“the world and men are just reciprocal,
yet contrary. spirit invadeth sense
and carries captive nature. be this true,
all good is heaven, and all ill is hell.”
bailey.
the southern and most eastern portion of hawaii was, at the period of this tale, in great part, a sterile, volcanic region, with but scanty vegetation and a scanty supply of water. mauna loa occupied the larger part, with its immense dome and volcano. it threw off on its flanks, vast rivers formed by the flow from its summit of torrents of lava, which, in cooling, broke up into a myriad of fantastic forms. in some places they presented large tracks of volcanic rock, in easy slopes, as smooth as if a sluggish stream of oil had been suddenly changed to stone,—in others, the sharp vitrified edges, broken, basaltic masses, and savage look of the whole, suggested the thought of a black ocean petrified at the instant when a typhoon begins to subside, and the waves running steeple high toss and tumble, break and foam, into a thousand wild currents and irregular shapes. no verdure of any kind found root in these wastes. the sole nourishment they offered was an occasional[126] supply of rain-water, left in the hollows of the rocks. it was impossible to traverse them, unless the feet were protected by sandals, impenetrable to the heat which was reflected from the glassy surfaces of the smooth rock, or the knife-like edges of the jagged lava, which formed a path as unpleasant as if it had been freshly macadamized with broken beer bottles. fresh currents of lava yearly flowed over the old, adding to the blackness of its desolation. the fumes of sulphur and other poisonous gases, the lurid glare of liquid rock, explosions and mutterings, belchings and heavings, the quaking and trembling of the fire-eaten ground and jets of mingled earth and water,—the very elements fuzed into whirlpools and fountains of nature’s gore, redder and more clotted than human blood, while fiery ashes obscured the sky, and heavy rocks shot up as if from hell’s mortars, burst high in the air, or fell far away from their discharging craters with the crash and roar of thunderbolts,—such at times were the scenes and atmosphere of much of this district.
still the coasts and many of the valleys afforded sufficient arable ground to support quite a numerous population. the climate was as variable as the variety of altitudes it covered. on the seaside, to the leeward of the fire-mountains, it was burning with the heat of sahara, and all but rainless, while the highest portions were almost continually enveloped in clouds and dense vapors. the natives were familiar with both the tropical palm and the frigid lichens, perpetual heat and perpetual[127] cold, boiling springs and never melting ice, the precocious luxuriance and the utter sterility of nature, all within a circuit of not over one hundred and fifty miles.
i doubt if the earth’s surface affords elsewhere more rapid transitions of zones within a more limited territory than hawaii. her phenomena of all kinds, and even her productions, though limited in variety, are on no niggard scale. the active and extinct volcanoes are the largest known,—her mountains, not in chains, but isolated, are the more impressive to the eye, from their solitary grandeur, rising as they do directly from the ocean, which encircling them leads off the view into immensity. thus the grandeur of this wonderful island becomes complete.
in the middle-ground between the hot country of the coast and the cold of the highest region, there is a neutral spot or belt, where the creative and destructive agencies of nature are in intimate contact. here we find heavy forests with trees of immense size, growing upon a soil so thin, that earthquakes frequently tilted them to the ground, throwing roots and the clinging earth into the air, and leaving bare the rock beneath. amid seas of cold lava arise islets of shrubbery; verdant spots, where the strawberry, raspberry, and other fruits grow, planted in ages past by the provident agency of birds, that have here rested in their flights from more prolific soils. now they yield welcome harvests to the colonies of their first sowers and to man. although fire so often lays them waste, they speedily recover[128] their fertility, and, indeed, are gradually pushing vegetation into the increasing soil on all sides, thus adding slowly to the area of habitable earth.
the inhabitants of this region partook of its character. they were brave, hardy, fierce, and cruel; as uncertain as their volcanoes, and as savage as their soil. the sybaritic life of their more favored neighbors had no attractions for them, except as a temptation for foray. they loved to seize upon the luxuries they were too ignorant to create for themselves, and indeed which nature almost denied them. but the superior arms and discipline of kiana’s people in general prevailed, and they were confined within their own borders, although sometimes a successful expedition supplied them with both slaves and victims for sacrifice to the gods of their terrible mythology. for they saw in the mighty agencies of nature around them, only malignant and sanguinary deities, whom they feared and sought to appease by rites as horrible as their own imagination.
the great crater of mauna loa was their olympus. amid its glowing fires, or high up in the perpetual snows of the mountain, resided their awful goddess pele, with her sister train and attendants of the other sex, whose names best express their terrific attributes. it will be noticed that like the grecian, their mythology had its origin in[129] their elementary conceptions of the facts of natural philosophy, which in time, by their darker imaginations, were personified into a family of monsters, instead of the poetical fancies of the sensuous greek. “hiaka-wawahi-lani,” the heaven dwelling cloud-holder, and “makole-inawahi-waa,” the fiery-eyed cave breaker, were the sisters of pele, and with the brothers “kamoho-alii,” the king of steam and vapor, “kapoha-ikahi-ala,” the explosion in the palace of life, “kenakepo,” the rain of night, “kanekekili,” thundering god, and “keoahi-kama-kana,” fire-thrusting child of war; the latter two were like vulcan deformed,—made up her court. their favorite sporting place was the volcano of kilauea, where they were always to be seen, revelling in its flames, or bathing in its red surges, to the chorus of its terrific thunderings or frightful mutterings.
my readers will, i trust, forgive me the insertion of these sentence-long names for the poetry there is in them, and if they will pronounce them with the soft accent of southern europe, they will find them as melodious as their definitions are expressive.
but it was not alone to these deities these savages paid homage. they worshipped a mammoth shark, and fed him with human victims, casting them alive within the enclosed water in which they kept their ferocious pet. this was not quite so bad as feeding lampreys on slaves, for their sin was done under a mistaken idea of religion, while the other was to glut revenge, and fatten eels for their[130] owner’s dinner. if we condemn the unintellectual indian for his sacrifices and his tabus, how much more must we pass under condemnation the roman for his inhumanity, and the catholic for his inquisition; the one sinning in the full light of knowledge, and the other of both knowledge and revelation.
as kiana had partially succeeded in placing the rites of worship among his sensuous people upon a cheerful and in a material view, an elevated footing, so the priests of these tribes had in every conceivable way augmented the terrors and demoniacal attributes of theirs, and shaped them into the likeness of a devil, called “kalaipahoa,” which combined all the ugliness their imaginations were capable of conceiving in a wooden idol, sufficiently hideous to have sent a thrill of horror even through dante’s inferno. it was the poison god, and was made of a wood, which the priests gave out to be deadly poisonous. its huge, grinning mouth was filled with rows of sharks’ teeth, human hair in brutish curls covered its head, while its extended arms and spread fingers continually cried, “give, give,” to the poor victims of its fears.
[131]
such, in brief, were the chief objects of worship among these hawaiians, whose habits in other respects offered a strong contrast to those of kiana’s people. cannibalism, though not very common, was not rare among the most ferocious of the clans, but was restricted chiefly to feasts of revenge after contests in which all their cruel propensities had been fully aroused. they were given to the worst forms of sorcery, and their worship embraced such rites as might be supposed to be pleasing to their demon-idols. always at war, either among themselves, or with their more favored neighbors of the north, their selfish passions were ever active, and their religion, based upon fear and the most abject superstition, but confirmed them in the vices most congenial to their natures. kiana’s subjects presented the aborigines of polynesia under their most favorable aspect, but these tribes the other extreme of savage life. with both there were exceptions to the general character. there was, however, sufficient similarity between their traits to prove not only a common parentage, but that a change of circumstances would, in time, produce an alteration in the most prominent qualities of each. this actually occurred, nearly three centuries later, when the first kamehameha united the islands under one sovereign. but even now the traveller perceives in the sparse inhabitants of these regions a less genial disposition than in those on the sea-coast, while it is among them that still linger most pertinaciously the traces of their former fearful worship.
among their chiefs was one named pohaku, who[132] had acquired by his superior courage and fierceness an ascendency over all the others. he was dark even for a native; his hair short and crispy; his eyes blood-shot; nostrils thick and wide spread, and his lips heavy and full, showing, when open, a mouth in which great milky white teeth appeared like scattered tomb-stones in a graveyard; many having been knocked out in the various fights in which he had been engaged. his frame and muscles were those of a bull, and his strength prodigious. brute force was his tenure of power, for with all the respect of the hawaiians for inherited rank, he was so bad a tyrant, that nothing but a convenient opportunity had been wanting for them long before to have rid themselves of him. so malicious was his vanity, that he had been known to cut off the leg of a man more richly tattooed than his own. to mangle faces, whose beauty inspired him with jealousy, was a common pastime. thankful were the possessors if their entire heads were spared. even a handsome head of hair was sufficient provocation to cause the owner to be beheaded. to this malevolence he joined a mania for building. what with his wars, cruelties and constant consumption of time in his rude works, his immediate tenants had a hard service, so that it was not surprising that they took every occasion to desert to the territories of kiana, who kindly received all who claimed his protection. others retreated farther into the savage wilderness, and there became petty robbers, a further pest to the little industry that could exist under such a ruler, and on so precarious a soil.[133] the whole population, therefore, bred to hardihood and tyranny, were ever ripe for every opportunity which would unite them in any enterprise that savored of danger and plunder.
