An equable climate throughout the year, a soft and balmy air, brilliant coloring on bush and tree, magnificent pictures of sea and sky, and of mountain and plain, make the islands a veritable paradise.

It is thought that these islands were peopled by Samoan natives about the year 600, and that subsequently their number was augmented by emigrants from the Fiji and other southern islands. At first there was plenty of land for all, but as their number increased, quarrels arose. Each island had its king or chief and some of the larger islands had two or more. The result was a condition very much like the feudal system; each king had petty chiefs, and these, in turn, their retainers, who were little better than slaves. Priests, who ranked equal to the petty chiefs, directed their pagan worship and occasionally made human sacrifices.

The kings were pretty apt to be at war with one another most of the time, but, about forty years before the American Revolution, there came a great soldier and leader, Kamehameha I. By the aid of European weapons and the counsel of foreign friends, he overcame his rivals and brought all the islands under his sway.

The Hawaiian Islands were made known to the rest of the world when that plucky English sailor, Captain James Cook, was making his third and last great voyage of discovery, in which he had set out to find the famous and tragic northwest passage. On a roundabout way to Bering Strait, he called at the islands which seemed very attractive to him. Perhaps it is not quite right to say that he discovered them, for it seems very probable that the Spanish explorer Gaetano discovered them in 1555.

General view of Volcano House, Kilauea, Hawaii
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It was 1789 when Cook first visited the islands, and after he had continued his voyage through Bering Strait, and had failed to find the northwest passage, he turned about and sailed for the islands. While ashore with a part of his crew at a landing that is now the village of Kealakekua, one of the ship's boats was stolen by natives.

Now Cook had learned to manage South Sea islanders in a very practical, though not the most tactful, way. When trouble occurred he used to send out a strong landing party, seize the king or chief and take him aboard the vessel—a proceeding which usually brought the natives to terms. But at this particular time the landing party was driven to the boats and Cook was killed.

The group of islands was first named after Lord Sandwich, a patron and friend of Cook. At the time of Cook's discovery of the long-forgotten islands it was estimated that their population was not far from four hundred thousand. Missionaries went to the islands early in the nineteenth century and their reports brought many Americans and Europeans who settled there permanently. Then the chief business of the islands was the ordinary trade with the many whaling vessels that were in the Pacific.