WEROWERO TO QUEEN VICTORIA.

243

Other parts of the Island World of the Pacific have furnished the materials out of which it were easy to compile another chapter of Polynesian Literature; but the following must suffice as a specimen of their direct and clear way of expressing themselves in letters, in groups of islands further south than the Sandwich.

It will be seen that their rhetoric comes to the point very soon, turns corners very sharply, and stops short when they have done. The communication is from a New Zealand Chief, and occasioned by the death of a governor who had been sent out there by the British Crown.

NEW ZEALANDER'S LETTER TO VICTORIA.

Good Lady Victoria, how farest thou? Great is my love to you, who are residing in your country. My subject is, A governor for us and the foreigners of this island. Let him be a good man. Look out for a good man, a man of judgment. Let not a troubler come here. Let not a boy come here, or one puffed up with pride. We, the New Zealanders, shall be afraid. Let him be as good as this governor who has just died. Mother Victoria, let your instructions to the foreigner be good. Let him be kind. come here to kill us, seeing that we are peaceable. were a bad people, a murdering people; now we are ably. We have left off the evil. It was you appointed this line of conduct, and therefore it is good to us.

Let him not Formerly we

sitting peace

Mother, be kind.

From me,

WEROWERO.

CHAPTER XI.

RIDE AROUND THE ISLAND OF OAHU, AND NOTES BY THE WAY.

Portia.-Good sentences, and well pronounced.

Nerissa.-They would be better, if well followed.

Portia.-If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages, princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps over a cold decrce.

Merchant of Venice.

We return to Honolulu-Festivities of the anniversary of Independence-Effect upon public morals-Natural hankering after the leeks and flesh-pots of heathenismConverts from paganism now and in the apostles' day, one and the same-Comparison instituted-We mount for Kaneohe--Visit by the way to the country villa of the king and chiefs-Work, trial, and reward of the pastor at Kaneohe- Mistaken timidity in admitting to the church-Arguments for and against-Corroborative views of Isaac Taylor-Practical working of an open church polity and a close one contrasted-Going to Egypt for the corn of scandal-Much ado about nothing-Leonato to Antonio-We halt at Waialua-Contrasts of natural scenery-Kaneohe the supposed pit of an old volcano-Toilsome descent-Picturesque view from its brink— Face of the country between the two stations-Hospitality of a teacher at HauulaDeportment of natives met with on the way-The stale charge of hypocrisy considered-No new thing for religion to be pressed into the service of selfishnessExamples of double dealing in the Pacific, by foreigners-Prevalent forms of selfdeception among the natives-Causes assigned-Treatment of cases when discovered -Rigor of church discipline-The usages of the church an education for Republicanism-The future Republic of the Pacific-A prophecy ventured.

ONE night's sail of seventy miles in the little government schooner Victoria, transfers us from the college of Hawaiian youth at Lahainaluna, Maui, to the island of Oahu; where we find the king and his court keeping the annual feast on the anniversary of the giving back

ANNIVERSARY FESTIVITIES AT HONOLULU.

245

to him his kingdom by the good Admiral Thomas. Those festivities were rather inconsiderately prolonged through three days, and cost the government much money, besides leading to more waste and dissipation on the part of individuals, and giving too free rein to the sensual mind of a people just getting up from the long debauch of heathenism.

The pastors at Honolulu found a strong current of worldliness and sensuality setting there some time after the feast; and there was a revival of a species of heathenism, for which some church members even had to be disciplined. The common people, after the example of their rulers, feasted themselves in squads.

They would get together, pray, then eat and drink, sing meles, (old native songs,) and indulge in other excesses; and there was a strong hankering after old heathenish pleasures, which they would like to baptize with a Christian name; like some of the love-feasts of the Corinthian and other converts, where one was hungry and another drunken; at which they counted it pleasure to riot in the day-time; feeding themselves without fear, sporting themselves with their own deceivings, having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin.

Without the Gospel, men everywhere, be they savage or civilized, are constantly tending downward. And when this tendency seems arrested, and some steps have been taken upward, there is still a gravitation in the sensual mind towards evil, which has to be watched against and counteracted, if we would keep an indi

vidual or a people progressing. Human nature, it is remarked by Taylor, in his "Ancient Christianity, however much it may have been raised above its ordinary level in particular instances, has always quickly subsided, and been substantially the same in every age and country.

Ancient and modern heathenism are of much the same type. The one in the Apostles' day had little to boast over the other in this. It took longer to purge out the old leaven from some of the primitive churches; and many of the converts then (it is manifest from Paul's own epistles) were not at all more stable—we doubt if as much so-or spiritually-minded, than some of the converts in these days at the Sandwich Islands.

A favorite ride and walk of twelve miles north from Honolulu, brings the traveller on Oahu to Kaneohe, one of the three out-stations on this island, of which the population, by the late census, is twenty-one thousand three hundred and sixty-three. You turn out of town on an excellent road near the large adobe and grass meeting-house of the Rev. Lowell Smith, belonging to the second church of Honolulu. The scenery of the Nuuanu Valley, with all its cultivated kalo-beds, cascades, cottages, and romantic mountain sides, is highly beautiful and unique.

Stewart's Journal of a Residence at the Sandwich Islands has made it familiar to many readers. And there is no one who has ridden through it up to the "Pali," but can testify that his glowing description has no more than done it justice.

THE KING'S VILLA IN THE VALLEY.

247

About five miles up the valley, we stopped at a large unfinished house belonging to the king, in a grove of ancient koa-trees, where the chief boys and girls were rusticating a while with the family of their missionary teachers. They make an exceedingly well-behaved and happy company. All of them, to the number of sixteen, talk English with considerable fluency; and their entire aspect and bearing reflect much credit upon the fidelity and tact of their amiable guardians. The king is fond of riding up there, and takes great pleasure in the school, often expressing his sense of its utility, and wishing there had been such a school for him when a lad.

Rev. Mr. Parker, of Kaneohe, a patient missionary there for sixteen years, up to 1850, was greatly tried when I knew him, with the stupidity, the sensual tendency, and the disposition to deceive among his people; and he was consequently very slow in admitting to the church. He was of opinion then that the stone Meeting-house which he had built by dint of hard labor, some help from other native churches, and the savings of his own family, would in two Sabbaths be crowded to more than its capacity, if he should have a meeting of those out of the church, propound a few of them for admission, and call another meeting of inquirers.

They would think the kumu is now opening the puka (door) of the church, if not of heaven, and would run from every quarter to get in. There was a revival movement in his district in the year 1844, but out of a company of three hundred inquirers he admitted but