In the midst of these evidences of prosperity and advancement it is but too apparent that the natives are steadily decreasing in numbers and gradually losing their hold upon the fair land of their fathers. Within a century they have dwindled from four hundred thousand healthy and happy children of nature, without care and without want, to a little more than a tenth of that number of landless, hopeless victims to the greed and vices of civilization. They are slowly sinking under the restraints and burdens of their surroundings, and will in time succumb to social and political conditions foreign to their natures and poisonous to their blood. Year by year their footprints will grow more dim along the sands of their reef-sheltered shores, and fainter and fainter will come their simple songs from the shadows of the palms, until finally their voices will be heard no more for ever. And then, if not before—and no human effort can shape it otherwise—the Hawaiian Islands, with the echoes of their songs and the sweets of their green fields, will pass into the political, as they are now firmly within the commercial, system of the great American Republic.
[1] The Princess Likelike died February 2, 1887. [↑]
Hina, the Helen of Hawaii.
CHARACTERS.
- Hakalanileo, a chief of Hawaii.
- Hina, wife of Hakalanileo.
- Uli, a sorceress, mother of Hina.
- Niheu and
- sons of Hina.
- Kana,
- Kamauaua, King of Molokai.
- Keoloewa and
- sons of Kamauaua.
- Kaupeepee,
- Nuakea, wife of Keoloewa.
- Moi, brother of Nuakea.