“Earth, our bright home its mountains and its waters,
And the ethereal shapes which are suspended
O’er its expanse, and those fair daughters,
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean who have blended
The colors of the air since first extended,
It cradled the young world....”
SHELLEY.
Olmedo had not been idle during the year in his labors to convert the
islanders to his faith. Nor was he without a certain degree of success,
though very far from having instilled into them any definite ideas of
Christianity. Indeed, strange as it may appear at the first statement,
there was in the rites he wished to supersede so much analogy with those
he wished to introduce, that the substitution was not easily effected.
Juan, in his martial zeal for the Roman Catholic faith, would gladly have
used the same arguments here as in Mexico; that is, have destroyed the
idols, purified the temples, and set up crucifixes and new images, which
only they should worship, whether persuaded or not of their religious
efficacy. For once, however, Spanish zeal was obliged to be tempered
with a respect for the force which was not now on their side. It must
be confessed, also, that the easy, seductive life he had led, the
absence of the worst features of heathenism, and the generous character
and shrewdness of Kiana, had not a little weakened Juan’s fanaticism;
so that, although conforming sufficiently to the ritual of his faith
to keep himself within the pale of his church’s salvation, he had
almost unconsciously imbibed the idea that some even of the virtues of
Christianity might exist among pagans.
Within the walled enclosure in which Juan and his sister resided,
overlooking the sea, Olmedo had built a small chapel. The rude images
which native ingenuity under his direction had carved to represent the
Virgin and her Son, were not so unlike their own wooden deities, as to
require anything more than an enlargement of their mythology, for the
simple natives to have accepted them as their own. This of course would
have been only adding to the sin which Olmedo wished to eradicate. The
good man, however, persevered in his rites and doctrines, and had the
satisfaction to have numbers of the chiefs and their attendants come
to witness his worship. Among them most frequently was Kiana, but as
his eyes were oftener directed towards kneeling Beatriz, than the holy
symbols of the altar, it is to be presumed that another motive beside
religious conviction swayed his heart. He saw that the crucifix and the
images of the gods of the white man, as he regarded them, were very
dear to them. Out of respect, therefore, to his guests, in unconscious
philosophical imitation of Alexander Severus, when he placed statues
of Abraham and Christ among his revered images, Kiana had set up the
crucifix in his domestic pantheon. How far he understood the teachings of
Olmedo may be gathered from one of their not unfrequent colloquies upon
religion.
[Illustration]
Mass had just been said. Olmedo had trained some of the more tractable
youths to assist him in the service, which they did the more willingly,
from perceiving that it gave them a personal importance to be considered
of the household of Lono. The solemn chant of the priest in a strange
and sonorous tongue, the regular responses of the Spaniards, and their
thorough devotion, the simple exhortations to a good life, which all
present could comprehend, followed by the earnest eloquence of Olmedo,
as he sought to expound in the Hawaiian tongue the mysteries of a faith
which it had no terms correctly to render, all made an impressive scene.
Their hearts were touched even when their minds were not enlightened.
It was the decline of day. The sun was pouring a flood of soft light over
the sea, which sparkled as with the radiance of an opal. Kiana, Olmedo,
and Beatriz, came out of the chapel, and reclined upon a pile of mats
which their attendants had spread for them on a green knoll just beyond
the reach of the waves. The trade wind fanned them with its cool breath,
and sang an evening hymn amid the waving palms, high above their heads. A
group of fishermen were hauling their nets, heavy with the meshed fishes,
to the music of a wild chant. Numbers of both sexes were sporting in
the surf. The line of breakers commenced far seaward, in long, lofty,
curling swells, that came in regular succession thundering onward to the
shore, which trembled under the mighty reverberation. It was not a sound
of anger, nor of merriment, but the pealing forth of Nature’s mightiest
organ, in deep-toned notes of praise. There was much in the commingled
glories of sound and color, the beauty of the shore, and the expanse of
the ocean, to suggest an Infinite Author to the most thoughtless mind.
Human life and happiness mingle largely with the scene. The bathers shout
and gambol in the water as if in their native element. The maidens and
boys,—with their parents, who in the frolic become children also,—dive
under the huge combers as one after another they break and foam on their
way to the shore. Heads with flowing tresses and laughing eyes are
continually shooting up through the yeast of waters with merry cries,
then ducking again to escape the quick coming wave. Rising beyond it,
each plunge carries them further seaward, till with their surf-boards
they reach the line of deep water. Then poising their boards on the very
crests of the heaviest rollers, they throw themselves flat upon them, and
skilfully keeping their position just on its edge before it topples and
breaks, they are borne with the speed of race horses towards the shore.
Now is their highest glee. In revelry they scream and toss their dark
arms, which strikingly contrast with the silvery gleaming wave, urging
their ocean steeds to still more headlong haste. They near the rocks.
Another instant, and of their gaysome forms nothing will remain but
mangled flesh and broken bones. But no: the wave passes from under them,
and dashes its salt spray upon the land barrier, and far away among the
green bushes; the surf board is cast with violence upon the shore, but
the active swimmers avoid the shock, by sliding at the latest moment from
their boards and diving seaward, again emerge, challenging each other
once more to mount Neptune’s car.
[Illustration]
A more quiet scene is at the left. Here flows a gentle stream, overhung
with deep foliage. On its banks, to the beating of drums and the quick
chants of the musicians, young children are dancing. They wear wreaths
of white or scarlet flowers, intermingled with deep green leaves, on
their heads; and on their bosoms are necklaces of bright shells or finely
braided hair, and feather mantles about their waists. They are yet too
young to feel other instincts than the gladsome and chaste impulses which
are shown in light and graceful motions. Even the groups of adults seated
on the grass, watching with interest their sports, reflect their innocent
gayety, and become for the moment young and innocent themselves.
[Illustration]
In the stream itself, mothers are teaching their infants to swim. Their
love for the water is apparent in every struggle. They take to it like
ducklings, and almost as soon as they can walk they can be trusted alone
in that element. Now they turn their smiling faces towards their parents,
and kick and cry for one more plash and still another; the delighted
mother encouraging its attempts with soothing voice and tender care.
Such was the spectacle on which Kiana and his friends were gazing, after
leaving the chapel and seating themselves by the sea-shore.
That day Olmedo had in his discourse dwelt more earnestly than usual upon
the doctrines of his creed, with the hope finally to induce Kiana to cast
aside his mythology and accept the Roman Catholic Trinity. Here, indeed,
was the stumbling-block. How could Olmedo hope to make an idea, which
was in a great degree contradictory and incomprehensible even to many
of the cultivated and theological minds of Europe, intelligible to the
simple reason of the Polynesian, when by the former it was at least only
received as a great mystery!
“You tell me,” said Kiana, “that there is one great God, who made heaven
and earth, an all-wise, all-perfect, all-powerful Being. He has created
the Hawaiian, the Spaniard, the Mexican, and all the races of men. I know
this to be true. My people worship the wooden images of deities, and
think they supply their wants. But those of us who have been taught the
true meaning of our sacred songs, know full well that these senseless
idols cannot make the taro grow,—they do not send us rain,—neither do
they bestow life, nor health. My thought has always been, there is one
only Great God dwelling in the heavens.”
“Your thought is indeed right,” replied Olmedo; “but God many years ago,
seeing how wicked the world was, sent his only-begotten Son to teach it
true religion. He was cruelly crucified by the people to whom he was
sent, and he went up to heaven, where he remains to be the judge and
Saviour of all men. After his ascension, he sent to his disciples, to
comfort them, the Holy Ghost. Now these three persons are one God,—the
God whom we Christians worship. All your images are vain idols; cast them
aside, and set up in their places the image of the Son, Jesus Christ, and
his holy mother, of whom he was born in the flesh, by the will of God,
without a human father. Then shall you and your people be saved.”
Had Olmedo been content to have acquiesced in the simple conception of
the One God, he would have had little difficulty in persuading Kiana and
his people to renounce the direct worship of idols, and to trust in and
pray to the Great Father. There was something in their minds that made
this idea seem not wholly new to them. This was derived in part from the
mystic expressions of their bards, who had dimly felt this sublime truth,
and in the testimony of the universal heart of the human race, which
ultimately resolves all things into One Great Cause, however much it
may overshadow his glory and pervert his attributes, by multiplying the
symbols of natural powers, and make to itself “graven images” of earthly
passions and foibles. But when Olmedo talked dogmatically of the “Three
in One,” he left only a vague impression, that he worshipped either
“three male gods and one female, which made four,” or that there were
absolutely three equal gods, which in time they called “Kane, Kaneloa,
and Maui.”