feet of Christ, her strong character underwent an entire change. Her naturally warm affections burst through the cold, contemptuous habit with which she had overlaid them. She walked with meekness and consistency in her new course; was attached to those who had been the means of this renovation, and kind to all her people. The new and good Kaahumanu' was the name by which she was frequently spoken of. If we sometimes think that here and elsewhere the introduction of Christianity has resulted in

small and imperfect effects, it is important to observe in such instances as this its overcoming and transforming power. Her example led to the adoption of the Christian profession by many others, for people took note that she had been with Jesus.' She died in 1832.

Although the name of Kapiolani, the wife of Naihe, has been already mentioned more than once, and her daring exploit at the crater of Kilauea alluded to, that courageous act must be again instanced, as indicating the reality and power of the faith which she had adopted. In the vast and wild region occupied on the island of Hawaii by the great mountain Mauna Loa, its summit indented with a gigantic crater, its sides rent with other openings, through which at times the liquid fire flows, the priests of Pele, the dreadful deity of the volcano, lived in an almost inaccessible seclusion. It is in mountain solitudes, amidst crags and precipices, subject to the more awful phenomena of nature that patriotism and superstitions, conquered and driven from the plain below, find refuge, and preserve through centuries a persecuted but obstinate longevity. After Christianity had taken possession of the more general and fertile portions of the Hawaiian Islands, the old worship clung about that lofty and desolate mountain, the base of which covers 120 square miles;-it even clings there still, to some extent, nursed by groanings and utterances from the tormented mountain, rocked by the fierce wild winds and storms, sheltered by clouds and mists, lighted by sudden spectral fires, and terrified by quakings and rendings of the soil. Few dwellers from below came to disturb the rites practised by the uncanny worshippers of Pele, for their bodies could not bear the cold and wet of the climate, and their souls. were daunted by the real and imaginary horrors of the

spot. It was at the great active crater of Kilauea, on the side of this mountain, against the threats and vaticinations of the assembled priests, and against traditions which till that time formed a part of her own nature, that Kapiolani, trusting in the power which has made all things,--exhibited the courage of a Christian woman, invaded the fiery sanctum of the goddess, ate the sacred berries, and cast some of them daringly into the heaving lava; and having there praised God aloud, amidst the most stupendous instances of His power, she reascended to reprove the idolatry of the amazed worshippers of Pele, and to urge them to forsake it.

There afterwards grew up in the mountain region a strange mixture of Christianity and the old heathenism, in which, like the Taiping in China, a Trinity was conceived and adopted, Hapu, a former prophetess, being united with Jehovah and Christ. This heresy did not last very long. A single missionary coming among the adherents of it, who were worshipping night and day in the temple, was the means of their abandoning the hastily-constructed faith and burning their temple.

Kauikeaouli, Liholiho's younger brother, succeeded to the crown, receiving the dynastic name of Kaméhaméha III. He had been born in 1814, and consequently was only eleven years old at the time of his accession. Before Lord Byron left the islands, a grand council was held to confirm the succession to the young prince. Besides Lord Byron, the English Consul and Mr. Bingham the missionary were present at the meeting, with the high chiefs of the kingdom. Kaahumanu was continued as regent during the King's minority, and Kalaimoku as the prime minister. At the council another important act was passed, by which the landed possessions held