and the scoria and ashes buried at their bases tell the story of their activity far back in the past.
It must have been a sight too grand for human eyes to witness when all these dead volcanic peaks, aglow with sulphurous flames, lit up the moonless midnights of the eight Hawaiian seas with their combined bombardment of the heavens!
On the island of Hawaii alone have the fires of nature remained unextinguished. At intervals during the past thousand years or more have Mauna Kea, Mauna Hualalai and Mauna Loa sent their devastating streams of lava to the sea, and to-day the awful, restless and ever-burning caldron of Kilauea, nearly a mile in circumference, is the grandest conflagration that lights up the earth. Within its lurid depths, in fiery grottoes and chambers of burning crystal, dwell Pele and her companions, and offerings are still thrown to them by superstitious natives. Do they yet believe in these deities after more than sixty years of Christian teaching? after their temples have been leveled and their gods have been destroyed? after their tabus have been broken and their priesthood has been dethroned and dishonored? The only answer is, "The offerings are still made."
Although the channel and ocean coasts of the islands are generally bold, rocky and precipitous, there are numerous bays and indentations partially sheltered by reefs and headlands, and many stretches of smooth and yellow beach, where the waves, touched by the kona, or the trade-wind's breath, chase each other high up among the cocoa's roots and branches of the humble hau-tree clinging to the sands. The harbor of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, is the only one, however, where passengers and freights of ocean crafts may be received or landed without the aid of lighters.
The most of the useful and ornamental growths of the tropics now flourish on the islands. The indigenous plants, however, are confined to the banana, plantain, cocoanut, breadfruit, ohia, sugar-cane, arrow-root, yam, sweet potato, taro strawberry, raspberry and ohelo. The lime, orange, mango, tamarind, papaia, guava, and every other edible product, aside from those named as indigenous, are importations of the past century.
The only domestic animals of the ancient Hawaiians were dogs, swine and fowls, and the most formidable four-legged creatures found in their fields and forests were mice and lizards. Wild geese, including a species peculiar to the islands, ducks, snipe and plover were abundant in their seasons, but seem to have been sparely eaten; and owls, bats, and a few varieties of birds of simple song and not over-brilliant plumage made up about the sum total of animal life on the islands a hundred years ago. But the native could well afford to be content with this limited provision, since it did not include snakes, mosquitoes, centipedes, tarantulas, or scorpions.
To what processes of creation or isolation do the Hawaiian Islands owe their existence? Were they raised from the depths of the ocean by volcanic action, as plainly suggested by their formation? or are they a part of a great sunken continent which speculation, sustained by misty tradition, claims once occupied the Polynesian seas? Hawaiian meles mention islands no longer to be found, and the facility with which communication was maintained between the Hawaiian and more southern groups previous to the twelfth century renders plausible the assumption that this intercourse was abruptly terminated six or seven centuries ago by the disappearance of a number of intervening atolls or islands which had served as guides to early Polynesian navigators. The gigantic ruins of temples and other structures found on Easter and one or two other islands of the equatorial Pacific are almost unanswerable arguments in favor of the theory of a sunken Polynesian continent; but the question will probably never be removed beyond the field of surmise.
HISTORIC OUTLINES.
The source and early history of the Hawaiian people, and, in fact, of the Polynesian race, of which they are a part, are involved in doubt. They have generally been regarded as an off-shoot of the great Malayan family; but more recent as well as more thorough investigation, particularly by Judge Fornander, the learned and conscientious historian, with reasonable conclusiveness shows the Polynesian and Malayan races to be of distinct and widely different origin.
Accepting this conclusion, we trace the strictly Polynesian tribes to an Aryan beginning, somewhere in Asia Minor or Arabia. There, in the remote past, it is assumed, they were brought in close contact with early Cushite and Chaldeo-Arabian civilizations. Subsequently drifting into India, they to some extent amalgamated with the Dravidian races, and, following the channels of the great Chaldean commerce of that period, at length found a home in the Asiatic archipelago from Sumatra to Luzon and Timor.
The exact time of their settlement on the large coast islands of southern Asia cannot be definitely determined, but their legends and genealogies leave little room to doubt that it was contemporaneous with the Malay and Hindoo invasions of Sumatra, Java, and other islands of the archipelago, during the first and second centuries of the Christian era, that the Polynesians were pushed out—not at once in a body, but by families and communities covering a period of years—to the smaller and more remote islands of the Pacific.
Their first general rendezvous was in the Fiji group, where they left their impress upon the native Papuans. Expelled from, or voluntarily leaving, the Fijis, after a sojourn there of several generations, the Polynesians scattered over the Pacific, occupying by stages the several groups of islands where they are now found. Moving by the way of the Samoan and Society Islands, the migratory wave did not reach the Hawaiian group until about the middle of the sixth century.
Nanaula, a distinguished chief, was the first to arrive from the southern islands. It is not known whether he discovered the group by being blown northward by adverse winds, or in deliberately adventuring far out upon the ocean in search of new lands. In either event, he brought with him his gods, priests, prophets and astrologers, and a considerable body of followers and retainers. He was also provided with dogs, swine and fowls, and the seeds and germs of useful plants for propagation. It is probable that he found the group without human inhabitants.
During that period—probably during the life of Nanaula—other chiefs of less importance arrived with their families and followers either from Tahiti or Samoa. They came in barges and large double canoes capable of accommodating from fifty to one hundred persons each. They brought with them not only their priests and gods, but the earliest of Polynesian traditions. It is thought that none of the pioneers of the time of Nanaula ever returned to the southern islands, nor did others immediately follow the first migratory wave that peopled the Hawaiian group.
For thirteen or fourteen generations the first occupants of the Hawaiian Islands lived sequestered from the rest of the world, multiplying and spreading throughout the group. They erected temples to their gods, maintained their ancient religion, and yielded obedience to their chiefs. The traditions of the period are so meagre as to leave the impression that it was one of uninterrupted peace, little having been preserved beyond the genealogies of the governing chiefs.
But late in the tenth or early in the beginning of the eleventh century the Hawaiians were aroused from their dream of more than four centuries by the arrival of a party of adventurers from the southern islands, probably from the Society group. It was under the leadership of Nanamaoa. He was a warlike chief, and succeeded in establishing his family in power on Hawaii, Maui and Oahu. But stronger leaders were soon to follow from the south. Among the first was the high-priest Paao, from Samoa. He arrived during the reign of Kapawa, the grandson of Nanamaoa, or immediately after his death. The people were in an unsettled condition politically, and Paao, grasping the situation, either sent or returned in person to Samoa for Pili, a distinguished chief of that island. Arriving with a large following, Pili assumed the sovereignty of the island of Hawaii and founded a new dynasty. Paao became his high-priest, and somewhat disturbed the religious practices of the people by the introduction of new rites and two or three new gods. However, his religion did not seem to differ greatly from that of the native priests, and from him the last of the priesthood, seven hundred years after, claimed lineage and right of place.
The intercourse thus established between the Hawaiian and southern groups by Nanamaoa, Paao and Pili
