How certain faces and scenes stand out clear, definite, as if challenging to be forgotten! One head I saw on the cape persists in my impressions of that dreamy day. Its owner was vouched for as pure Hawaiian—yet why, when he flashed his eyes sidewise, did I fancy they were grey? He was the alii type, nobly tall, with straight-backed skull and waving iron-grey hair. The Hawaiian lofty sweetness was not wanting, softening the sternness of a large mouth and aquiline nose—reminiscent of the carven lineaments of the fast-disappearing Marquesan.
The scene that is stamped upon my recollection is of the peacock-blue, deep water at foot of that dull-gold burial cliff. Here some grand specimens of Polynesians, nude save for bright loin-cloths, were fishing as of old from a small fleet of the savage black and yellow outrigger canoes. The noonday sun beat hot upon them, and their skins glistened like wet copper and bronze. Now and again a fixed, silent statue became alive and went overboard with a perfect grace that left hardly a ripple upon the intensely blue current. Then two or more would pull in a tawny net, and spill into the canoes their catch of sentient silver. Or, if some were colored fish of unedible sorts, these were flung like autumn leaves back into their element.
Unwatched so far as they knew, untrammeled, utterly at one with their native environment, they gave me unwittingly a look into the past of their race. Often I feel again beneath my head the cast-up spar, sun-whitened, of a forgotten wreck, and see from beneath drowsy lashes that vision of the golden age of Polynesia, and hear the desultory chatter and young, care-free laughter of those children of the sun who little knew the priceless worth of their gift to one white visitor on their shore.
Doubtless I heard and listened to the same natives, but in their unlovely modern clothes, at a church convention song-festival in Napoopoo, part of the centennial commemoration of Opukahaia. The best voices on the island were there, sweet, pure, true, melodious. I sat on a bench with my back to the singers, but more particularly, to the glaring lanterns; swinging my feet over a small surf and dreaming into the starry night. “What dreams may come,” when one revisits lands where one’s own romance has been enacted. I thought I saw the Snark’s headsails come questing through the gloom around the point—my little ship of dreams-realized.
Upon the outskirts of Napoopoo village lie the well-preserved remains of Hikiau heiau where the monument to the famous young Hawaii Christian of a century ago was unveiled with day-long song and prayer and genuine Hawaiian oratory. This temple, which has been cleared of debris, shows half a dozen shallow terraces rising to the final shrine. Here one can see the very holes where once stood the idol-posts. In the middle of this level is a divided wall inclosure. A short distance southeast of the savage edifice, one comes upon a small stone platform where was the house of Opukahaia’s uncle, with its family chapel—I should say heiau; and two tall coconut palms which the boy is supposed to have planted.
The new monument stands hard against the outer southwest corner of the impressive Hikiau temple, that point being nearest to where Opukahaia had lived, and from where he sailed quite literally for the bourne whence there was no return for him. The Anglicized inscription follows:
IN MEMORY OF
HENRY OPUKAHAIA
Born in Kau 1792.
Resided at Napoopoo 1797-1808