The Story of Hawaii (Illustrated Edition). Fowke Gerard

of the same year the British flag was hoisted. If England had ratified this voluntary cession the subsequent history of the group would have been very different.

      After the conquest of Oahu in 1795 Kamehameha's chief work consisted in consolidating the government. All the power he centralised in his own hands. He broke up the dangerous influence of ambitious chiefs by apportioning to them land in small scattered parcels instead of assigning whole districts, as had been the custom, and by keeping the more turbulent at the court as his personal attendants. He promoted agriculture by every means in his power, and so sternly reproved and punished crime that serious offences became very rare. He made intelligent and successful efforts to win the approval and co-operation of foreigners. He supported rigorously the whole, complex mass of the ancient tabu system, which was probably wise, since there was nothing as yet to replace the old religion, and the tabus were of great service to him in upbuilding and perfecting the power of his own personal rule. He was eminently judicious in the choice of his counsellors and in his appointments. He left to his successor a consistent, efficient governmental system, so thoroughly centralised, its power so impressed on the minds of the people, that even a weak king and the sweeping changes of the next few years did not affect its stability. For his power as a warrior, still more for his sagacity as a ruler, Kamehameha I is rightly considered the greatest of the Hawaiians, and under similar conditions would have been a great man in any country.

      At the time that the internal affairs of the Islands were being put on a stable basis their opportunities of contact with the outer world became more frequent and their foreign relations more important. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century there grew up a large trade in sandal-wood, which was bought at a preposterously low figure, while at the same time foreign articles were sold in Honolulu at exorbitant prices. The sandal-wood trade was so extensive and was carried on with so little thought of the future that the trees were practically exterminated and are even now very rare. Vast quantities of rum were imported and stills for the manufacture of a crude liquor, which was practically all alcohol, were set up on the different islands, doing untold injury to the natives. At this time also the Russians carried on an extensive trade with the Islands and took an interest in the country apparently dangerous to its independence. One trader went so far as to build forts and to hoist the Russian flag, a proceeding which was naturally intensely irritating to the King. To insure the safety of Honolulu a fort was constructed in a position commanding the harbour. This old fort was long since destroyed, but has left its name in Fort Street, which once led to it and is now the principal business thoroughfare of the city.

      Immediately after the death of Kamehameha I the whole tabu system fell to pieces and with it went the ancient religion, in which the majority of the people had long since ceased to believe.. There were, as might have been expected, some few who at first refused to give up their gods, but it is probable that even these were actuated largely by political ambition, not by any real faith; there was fighting in several places, but the new King and the Queen Regent soon put down this incipient insurrection. In general the fevour of renunciation was such that the chief priests themselves set the example of burning the idols, and so complete was the holocaust that but very few were saved. Even the museums have found it difficult to obtain fair specimens of ancient Hawaiian idols. Outwardly the destruction of the old religion was complete, but certain superstitions were too deeply rooted in the national character to be quickly eradicated and have for generations influenced the lives of the people, even affecting their understanding of the dogmas of Christianity. It is, however, fair to say that in 1819 Hawaii was a land absolutely without a religion. The destruction of the idols came about through realisation of their impotence, as manifested in the freedom from punishment of foreigners who made mock of the tabus and who desecrated the temples. This voluntary abolition of the old religion made much easier the task of the American missionaries who arrived a year later.

      The coming of the missionaries was the real beginning of civilisation in the Islands. Up to 1820 the outside world had given the Hawaiians little beside trinkets, firearms, rum, and more expert methods of deceit. Now it was to give to them their part in the civilisation of Western nations, to teach them that this involved the acceptance of new and higher ideals of conduct, of a religion to replace their outworn superstitions; that it meant a life regulated according to civilised law. The missionaries undoubtedly went to Hawaii fired with the desire to save souls in danger of eternal damnation. They seem very quickly to have realised that wholesale baptism, misunderstood, was less important than a general quickening of spirit, a training in the decencies of life. They never neglected the religious side of their teaching, but they also never neglected the secular side. They learned the Hawaiian language; they reduced it to writing and imported printing presses; they did their best as doctors and taught the elementary rules of health. At first only permitted to land on sufferance, they soon became of prime importance to the chiefs, and were their advisers on almost all questions. It is fair to them to say that if this function seemed an undue extension of their religious duties—and their severest critics never accuse them of anything else—they were the only foreigners in the Islands who would advise the chiefs impartially, and the only ones, moreover, who would have advised in such fashion as to save the dwindling remnants of the Hawaiian race. They were pioneers seeking results in better men, not in riches for themselves; they were trying to give the people their own standards of decency and honour. This soon resulted in bitter opposition from the foreign riffraff who infested the Islands, and especially from the ships that called more and more frequently.

      It was the fixed belief of ship captains in those distant days that no laws, whether of God or man, were in force west of Cape Horn. The call at Hawaii for water and provisions was most of all an opportunity for debauchery and unchecked crime. Hawaiian women were often captured and carried off on cruises to the North. When a whaler appeared off the coast many of the native women fled to the mountains as their only sure protection. It is easy to understand, therefore, that when the King promulgated laws against immorality, laws evidently intended to be enforced, the whaling crews considered themselves cheated out of their rights and turned with rage against the missionaries, whom they correctly held to be responsible. In more than one instance brutal attacks were made on missionaries in isolated stations, who were saved only by the devoted natives. It is sad to think that the commander of a United States frigate was among the most insolent in the demand for the repeal of these laws against vice, and that he permitted his men to attack both the house of a chief and the mission premises in Honolulu for the purpose of frightening the Government into submission. Drink was carrying off the Hawaiians by hundreds, and when, in recognition of the danger, a heavy duty was laid on spirits, it was the commander of a French frigate who gave the King a few hours to decide whether he would abolish the duty or undertake a war with France, These outrages and many others of a similar kind directed against efforts really to uplift the country were seconded by a party in Honolulu, a party,, unfortunately, headed by the British consul who was for years allowed to retain his post in spite of repeated protests and requests for his removal on the part of the Hawaiian Government.

      Internal affairs, in the meantime, had been ably managed by the Queen Regent, Kaahumanu, who was a wife of Kamehameha I. -The King, Liholiho, or Kamehameha II, was weak and dissipated and finally died while on a trip to England. The Queen Regent held the power until her death, and then appointed Kinau, a daughter of Kamehameha I, who, although an able woman, was not as forceful as Kaahumanu, to succeed her during the minority of the young King. It seems to have been a well established custom to have a woman hold, with the King, the regal power. Kamehameha III also was inclined to be of weak moral fibre, and every effort was made by the lower class of foreigners to destroy his health and to subvert his vaguely good intentions by leading him into every form of dissipation. He was, however, protected, as his predecessor had not been, and his long reign (1824-1864) was, on the whole, a time of prosperity and of rapid progress. Education became general, laws were fixed, the troubles concerning the Roman Catholic religion were brought to a satisfactory conclusion by an edict of general toleration. These troubles, which at one time threatened to produce international complications, the King refusing to permit Catholic missionaries to land, were occasioned largely by the fact that Hawaiians had been accustomed for centuries to look on religion as an integral part of the Government and, therefore, to consider a man who professed a different creed from that of the King as necessarily a rebel. To Kamehameha III also is due the credit of giving to the kingdom a liberal constitution, which allowed