kept up. Tamehameha reduced the whole under his sway, and thus put an end to these harassing and exterminating broils. From Vancouver he learnt to build ships of considerable burden; his subjects soon became good seamen, and engaged in commercial speculations to the coasts of America and Asia, and even as far as Canton; he granted lands to foreign residents, and even had the good sense to protect by taboo, or rendering sacred, for ten years, the cattle left by Vancouver; the consequence of which is, that numerous herds are now running wild, especially in the interior of Owhyhee, the largest of the seven islands, besides those which are domesticated. He encouraged the law of inheritance, by bestowing the lands on the wives and children of the deceased, whereas, by the old custom of the country, they always reverted to the king. He caused roads to be made, waste lands to be reclaimed, wells to be sunk, new vegetables to be introduced, and groves of fruit-trees to be planted; he built forts for the protection of the towns, and procured artillery from the trading vessels, to be mounted upon them. From the time of Vancouver's visit, when he voluntarily made a cession of the islands to Great Britain, he always considered the English as his best friends and protectors. It is due to this uneducated man to say that perhaps no country in the world, during a reign of thirty years, ever witnessed so great a change in the condition of a people as did the Sandwich Islands under that of Tamehameha. His intelligent mind was aware of the incalculable superiority possessed by the Europeans and others, whose ships visited him, over his own poor islanders. The circumstances, that the English were the first to touch there; that their vessels were the largest and most powerful; that, besides the advantages sought for themselves in procuring provisions of all kinds, they had endeavoured to improve the islands by carrying thither new and profitable animals and vegetables; all led him to look on the British as not only the most powerful, but the most friendly, of the new nations they had learned to know; and he might reasonably hope that we should be as willing as able to protect them against the insults and injuries that some of the traders had offered them.'-Voyage, p. 37. It is supposed, indeed, that he did more than appeared externally during his life-time; and, in particular, that, from witnessing the superior intelligence of his European visitors, he had taken up, and to a certain extent acted upon, a deep prejudice against the crafty priesthood and clumsy religion which had so long imbued the minds of his people with all the folly and much of the cruelty of superstition. His desire for the introduction of some more rational faith manifested itself, as all believed at the time, in the conduct adopted almost immediately after his death, in May, 1819, by his son son and successor, Iolani Riho Riho. After many conferences with the chiefs of the islands on the absurdities of their religion, especially the impotence of the wooden images which they were in the habit of adoring, and to whom they frequently offered human sacrifices, the new king (who had, on his accession, assumed his father's name of Tamehameha) announced his resolution, with the consent of his nobles, at once to desecrate the Morais or temples, and destroy the idols. The king's mother, indeed, showed some little reluctance; she asked what harm had their gods done? 'Nay,' said the chiefs, 'what good have they done? Are not the offerings we are required to make burdensome, and the human sacrifices demanded by the priests cruel and useless? Do not the foreigners who visit our shores laugh at our supposing these illshaped logs of wood can protect us?' To which the queen replied, 'Do as you will'—and on that same day the morais and the hevas were destroyed or desecrated, except some few places, where the bones of certain famous chiefs were deposited, and over which a few old priests were permitted to keep watch. The next important step taken by Riho Riho, was the total abolition of that singular instrument of power and oppression, which then extended over the whole of the Polynesian islands-and appears to be exclusively confined to them-the Taboo; an instrument, by virtue of which the king, the chiefs, and the priests could at any time possess themselves of the property of the people; while the females, in particular, were made to feel all its humiliating and degrading force. From its birth, the child, if a female, was not allowed to be fed with a particle of food from the father's dish, or that had been cooked at the father's fire; if a boy, he partook of his father's food, and ate his meals with him, while the mother was not only obliged to eat in an outhouse, but was interdicted from tasting certain species of animal food and fruits. Of this essential part of their cruel system of idolatry, Mr. Ellis has given the best explanation we have yet met with. The word, in its literal sense, means sacred; in a religious sense, it implies a separation from ordinary purposes, and an exclusive appropriation to persons or things bearing a sacred character. a sacred character. Thus, those chiefs of the highest rank, who derive their genealogy from the gods, are taboo; the morais, or temples, are taboo; but females generally, not being invested with a sacred character, are not taboo; and hence the prohibition of females from eating any of the fruits or animals that enter into the offerings to the gods. It is probable that this degradation of females was brought, with many other customs and superstitions, by the original settlers from the east. Mr. Ellis tells us : The tabu seasons were either common or strict. During a common tabu, tabu, the men were only required to abstain from their usual avocations, and attend at the heiau when the prayers were offered, every morning and evening. But during the season of strict tabu, every fire and light on the island or district must be extinguished; no canoe must be launched on the water, no person must bathe; and, except those whose attendance was required at the temple, no individual must be seen out of doors; no dog must bark, no pig must grunt, no cock must crow,-or the tabu would be broken, and fail to accomplish the object designed. On these occasions they tied up the mouths of the dogs and pigs, and put the fowls under a calabash, or fastened a piece of cloth over their eyes. All the common people prostrated themselves, with their faces touching the ground, before the sacred chiefs, when they walked out, particularly during tabu; and neither the king nor the priests were allowed to touch anything; even their food was put into their mouths by another person.'-Ellis, pp. 366, 367. For every breach of a strict taboo, the delinquent was offered as a sacrifice to the offended deity, by being burnt or strangled, or dispatched with a club or a stone, within the precincts of the temple. Well may Mr. Ellis say, that an institution so universal in its influence, and so inflexible in its demands, contributed very materially to the bondage and oppression of the natives in general.' To the honour of the young king, he determined to relieve the great body of the people from the miseries of this singular institution, and the females from a state of hopeless degradation. For this purpose, he instituted a great feast, at which the chiefs, the priests, and multitudes of the people were assembled. • When the baked meats were brought into the king's presence, he caused the choicest part of them, and especially of those kinds of food which it was unlawful for women to taste, to be carried into the eatinghouse of his wives, and accompanying them himself, he sat down and ate, and caused the women to eat, in the sight of the people, of all the things looked upon as prohibited. The priests and chiefs were instantly apprized of the fact, which to the multitude appeared prodigious, and calculated to awaken the vengeance of Heaven; but they, prepared beforehand, had already met together, and the chief priest Hevaheva, preventing the messenger with the report, explained to the people, that as the gods had not revenged the violation of the tabu it was a sign they had no power, and therefore ought to be destroyed; on which Hevaheva himself began by setting fire to the principal morai. On that day the idols were overthrown; and as soon as the event could be known in the other islands, the example was followed without hesitation.'- Voyage, p. 47. From this moment, two chiefs, possessed of great power and influence, Karaimoku (better known by his assumed name of William Pitt), and Boki, his brother, resolved to take the first opportunity of solemnly and openly professing Christianity; and, accordingly, accordingly, when Captain Freycinet touched at the Sandwich Islands in his voyage round the world, these two chiefs were baptized by the chaplain of his ship; and thus (to use Mrs. Graham's words) Christianity was planted by the spontaneous will of the natives, before any mission even of persuasion had reached them.' It was not till the following year, that the American Missionaries landed on the islands, where they were kindly received by the king, who assigned them lands and houses, and a piece of ground close to his own residence for a church. The voluntary destruction which had taken place of the monstrous and shapeless logs of wood which had been worshipped as deities, and the desecration of the temples, had fully prepared the minds of the chiefs for the reception of a new faith; but, it will readily be supposed, the mass of the people were unable at once to rid themselves of the many deep-rooted superstitions which had grown with their growth; above all others, it was hard to drive out the dreams connected with the active and terrific volcanoes of these islands, and the fire-gods supposed to dwell amidst those awful scenes. The goddess Pelé, who presides over the internal fires, is supposed to have exacted from the first pair who landed on Owhyhee, such offerings as they had to present; and when she burst forth from her abode in streams of burning lava, she was propitiated by throwing hogs, and sometimes an infant, into the liquid flame. This idolatrous worship is now no more; it was the last and most powerful that remained, and its abolition was at length effected, as Mr. Bloxam tells us, by one of the greatest acts of moral courage which has, perhaps, ever been performed; the actor was a woman, and, as we are pleased to call her, a savage.' But, in order to exhibit the full merit of this extraordinary woman, for such she must be considered, it will be right to extract from Mr. Ellis's narrative, a brief sketch of the principal island of Owhyhee, which, by a silly affectation of Italianizing, as they call it, the language and proper names (the letter w in Italian!), the American Missionaries are pleased to spell Hawaii. Owhyhee, the largest of the seven islands, covering a space of about four thousand square miles, is one complete mass of lava in different stages of decomposition. Perforated with innumerable apertures,' says Mr. Ellis, in the shape of craters, the island forms a hollow cone over one vast furnace, situated in the heart of a stupendous submarine mountain rising from the bottom of the sea.' Two immense peaked mountains rise out of the north-east and south-west extremities of the central table-land, the former named Mouna Kea, or the White Mountain, supposed to be eighteen, and the latter, Mouna Roa, fifteen-thousand feet high. The steep declivity of this table-land,-which, at dif ferent ferent distances from the coast, rises into a continued ridge, from three to six thousand feet in height is indented with innumerable craters, whose floods of melted lava have from time to time encroached considerably on the sea. Some twenty five years ago, an eruption from the summit of Mouna Huararai, a part of the ridge on the western side, estimated at eight thousand feet in height, poured forth a torrent of lava, which overwhelmed in its course several villages, destroyed numerous plantations and fish-ponds of the inhabitants, and filled up the deep bay of Kairauea to the extent of twenty miles in length, forming an entirely new line of coast. A prodigious number of hogs were thrown alive into the burning stream to appease the anger of the gods, and stay its devastating course. Tamehameha himself, little as he was tainted with superstition in general, thought it expedient on this occasion to be present at the scene of desolation. Attended by a large retinue of chiefs and priests, he approached the streaming lava, cut off a lock of his sacred hair, and threw it into the torrent; whereupon the gods were appeased, or at least the lava ceased to flow, which added in no small degree to the influence of the king over the minds of the people. No wonder, then, that the priests of the fire-gods made a severe struggle to maintain their ground: when the national idolatry was publicly abolished, in the year 1819, by Riho Riho, they openly denounced the most awful threatenings of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, in revenge, they said, for the insult offered to the national religion by the king and the chiefs. This adherence to Pelé, the goddess of fire, and her numerous train of subordinate deities male and female, was witnessed on several occasions, years afterwards, by the missionaries, in their peregrinations round the island: on the votaries of this particular superstition they were unable to make the least impression. In one place, where a sermon had been preached on the greatness of Jehovah, an old woman, who had listened with great attention, all at once exclaimed, Powerful are the gods of Owhyhee, and great is Pelé.' This was succeeded by a song in honour of the goddess, in which some joined, others shouted, and a third set laughed in chorus. The missionaries thought them intoxicated, but being assured to the contrary, and that it was only the inspiration of the goddess, they thought it right to have some conversation with the old priestess; but all they could get from her, was her admission, that, for anything she knew to the contrary, their Jehovah might be a very good god, and that it was right they should worship him; but,' said she, Pelé is my deity, and the great goddess of Hawaii. Kirauea is the place of her |