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.

IT

HISTORICAL SKETCH- A DUST OF SYSTEMS

6

LONELY ONE.'

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

century till the year 1854, when the late king ascended the throne at the age of twenty-one, and reigned ten years.

An unavoidable pun, arising from dissimilarity of languages, must be made in recording that the mother of the islands was Papa. She created the Kalo, and her history involves the doctrine of metempsychosis. It is unnecessary to say that she lived in very early times. Descending, in a bound, to a period when a king was at least half-man in his nature, we come to Akea, the first King of Hawaii. At the termination of his reign, he passed into a region beneath, named Kapapahananaumoku ( the island-bearing stratum '), and there founded a kingdom. Akea was succeeded in the monarchy by Miru, the Hawaiian Pluto, who, when he died, descended to that uncomfortable place below,' and shared the kingdom with Akea. The subterranean realm has been invested by the native traditions with strange fanciful poetry. It is a land of darkness. Its inhabitants feed upon lizards and butterflies; they drink from streams of water which flow there; they recline beneath wide-spreading kou trees and large kahiris (insignia, formed of feathers on a tall handle, round which they are set cylindrically). Some of the natives described the hades of departed spirits, as a bourn from which no traveller returns ;' but by others it was said, that occasionally a newly-arrived soul, after having been questioned by Miru as to the doings and pursuits of the kings and people above, was sent back to the ao marama, 'region of day,' with a monitory message, to desire them to descend to his kingdom. These visitations were rare, and little was generally known of the land of Kapapahananaumoku except what was communicated in dreams and visions of the priests.

KINGLY SUCCESSION.

139

The Hawaiian kings for many successive generations resided frequently at a town called Honaunau, on the western side of the island, a little south of the bay where Cook met his death. This place was formerly of greater importance than it is now. It possesses two interesting objects:-the Hare o Keave, a mausoleum containing the bones of about eight generations of kings; which bones are carefully cleaned, and tied up in bundles. A great number of frightful idols keep guard within and without the regal ossuary. The other place of interest is a sacred enclosure adjoining this building, being one of the two pohonuas, or cities of refuge, which existed on the island of Hawaii. After the unification of the islands the King and chiefs resided generally at Lahaina or Maui.

The kingly office was hereditary, but not purely so. The King could nominate his successor even though he possessed offspring of his own. In matters of succession, owing to the great laxity of the marriage tie, the female descent was preferred, and a female always occupies the next place to the King in the State. Her office is now called that of Premier. It is stated in tradition that, on two or three occasions, queens have reigned in the island; and among the chiefdom many were, and still are, females. There is no reason to doubt that at first, as with the beginning of other kingdoms, the strong man ruled, and that the Hawaiians, like other nascent nations, adopted

the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can.'

Kings and chiefs having attained this social superiority, maintained it with effect. Because they were strong,

they were enabled successfully to fortify their position and become yet stronger. They admitted the priesthood to somewhat equal privileges, and they found the advantage of having their aid, as they then possessed the means of coercing the common people, both by bodily force and through mental influences,-those of induced fear and superstition. They held the people in the most complete subserviency, and the whole system was rigorously feudal. By the tabu, and the plan of forced labour, called hana poalima, the chiefs reduced the commonalty to a servile and tributary condition; whilst having abundance of food, rest, and shelter themselves, the physical difference between the chiefdom and the common people became so marked, that it caused a-doubt in some observers' minds whether the chiefs could be of the same race with the plebeian population. The chiefs, male and female, attained to great height, strength, and size, and had in later life a strong tendency towards obesity.

With respect to the Crown, Wilkes* says, that in former times there was no fixed succession, and that the practice affecting it varied. Even when the right of descent became estained the rank of the mother was an element in deciding the successor. Thus the eldest son and daughter of the first Kaméhaméha, who had several wives, were set aside in favour of younger children by a wife of higher birth than their mother. And with regard to female succession, the same writer instances Queen Keokeolani, who, two generations before the discovery of the islands by Cook, held the throne, although she had several half-brothers, but who were of lower rank on their mother's side than her own.

*Nar. U.S. Exploring Expedition.'