die; for it was not believed that Kamehameha’s
departure was the effect either of sickness or old
age. When the sorcerers set up by their
fire-places sticks with a strip of kapa flying
at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun’s
brother, came in a state of intoxication and
broke the flag-staff of the sorcerers, from
which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends
had been instrumental in the King’s death.
On this account they were subjected to abuse.”
You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is.
This great Queen, Kaahumanu, who was “subjected
to abuse” during the frightful orgies that followed
the King’s death, in accordance with ancient
custom, afterward became a devout Christian and a
steadfast and powerful friend of the missionaries.
Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for
food, by the natives —hence the reference
to their value in one of the above paragraphs.
Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to
suspend all law for a certain number of days after
the death of a royal personage; and then a saturnalia
ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion,
but not in the full horror of the reality. The
people shaved their heads, knocked out a tooth or
two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised, mutilated
or burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other’s
huts, maimed or murdered one another according to
the caprice of the moment, and both sexes gave themselves
up to brutal and unbridled licentiousness.
And after it all, came a torpor from which the nation
slowly emerged bewildered and dazed, as if from a
hideous half-remembered nightmare. They were
not the salt of the earth, those “gentle children
of the sun.”
The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs
which cannot be comforting to an invalid. When
they think a sick friend is going to die, a couple
of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafening
wailing night and day till he either dies or gets well.
No doubt this arrangement has helped many a subject
to a shroud before his appointed time.
They surround a hut and wail in the same heart-broken
way when its occupant returns from a journey.
This is their dismal idea of a welcome. A very
little of it would go a great way with most of us.
Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,)
to visit the great volcano and behold the other notable
things which distinguish that island above the remainder
of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain
Saturday afternoon, in the good schooner Boomerang.
