Note.—Malei was, I am told, a female kupua who assumed various bodily forms. Offerings were necessary, not for her physical but for her spiritual sustenance. The burnt offering was not merely pleasing for its sweet smelling savour, it was an aliment necessary to the creature’s continued existence. For the same or a parallel reason, songs of praise and adulation (kanaenae) were equally acceptable and equally efficacious. Cut off the flowers of speech as well as the offerings of its worshippers, and a kupua would soon dwindle into nothingness.
“You are quite right,” answered Malei: “the only food to be had in this desolate spot is the herbage that grows hereabouts; and for clothing we have to put up with such clouts as are tossed us by travelers. When the wind blows one has but to open his mouth to get his belly full. That has been our plight since your sister left us two old people here. Cultivate this plain, you say; plant it with sweet potatoes; see the leaves cover the hills; then make an oven and so relieve your hunger. Impossible.”
As they traveled on Maka-pu’u and its neighbor hills passed out of sight. Arriving at Ka-ala-pueo, they caught view of the desolate hill Pohaku-loa, faint, famished, forlorn. The sight of it drew from Hiiaka this chanting utterance:
Puanaiea ke kanáka,
Ke hele i ka li’u-la,
I Koholá-pehu, i ke kaha o Hawí, e.
Wi, ai ole, make i ka i’a ole, e.
TRANSLATION
Man faints if he travels till night-fall