CHAPTER XXX.

ROBERT CRICHTON WYLLIE.

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O account of the Hawaiian kingdom could now be considered complete without a notice of the life and services of the statesman whose name stands at the head of this chapter. The telegram which brought the news of his death on the 19th of October 1865, made it possible to speak in the present history of the powers and character of a man whose devotion to the land of his adoption was as remarkable as it was disinterested. During his lifetime, references to his labours or to his idiosyncrasies would have seemed the language of flattery or of unfriendly criticism; but now it is the decent act of his survivors to linger a short space beside his grave, to recount his somewhat eventful career, and to trace in bas-relief upon the marble of his tomb a sketch of the man.

Robert Crichton Wyllie, who for several years before his death occupied the post of Minister of Foreign Relations, or as we should say, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was born at Hazelbank in the parish of Dunlop, Ayrshire, in the year 1798. Without claiming to belong to the family of Sir Matthew Wyllie of that ilk,' he came of respectable parentage, and his father appears

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to have been possessed of the lands of Hazelbank. His mother, from whom he derived his second Christian name, could trace her descent from the Admirable Crichton. Like many others of his nation, Mr. Wyllie did not go back to his country to settle there, but loved it dearly-perhaps even more dearly-at a distance. He carried on his mental associations with the place of his birth to the end; magnifying its importance a little, perhaps, through the fairy lens of time and separation. By the pre-decease of an elder brother he inherited the homestead where he was born, an estate of a few acres, which the proprietors around him would have designated 'just a house and kale-yard.' But the little property was dear in the eyes of a stranger in a strange land; and in writing to the author, in 1860, of his naturalization in Hawaii, he says, 'I have always carefully preserved my native allegiance as the very humble " Bonnet Laird" of Hazelbank, Ayrshire.'

It is an honourable incident in his history, that on revisiting his native land after his first long absence in South America, during which period of fourteen years he had prospered in worldly wealth, he built a comfortable house at Hazelbank,-not for himself, for he never inhabited it after his parents' death, but as a dwelling for his father and mother. Mr. Wyllie completed his education at the college in Glasgow by qualifying himself for the surgical profession, and he received a diploma before he had attained the age of twenty. He made one or more voyages to the North Sea as surgeon; met with all the hardships of that stormy navigation, and was wrecked three times. At some period of his early life he proceeded to our Australian colonies, and applied himself for a time to sheep-farming. Somewhat later, he visited the Southern States of America;

and, next, found his way to Chili, and became a partner in a successful firm at Valparaiso, known as Begg, Wyllie, and Company. His life in Chili was active and adventurous. He rode about the wild territories of that young republic with loaded pistols at his girdle collecting the silver dollars due to his house of business. Whilst there, he acquired a perfect familiarity with the Spanish language, which he spoke and wrote with the fluency of a native of Spain.

He also allowed his surgical and medical knowledge to be made available, and attended the inmates of several of the convents and nunneries. From these be would receive no fees; and the form which their gratitude took was at once elegant and costly. The religious houses presented to him, on three or four occasions, small trees, from the branches of which hung gold and silver coins, ornaments and valuable trifles. He preserved these graceful memorials untouched; and used, when afterwards residing in London, to display them on his dinner table with satisfaction and pardonable pride. In Valparaiso Mr. Wyllie accumulated in a comparatively short time a fortune which even in these advanced days would be called considerable. In 1824, the daring of the man in his early life is exhibited by a voyage which he made across the vast ocean from Mexico to India, in a small vessel of fifty tons burthen

scarcely more than a boat in size-and uncoppered; visiting on his way the islands of the South Pacific. In a letter written in the year 1860, Mr. Wyllie refers to this voyage, and mentions the little craft as his 'Yacht Daule.' We next meet with him in Mazatlan. With the same love of adventure wihch so greatly addicted him to roving about the world, he took charge of a cargo of cattle and sheep for India. This voyage led

to a new phase in his career, by introducing him to a gentleman whose brother was engaged in mercantile business in London and Calcutta. As a result of this meeting, Wyllie proceeded to England and joined the house spoken of, the title of which thence became Lyall, Wyllie, and Company. During the time this partnership subsisted, Mr. Wyllie occupied a house in Mayfair jointly with a friend, to whom I am indebted for several of the particulars here given. He became an early member of the Reform Club, and was well known there. Some who read these pages may still remember him, a well-dressing man, of animated but rather tedious conversation, and possessed of a remarkably retentive memory.

Wyllie had once or twice in life made some heavy pecuniary losses; and after about four years of London routine, dinner-parties, and Reformism, the bachelor friends broke up their joint establishment, and 'parted like two rivers;' one to Italy, 'where silvery Padus gleams; the other, the subject of this memoir, to America; being drawn thither with the view of saving or gaining back part of his funds, and acting for the interest of others, bond-holders of some of the repudiating States.

To walk down one street instead of another may change, as some one has remarked, the whole course of our life for by so doing we may meet or miss a person who can influence our future. This happened to Wyllie. In America he fell in with General Miller, whom he had known before at Valparaiso, and whose career in the Chilian war of independence had been brilliant and remarkable. By Miller, who had been appointed ConsulGeneral in the Hawaiian Islands for Great Britain, he was persuaded to accompany him thither, and he arrived

at Honolulu in March 1844. It was not long before his business talent was called into use. General Miller having to leave the islands for the purpose of visiting Tahiti, Mr. Wyllie was appointed acting English Consul, in which capacity he continued about a year. On Miller's return to his post, Wyllie was invited to enter the service of King Kaméhaméha III. The portfolio of Foreign Affairs was entrusted to him on the 24th of March 1845, and he continued to act as Foreign Minister till his death in October 1865.

And now commenced the real work of his energetic life. He cast himself entirely into the part he had accepted, and left no labour unapplied, no means unused to consolidate the dynasty of Kaméhaméha, to establish the independence and security of the island kingdom, to advance the country of his adoption in material prosperity, in social advance, and in the standing it was to take among the family of nations. His industry was prodigious; his foreign correspondence voluminous; his mind was omnivorous. A contributor to the 'Hawaiian Gazette' thus writes of him, at the commencement of his career in the islands: His activity and deep interest in Hawaii Nei is fully shown in his notes published in the "Friend," during the very year of his arrival (1844); in which he treats of almost every subject of value and interest to the country, from the premiership to the cultivation of the taro plant. remarks, addressed a generation ago, may seem crude and sometimes odd to us; but we affirm that they contain germs of good, by no means developed even in the year of grace 1865. His ideas of a parochial clergy may be deemed highly inappropriate, but his hints as to the establishment of schools of art at the capital are well urged. It is true that he refers here to the

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