A few general remarks concerning the physical characteristics of
the Hawaiian Islands would seem to be appropriate in presenting a
collection of legends dealing alike with the history and folk-lore
of their people. The islands occupy a place in a great waste of the
Pacific between the nineteenth and twenty-third degrees of north
latitude, and the one hundred and fifty-fourth and one hundred and
sixty-first degrees of longitude west from Greenwich. They are two
thousand one hundred miles southwest from San Francisco, and about
the same distance from Tahiti.
The group consists of ten islands, including two that are little
more than barren rocks. The farthest are about three hundred miles
from each other, measuring from their extreme boundaries, and their
aggregate area is a little more than six thousand one hundred square
miles. Of the eight principal islands all are habitable, although
the small islands of Niihau and Kahoolawe are used almost exclusively
as cattle-ranges.
The most of the shores of the several islands are fringed with coral,
but their origin seems to be indisputably shown in the numerous
craters of extinct volcanoes scattered throughout the group, and in
the mighty fires still blazing from the mountain-heights of Hawaii.
By far the larger part of the area of the islands is mountainous; but
from the interior elevations, some of them reaching altitudes of from
ten to fourteen thousand feet, flow many small streams of sweet water,
widening into fertile valleys as they reach the coast, while here and
there between them alluvial plateaus have been left by the upland wash.
With rare exceptions the mountain-sides are covered with vegetation,
some of sturdy growth, capable of being wrought into building materials
and canoes, while lower down the ohia, the palm, the banana, and the
bread-fruit stand clothed in perpetual green, with groves of stately
cocoas between them and the sea.
Once the fragrant sandal-wood was abundant in the mountains, but
it became an article of commerce with the natives in their early
intercourse with the white races, and is now rarely seen. Once the
valleys and plateaus were covered with growing taro and potatoes; now
the cane and rice of the foreigner have usurped the places of both,
and in the few shaded spots that have been left him the forgiving
and revengeless Hawaiian sadly chants his wild songs of the past.
Neither within the memory of men nor the reach of their legends,
which extend back more than a thousand years, has there been an active
volcano in the group beyond the large island of Hawaii, which embraces
two-thirds of the solid area of the archipelago. The mighty crater
of Haleakala, more than thirty miles in circumference, on the island
of Maui, has slept in peace among the clouds for ages, and hundreds
of lesser and lower craters, many of them covered with vegetation,
are found scattered among the mountains and foot-hills of the group;
but their fires have long been extinct, and the scoria and ashes buried
at their bases tell the story of their activity far back in the past.
It must have been a sight too grand for human eyes to witness when
all these dead volcanic peaks, aglow with sulphurous flames, lit up
the moonless midnights of the eight Hawaiian seas with their combined
bombardment of the heavens!
On the island of Hawaii alone have the fires of nature remained
unextinguished. At intervals during the past thousand years or more
have Mauna Kea, Mauna Hualalai and Mauna Loa sent their devastating
streams of lava to the sea, and to-day the awful, restless and
ever-burning caldron of Kilauea, nearly a mile in circumference,
is the grandest conflagration that lights up the earth. Within its
lurid depths, in fiery grottoes and chambers of burning crystal,
dwell Pele and her companions, and offerings are still thrown to them
by superstitious natives. Do they yet believe in these deities after
more than sixty years of Christian teaching? after their temples
have been leveled and their gods have been destroyed? after their
tabus have been broken and their priesthood has been dethroned and
dishonored? The only answer is, "The offerings are still made."
Although the channel and ocean coasts of the islands are generally
bold, rocky and precipitous, there are numerous bays and indentations
partially sheltered by reefs and headlands, and many stretches of
smooth and yellow beach, where the waves, touched by the kona, or
the trade-wind's breath, chase each other high up among the cocoa's
roots and branches of the humble hau-tree clinging to the sands. The
harbor of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, is the only one, however,
where passengers and freights of ocean crafts may be received or
landed without the aid of lighters.
The most of the useful and ornamental growths of the tropics now
flourish on the islands. The indigenous plants, however, are confined
to the banana, plantain, cocoanut, breadfruit, ohia, sugar-cane,
arrow-root, yam, sweet potato, taro, strawberry, raspberry and
ohelo. The lime, orange, mango, tamarind, papaia, guava, and every
other edible product, aside from those named as indigenous, are
importations of the past century.
The only domestic animals of the ancient Hawaiians were dogs,
swine and fowls, and the most formidable four-legged creatures
found in their fields and forests were mice and lizards. Wild geese,
including a species peculiar to the islands, ducks, snipe and plover
were abundant in their seasons, but seem to have been sparely eaten;
and owls, bats, and a few varieties of birds of simple song and not
over-brilliant plumage made up about the sum total of animal life
on the islands a hundred years ago. But the native could well afford
to be content with this limited provision, since it did not include
snakes, mosquitoes, centipedes, tarantulas, or scorpions.
To what processes of creation or isolation do the Hawaiian Islands
owe their existence? Were they raised from the depths of the ocean by
volcanic action, as plainly suggested by their formation? or are they
a part of a great sunken continent which speculation, sustained by
misty tradition, claims once occupied the Polynesian seas? Hawaiian
meles mention islands no longer to be found, and the facility with
which communication was maintained between the Hawaiian and more
southern groups previous to the twelfth century renders plausible the
assumption that this intercourse was abruptly terminated six or seven
centuries ago by the disappearance of a number of intervening atolls or
islands which had served as guides to early Polynesian navigators. The
gigantic ruins of temples and other structures found on Easter and one
or two other islands of the equatorial Pacific are almost unanswerable
arguments in favor of the theory of a sunken Polynesian continent;
but the question will probably never be removed beyond the field
of surmise.