EARLY ISLAND

EARL

CHAPTER VI.

DISCOVERIES-NATIVE HISTORY-COOK'S

FIRST ARRIVAL.

ARLY in the sixteenth century the pioneers of navigation from Portugal, Spain, and Genoa had burst into the great Pacific Ocean. Magellan entered the Pacific in 1520, and discovered the Marianas, the Philippines, and some smaller islands. Gaetano discovered one of the Sandwich Islands in 1542; and following him, Quiros found Tahiti and the New Hebrides. Sea voyages in the Pacific multiplied, but that sea long continued the exclusive theatre of the enterprises of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Its hydrography was, however, unfixed and imperfect, and, as Humboldt remarks, the islands by which it was studded, from want of exact astronomical determination of position, strayed to and fro on the map, like floating islands. That great observer says: It has been asked, how it was possible for Spanish vessels since the sixteenth century to cross the great ocean from the western coast of the New Continent to the Philippine Islands without discovering the isles with which that vast sea basin is strewed?' He answers the question by the small number of voyages made; one ship went and returned between New Spain and Manilla during the year; scarcely more between the latter place and Lima; by the difficulties of navigation at a period

* 'Cosmos.'

when the use of lunar distances and chronometers was unknown to navigators; and by the necessity felt of following an ascertained track, from which if they deviated, they feared falling in with shallows and shoals. He enumerates the discoveries made by the Spaniards in the great ocean, and says that the names of Viscayno, Mendána, Quiros, and Sarmiento, undoubtedly deserve a place beside the names of the most illustrious navigators of the eighteenth century. In 1542,' he says, 'Gaetano had already found several scattered islands. not far from the group of Sandwich Islands; and it cannot be called in question that even this last group was known to the Spaniards for more than a century before the voyage of Cook for the island of Mesa indicated on an old chart of the galleon of Acapulco is the same with the island of Owhyhee, which contains the high mountain of The Table or Mouna Roa.'* Christian missionaries, too, were pressing forward into the newly discovered tropical lands of America: one or more possibly reached Hawaii. Ellis found a tradition preserved there among the people, and he heard it from them in three different places, that in the reign of Kahoukapu, a priest (Kahuna) arrived in Hawaii from a foreign country. He was a white man, having the name of Paao, and he brought with him two idols or gods, one of which was large and the other small. These were adopted by the nations, admitted into the national pantheon, and were worshipped according to the direction of Paao; the temple called Mokini, in the district of Pauepu, near the north point of the island, was built for them, as tradition states by a priest, who afterwards became a powerful man in the nation.

*Polit. Essay on New Spain.'

It requires no great effort of the imagination to see, under the native name Paao, a metamorphic form of Paolo; in the two idols, large and small, images of the Virgin and Holy Child; in the temple, a small church or chapel. After Paao's death, his son (we presume the priest's son is meant, and it militates a little against the supposition just mentioned), whose name was Opiri, officiated in the temple of Mokini. Of Opiri an interesting record is preserved orally, that he acted as interpreter between the king and a party of white men who arrived at the island.

A tradition of white men, still more involved in mystery, was found by the same inquiring author. The great volcanic mountain, now extinct, Mauna Kea, is said to have taken its name, not from the snow by which it is perpetually capped,-Kea being the obsolete term for white,-but on account of some white men, who are reported to have resided on the mountain. and to have come down to the seashore frequently in the evening, and to have frightened the natives. These people were called na Kea, the whites.'

One more native tradition deserves mention as indicating the knowledge the Hawaiians had in early times of the existence of other groups, and as also connecting a relation of the same order given by the old traveller Rubruquis. In The Voyage of Kamapiikai,' it is stated, that one of the gods appeared to the priest Kamapiikai in a vision, revealed to him the existence, situation, and distance of Tahiti, and directed him to make a voyage thither. He accordingly sailed with forty companions in four double canoes. On the return of this party after an absence of fifteen years, they described the country they had visited, and which they called Haupokane, as possessing handsome inhabitants,

delicious and plentiful fruits, &c.; and that there was there a stream or fountain called the 'wai ora roa,'' the water of enduring life.' The priest made subsequently three more voyages to the newly discovered country, accompanied by many Hawaiians; and from the fourth voyage they never returned; having either taken up their permanent abode at Haupokane, or perished at sea. The inducement to the priest's fellow countrymen to accompany him was mainly the qualities of the water of enduring life.' It produced marvellous changes in those who bathed in it. The infirm, the emaciated, and the deformed came out of its wave young, strong, and handsome. The island is not improbably one of the Marquesan group, but under a name which cannot be identified. The story preserved in Roger Bacon from the travels of Rubruquis, and analogous to the relation above, is his description of a land near Cathay, bounded by the Eastern Ocean,-a happy land, 'where men and women arriving from other countries cease to grow old.' The marvellous waters of the wai ora roa agree also with The Fountain of Youth,' which Ponce de Leon sought for in vain in Florida in 1512. The native legend may be a transformed version of a relation given by early Spanish visitors.

It has been already mentioned that in proportion as printing has become used in the islands, oral tradition is dying out. It was fortunate, therefore, that the early American missionaries collected and preserved as much as they did of the prescriptive history of Hawaii. Mr. Ellis, at the time of his visit, found the bards able to recount the successive reigns of about seventy kings; and with regard to the thirty-five reigns nearest to our own day, the accordance between the bards was very exact.

TRADITIONARY VISITANTS.

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Native traditions refer to the arrival of strangers a . long time before Cook's appearance. In the seventeenth century Spanish merchantmen were crossing the Pacific, and might have refreshed at these islands. The buccaneers, too, may have found the small harbour a convenient place of concealment. On Captain Cook's first visit, he found two pieces of iron in the possession of the natives,-one a portion of a hoop, the other apparently part of a broadsword. The islanders were acquainted with the use of iron. It is not wonderful that more of that metal was not found in an unchanged state, because it would be converted into fish-hooks, which the Hawaiians preferred making in their own fashion from pieces of iron, to the hooks brought to them ready made. Tradition states that many generations since, ships were seen passing the islands at a distance. The name they gave them, and which is still retained in the native language for all vessels, was Moku, or islands. A more precise tradition relates that a boat arrived in Kealakeakua Bay, on the west side of Hawaii, the bay where Cook met his death,- that it had no masts or sails, but was painted, and had an awning over the stern. The persons who arrived in the boat were clad in white and yellow cloth, and one of them wore a hat with a plume, and had a pahi, i. e. a sword, at his side. These people remained, and formed alliances with the natives, rose to be chiefs and famous warriors, and for a considerable period governed Hawaii. The date of their coming, as far as it can be deduced from circumstances, may have been about the year 1600. Later than this, perhaps in 1620, a vessel was wrecked in the south side of the same bay. The captain of her, and a white woman, were the only persons saved. On reaching the beach they prostrated