I
THE GHOST OF WAHAULA TEMPLE
Hawaiian temples were never works of art. Broken lava was always near the site upon which a temple was to be built. Rough unhewn stones were easily piled into massive walls and laid in terraces for altar and floors. Water-worn pebbles were carried from the nearest beach and strewn over the uneven floor, making a comparatively smooth place over which the naked feet of the temple dwellers passed without the injuries which would otherwise frequently come from the sharp-edged lava. Rude grass huts built on terraces were the abodes of the priests and of the high chiefs who sometimes visited the places of sacrifice. Elevated, flat-topped piles of stones were usually built at one end of the temple for the chief idols and the sacrifices placed before them. Simplicity of detail marked every step of temple erection.
No hewn pillars or arched gateways of even the most primitive designs can be found in any of the temples whether of recent date or belonging to remote antiquity. There was no attempt at ornamentation even in the images of the great gods which they worshipped. Crude, uncouth, and hideous were the images before which they offered sacrifice and prayer.
In themselves the heiaus, or temples, of the Hawaiian Islands have but little attraction. To-day they seem more like massive walled cattle-pens than places which had ever been used for sacred worship.
On the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii near Kalapana is one of the largest, oldest, and best preserved heiaus, or temples, in the Hawaiian Islands. It is no exception to the architectural rule for Hawaiian temples, and is worthy the name of temple only as it is intimately associated with the religious customs of the Hawaiians. Its walls are several feet thick and in places ten to twelve feet high. It is divided into rooms or pens, in one of which still lies the huge sacrificial stone upon which victims—sometimes human—were slain before the bodies were placed as offerings in front of the hideous idols leaning against the stone walls.
This heiau now bears the name Wahaula, or "red-mouth." In ancient times it was known as Ahaula, or "the red assembly," possibly denoting that at times the priests and their attendants wore red mantles in their processions or during some part of their sacred ceremonies.
This temple is said to be the oldest of all the Hawaiian heiaus—except possibly the heiau at Kohala on the northern coast of the same island. These two heiaus date back in tradition to the time of Paao, the priest from Upolu, Samoa, who was said to have built them. He was the traditional father of the priestly line which ran parallel to the royal genealogy of the Kamehamehas during several centuries until the last high priest, Hewahewa, became a follower of Jesus Christ—the Saviour of the world. This was the last heiau destroyed when the ancient tabus and ceremonial rites were overthrown by the chiefs just before the coming of Christian missionaries. At that time the grass houses of the priests were burned and in these raging flames were thrown the wooden idols back of the altars and the bamboo huts of the soothsayers and the rude images on the walls, with everything combustible which belonged to the ancient order of worship. Only the walls and rough stone floors were left in the temple.
In the outer temple court was the most noted sacred grave in all the islands. Earth had been carried from the mountain-sides inland. Leaves and decaying trees added to the permanency of the soil. Here in a most unlikely place it was said that all the varieties of trees then found in the islands had been gathered by the priests—the descendants of Paao. To this day the grave stands by the temple walls, an object of superstitious awe among the natives. Many of the varieties of trees there planted have died, leaving only those which were more hardy and needed less priestly care than they received a hundred years or more ago.