4
The Sandwich Islands.
rian, as, in a dispute between American Protestantism on the one side, and, on the other, French Catholicism, in partial
[JuIY1
Kahoolawe, are still designated as “ the foreign roads.”
The profession of the bards, though
alliance withEnglish anti-Americanism, highly honorable, does not seem to have we could under any circumstances added much to the store of knowledge, expect to find in a zealous American and was rather confined to the excite and vehement Protestant. If by an ment of religious enthusiasm, by wild expression thus guarded, we imply and imaginative songs and odes. Their some want of entire reliance on the historical labors were limited to lyrical impartial fidelity of the whole of our narrations of miraculous interpositions, author’s narrative, we neither make to the battles of shadowy though blood nor mean any other insinuation than he thirsty heroes, and to stirring relations is a man. For though personally our of more than uncertain events. Their selves both American and Protestant, men become gods, and their gods as we cannot claim for even the combina suddenly relapse into men, each seem tion of those two attributes, that un ing perplexed, prejudiced, unerring infallibility, which both Mr. Jarves, the American Mis sionaries, and ourselves,would doubtless
unite in denying to that Pope, whose re~ presentatives are alleged by him to have brought so much trouble and confusion, religious and political, into the before peaceful order and uniformity of doc trine prevailing in the Islands. Vho were the ancient Hawaiians, the date of the first settlement of the group, the succession of kings, and the increase of civilisation up to the time when they first became known to Eu ropeans—are questions to which we look in vain for solution to the records or traditions of the Hawaiian Islands. For an imaginative people, their tradi tions are singularly barren and uninte resting. It is, however, worthy of at tention, that, like most savage nations, they possess an account ofa flood, said to have taken place at a remote period, in which some of the inhabitants were saved by taking refuge in a canoe which rested on the summit of Mauna-Kea, the highest mountain in the Islands. Their origin, too, is accounted for by the statement of an emigration from Tahiti, rendered probable by various
“ incertus scamnum, faceretne Priapum.” There is little doubt—indeed, none—
that the group were visited by Europe ans, probably by the Spaniards, previow ly to the voyage of Captain Cook. That great navigator found the value of iron, of which there existed no native speci mens, well known.
On the return of
the first visitors sent to examine Cook’s ships, the report of the great quantity of iron seen on board the ships excited the cupidity of the chiefs, and one of the warriors volunteered to seize it, saying, “I will go and take it, as it is
my business to plunder." He went, and in the attempt was fired upon and killed. Some fragments of iron hoop and of a sword-blade, in possession of the chiefs, were said to have been left
there by white men. Various traditions remain of the visits of parties of white men, either in vessels stopping at the Islands, or thrown on them by ship wreck. Those were doubtless some of the earlier Spanish navigators of the Pacific.
As Mr. .Iarves remarks, the
singularly “graceful form of the hel mets, and the elegance of the feathered points of evidence, on which we need mantles, so unlike the usual rude arts not dwell. So vague and dim, how of the islanders, bearing as they did a ever, had become even the memory of striking resemblance in form to those this tradition, that though the name formerly worn among the Spaniards,” Tahiti is still preserved in the Hawaiian together with other similar evidences language, it was applied to any foreign of a better taste and knowledge, proba country, and to this day its actual sig bly derived their origin from visitors of nification answers to the English term that nation. A number of Hawaiian “ abroad.” A communication once ex words also exhibit a strong analogy isted with the other various Polynesian with the Spanish. One white indivi groups, by means of much larger vessels dual who thus landed alone on one of than the canoes, alone in existence the islands—either the sole survivor when first visited by Captain Cook; from a shipwreck, or perhaps some and certain points of departure, as the zealous priest landing from a [passing southern extremities of Hawaii and ship, in a solitary sublimity of self
