Deck and port /

by Walter Colton

Now these are the children of the chiefs—their sons, and their daughters; those whose intelligence and influence are to shape the destinies of these islands. If this is not beginning at the right end of the business, I should like to have some one tell us where the right end is.

Tuesday, June 16. My kanacka brought me his horse this afternoon punctual at the hour. This horse, a noble animal, is all his capital. I give him a dollar a day for the use; can have him at any and all hours, though I seldom ride but once. This is enough, unless the showers hold up more than they have; for they now fall as easily as a hasty word from a heated heart; or a blow from the ferule of a vexed pedagogue; or a yellow leaf from the twig of a blighted tree; or a false smile from the eyes of a cunning coquette; or a hollow nut from the teeth of a squirrel; or a silver eel from the hand of a fisherman; or any thing else, which escapes very easily from its confinement.

My fair companion being firmly in her saddle, we started, at an easy canter, over the plain, which stretches away from the eastern section of the town. We passed on the right the royal mausoleum, lifting its sombre roof over the coffins of barbaric kings. Before Christianity, with her silent rites, reached these islands, the death of a monarch or sachem was followed by a wail that poured itself over hill and vale, in a roaring tide. Then followed a scene of promiscuous licentiousness, from which the orbs of heaven might have withdrawn their light. Over these obscene orgies Christianity has spread her influences, and the dead now go quietly to their rest, and the living lay it to heart.

Further on, we passed through a cocoanut-grove. This singular tree shoots up some fifty feet, without seeming to know for what purpose; it then suddenly branches out, and is so eager in this spreading business that it seems to lose its soaring ambition; and there it stands, like a naked shaft, with its umbrella-shaped top. Its broad leaves hang down as if to conceal its blushes. It is naked as sin driven from its last subterfuge. It fain would reconcile you to its deformity by its milk; but this is as insipid as its own look is foolish. This tree, with a half-naked kanacka climbing its shaft, is the most effective picture of poverty with which I have ever met. It is, if possible, worse than a monkey on the sign-post of a groggery, beckoning to his fellow-topers to come in. But the decoy, in this case, wiser than the dupe, never drinks.

We passed near the shore a large number of canoes, in which the natives were engaged in fishing. They keep them pointed towards the sea, and one person vigorously at work with the paddles, so that the rollers, which set in here with great force, may not heave them high and dry on the beach. They show great skill in the management of these treacherous canoes. A novice would upset one before he was well in. They are often themselves capsized, but it costs them only a ducking; the canoe is instantly righted, and they are back again in its hollow. As for the water, it is almost as much their element as that of the fish for which they angle. They can dive from ten to fifteen fathoms, and bring up shells; or swim many miles without apparent fatigue. There is a native woman, now living in Honolulu, who, being wrecked at sea, swam twenty miles to the shore of a neighboring island. Her husband, of feebler constitution, gave out; she buoyed him up, swimming with him till they had come in sight of the shore, when he sank overpowered. Still she clung to him, and brought the lifeless form to the beach. Give me a kanacka wife in a gale.

Winding around a bay which circles up, with a rippling verge, into the mainland, we arrived at the blackened ruins of a celebrated heathen temple. The rude foundations only remain; the superstructure has been swept away with the savage rites which it enshrined. The smoke of human victims here appeased the violated tabu, and the putrid exhalations of decaying beasts cancelled the turpitude of human guilt. But Revelation has poured its clear light into its dark recesses. The sorcerer has fled, the victim been unbound, and the guilty have gone to that mercy-seat where penitence never pleads in vain.

High over these fearful ruins soars the steep crater of an extinguished volcano, to which a capricious fancy has given the appellation of Diamond Hill. It still stands in all the stern ruggedness which its adamantine features assumed, when, ages since, its burning torrents of lava stiffened into rock. It is now the beacon of the mariner; the first that greets his glance, and the last that fades upon his eye. Against its base the broad Pacific heaves its swelling strength; but it will stand unshaken till the pillars of nature’s vast fabric fall.

We passed, on our return, the king’s chapel, a spacious edifice, of one hundred and fifty-four feet by seventy-eight. It is reared of coral rock, hewn into uniform blocks, and impresses you with its architectural sobriety and strength. The interior of its high walls is relieved by a substantial gallery, while the ample area of its floor presents to the eye, in the form of seats, the varied means and ingenuity of their occupants. The pulpit is the same which once gravely dignified the central church in New Haven, Conn., but which a more fastidious taste recently set aside. It answers its sacred design very well here. Sinners are converted under its droppings just as readily as if the marbles of Carrara gleamed from its panels. The truth of God falls with the same power in the sumptuous shrine of the prince and the wigwam of the savage. The towers of the triple crown, and the tent of the Arab, tremble alike beneath its force.

The sun had set before we reached our home. The bustle through many of the streets had subsided; but the loud words and laughter of the crowd that had gathered to witness the approach of a strange sail, came floating on the wind. The hour of ten is announced by a gun from the fort,—a signal for the keepers of pulperias and places of amusement to close their doors. The king himself, if abroad, though engaged in a game of chess, would forego the triumph of a checkmate, and return to his palace. He aims, in this particular at least, to maintain a wholesome regulation through the influence of his own example. Prouder potentates may laugh at this punctilio of his Hawaiian majesty, but were they to imitate it, their thrones would be quite as safe and their subjects quite as virtuous. A good example is like a guinea, which shines just as bright, however deep and dark the mine from which it came. Our wisest lessons often come from our inferiors, as the choicest fruit is frequently found on the humblest shrub. The condor may dwell in the lofty steeps of the mountain, but it is to the modest thrush or meadow-lark that we turn for a gush of music.

Wednesday, June 17. Mr. Damon and myself took horses this morning for Ewa, lying in a valley, which opens on the sea, and distant some twelve miles. Our horses were in fine spirits, and started off at a hand-gallop, across the broad lagoon, which skirts the western extremity of the town. Over this fertile interval swell many round knolls, crowned with kanacka huts, and surrounded with thrifty taro patches. Ascending the spur of a mountain range, a deep, green valley opened on the right, through which a winding rivulet babbled, and where herds were seen cropping the grass, or ruminating in the shade. From its bosom rose the walls of a spacious enclosure, into which the cattle, horses, and sheep are driven at night,—to protect them, as one would suppose, from ravenous beasts; but there are none in the island: the object is to keep them from straying off among the mountains, and becoming too wild for domestic purposes; for every thing here runs instinctively to wildness.