[244] Ka pae, the border; ko kea, white cane; upepe, easily broken, from its soft character. Pae is a border of land usually planted to something different from the land generally. [↑]
[245] Mai, etc., from the outside to the inside Kohala. In the northern section of that district its people designate the western end the outside, and the eastern, windward, end, the inside. [↑]
[246] E hea mai, etc., call to me; malokona, there inside—Kohala inferred. [↑]
[247] Eia ka puu, here is the hill, the difficulty, the sin; owaho nei, outside here, the cold. [↑]
[[307]]
On Hawaiian Rank.
Some years ago, in the spring and summer of 1883, a sharp and bitter controversy arose between the two native Hawaiian newspapers, the Kuokoa and the Elele Poakolu, as to the dignus and status of the Hawaiian nobility in olden time and more especially the rank and pretensions of two families, of which the Kuokoa represented one, and the Elele the other. I noted and made memoranda of the controversy for further use, but as the legislative committee on the genealogy of the chiefs had been appointed and was supposed to be actively at work at that time, I looked upon the controversy of the two newspapers as an intrusion, if not an impertinence, and reserved my own opinion on the subject in dispute until said committee should have, in a manner authoritatively, settled and published the rules for determining the ancient degrees of nobility, their number and their relative status with their kapus or privileges, whether inherent and inalienable or incidental and changeable.
At the legislative session of 1884 said committee on the genealogy of the chiefs made a report which no doubt was very valuable for the information it rendered on many subjects, but through some unfortunate oversight it did not touch on the genealogy of the chiefs, and I and the public generally were left in doubt as to the position that the committee would take touching the rank and privileges of the nobility. The committee, however, was continued in its labors by the legislature of 1884, and during these last two years expectation stood on tip-toe among not a few of His Majesty’s subjects, whose family records tell them that the blue blood of the Kawelos, the Kakuhihewas, the Kaulaheas, the Kiha-nuis and Keakealanis, is still coursing in their veins as well as in those of their sovereigns, and whose public recognition as such descendants depended on the faithful, intelligent and impartial investigation of said genealogy committee. The legislative session of 1886 has closed, but the committee on the genealogy of the chiefs, whatever may have occupied its attention during the last two years, has not spoken on the subject which was especially entrusted to it.