“The world and men are just reciprocal,
Yet contrary. Spirit invadeth sense
And carries captive Nature. Be this true,
All good is Heaven, and all ill is Hell.”
BAILEY.
The southern and most eastern portion of Hawaii was, at the period of
this tale, in great part, a sterile, volcanic region, with but scanty
vegetation and a scanty supply of water. Mauna Loa occupied the larger
part, with its immense dome and volcano. It threw off on its flanks, vast
rivers formed by the flow from its summit of torrents of lava, which, in
cooling, broke up into a myriad of fantastic forms. In some places they
presented large tracks of volcanic rock, in easy slopes, as smooth as if
a sluggish stream of oil had been suddenly changed to stone,—in others,
the sharp vitrified edges, broken, basaltic masses, and savage look
of the whole, suggested the thought of a black ocean petrified at the
instant when a typhoon begins to subside, and the waves running steeple
high toss and tumble, break and foam, into a thousand wild currents and
irregular shapes. No verdure of any kind found root in these wastes. The
sole nourishment they offered was an occasional supply of rain-water,
left in the hollows of the rocks. It was impossible to traverse them,
unless the feet were protected by sandals, impenetrable to the heat
which was reflected from the glassy surfaces of the smooth rock, or the
knife-like edges of the jagged lava, which formed a path as unpleasant
as if it had been freshly macadamized with broken beer bottles. Fresh
currents of lava yearly flowed over the old, adding to the blackness of
its desolation. The fumes of sulphur and other poisonous gases, the lurid
glare of liquid rock, explosions and mutterings, belchings and heavings,
the quaking and trembling of the fire-eaten ground and jets of mingled
earth and water,—the very elements fuzed into whirlpools and fountains
of nature’s gore, redder and more clotted than human blood, while fiery
ashes obscured the sky, and heavy rocks shot up as if from hell’s
mortars, burst high in the air, or fell far away from their discharging
craters with the crash and roar of thunderbolts,—such at times were the
scenes and atmosphere of much of this district.
Still the coasts and many of the valleys afforded sufficient arable
ground to support quite a numerous population. The climate was as
variable as the variety of altitudes it covered. On the seaside, to the
leeward of the fire-mountains, it was burning with the heat of Sahara,
and all but rainless, while the highest portions were almost continually
enveloped in clouds and dense vapors. The natives were familiar with both
the tropical palm and the frigid lichens, perpetual heat and perpetual
cold, boiling springs and never melting ice, the precocious luxuriance
and the utter sterility of nature, all within a circuit of not over one
hundred and fifty miles.
I doubt if the earth’s surface affords elsewhere more rapid transitions
of zones within a more limited territory than Hawaii. Her phenomena
of all kinds, and even her productions, though limited in variety,
are on no niggard scale. The active and extinct volcanoes are the
largest known,—her mountains, not in chains, but isolated, are the more
impressive to the eye, from their solitary grandeur, rising as they do
directly from the ocean, which encircling them leads off the view into
immensity. Thus the grandeur of this wonderful island becomes complete.
In the middle-ground between the hot country of the coast and the cold of
the highest region, there is a neutral spot or belt, where the creative
and destructive agencies of nature are in intimate contact. Here we find
heavy forests with trees of immense size, growing upon a soil so thin,
that earthquakes frequently tilted them to the ground, throwing roots and
the clinging earth into the air, and leaving bare the rock beneath. Amid
seas of cold lava arise islets of shrubbery; verdant spots, where the
strawberry, raspberry, and other fruits grow, planted in ages past by the
provident agency of birds, that have here rested in their flights from
more prolific soils. Now they yield welcome harvests to the colonies of
their first sowers and to man. Although fire so often lays them waste,
they speedily recover their fertility, and, indeed, are gradually
pushing vegetation into the increasing soil on all sides, thus adding
slowly to the area of habitable earth.
The inhabitants of this region partook of its character. They were brave,
hardy, fierce, and cruel; as uncertain as their volcanoes, and as savage
as their soil. The sybaritic life of their more favored neighbors had no
attractions for them, except as a temptation for foray. They loved to
seize upon the luxuries they were too ignorant to create for themselves,
and indeed which nature almost denied them. But the superior arms and
discipline of Kiana’s people in general prevailed, and they were confined
within their own borders, although sometimes a successful expedition
supplied them with both slaves and victims for sacrifice to the gods of
their terrible mythology. For they saw in the mighty agencies of nature
around them, only malignant and sanguinary deities, whom they feared and
sought to appease by rites as horrible as their own imagination.
[Illustration]
The great crater of Mauna Loa was their Olympus. Amid its glowing
fires, or high up in the perpetual snows of the mountain, resided
their awful goddess Pele, with her sister train and attendants of the
other sex, whose names best express their terrific attributes. It
will be noticed that like the Grecian, their mythology had its origin
in their elementary conceptions of the facts of natural philosophy,
which in time, by their darker imaginations, were personified into a
family of monsters, instead of the poetical fancies of the sensuous
Greek. “Hiaka-wawahi-lani,” the heaven dwelling cloud-holder, and
“Makole-inawahi-waa,” the fiery-eyed cave breaker, were the sisters
of Pele, and with the brothers “Kamoho-alii,” the king of steam and
vapor, “Kapoha-ikahi-ala,” the explosion in the palace of life,
“Kenakepo,” the rain of night, “Kanekekili,” thundering god, and
“Keoahi-kama-kana,” fire-thrusting child of war; the latter two were like
Vulcan deformed,—made up her court. Their favorite sporting place was
the volcano of Kilauea, where they were always to be seen, revelling in
its flames, or bathing in its red surges, to the chorus of its terrific
thunderings or frightful mutterings.
My readers will, I trust, forgive me the insertion of these sentence-long
names for the poetry there is in them, and if they will pronounce them
with the soft accent of Southern Europe, they will find them as melodious
as their definitions are expressive.
But it was not alone to these deities these savages paid homage. They
worshipped a mammoth shark, and fed him with human victims, casting
them alive within the enclosed water in which they kept their ferocious
pet. This was not quite so bad as feeding lampreys on slaves, for their
sin was done under a mistaken idea of religion, while the other was to
glut revenge, and fatten eels for their owner’s dinner. If we condemn
the unintellectual Indian for his sacrifices and his tabus, how much
more must we pass under condemnation the Roman for his inhumanity, and
the Catholic for his Inquisition; the one sinning in the full light of
knowledge, and the other of both knowledge and revelation.
[Illustration]
As Kiana had partially succeeded in placing the rites of worship among
his sensuous people upon a cheerful and in a material view, an elevated
footing, so the priests of these tribes had in every conceivable way
augmented the terrors and demoniacal attributes of theirs, and shaped
them into the likeness of a devil, called “Kalaipahoa,” which combined
all the ugliness their imaginations were capable of conceiving in a
wooden idol, sufficiently hideous to have sent a thrill of horror even
through Dante’s Inferno. It was the poison god, and was made of a wood,
which the priests gave out to be deadly poisonous. Its huge, grinning
mouth was filled with rows of sharks’ teeth, human hair in brutish curls
covered its head, while its extended arms and spread fingers continually
cried, “give, give,” to the poor victims of its fears.
Such, in brief, were the chief objects of worship among these Hawaiians,
whose habits in other respects offered a strong contrast to those of
Kiana’s people. Cannibalism, though not very common, was not rare among
the most ferocious of the clans, but was restricted chiefly to feasts of
revenge after contests in which all their cruel propensities had been
fully aroused. They were given to the worst forms of sorcery, and their
worship embraced such rites as might be supposed to be pleasing to their
demon-idols. Always at war, either among themselves, or with their more
favored neighbors of the north, their selfish passions were ever active,
and their religion, based upon fear and the most abject superstition,
but confirmed them in the vices most congenial to their natures. Kiana’s
subjects presented the aborigines of Polynesia under their most favorable
aspect, but these tribes the other extreme of savage life. With both
there were exceptions to the general character. There was, however,
sufficient similarity between their traits to prove not only a common
parentage, but that a change of circumstances would, in time, produce
an alteration in the most prominent qualities of each. This actually
occurred, nearly three centuries later, when the first Kamehameha united
the islands under one sovereign. But even now the traveller perceives in
the sparse inhabitants of these regions a less genial disposition than
in those on the sea-coast, while it is among them that still linger most
pertinaciously the traces of their former fearful worship.
Among their chiefs was one named Pohaku, who had acquired by his
superior courage and fierceness an ascendency over all the others. He was
dark even for a native; his hair short and crispy; his eyes blood-shot;
nostrils thick and wide spread, and his lips heavy and full, showing,
when open, a mouth in which great milky white teeth appeared like
scattered tomb-stones in a graveyard; many having been knocked out in
the various fights in which he had been engaged. His frame and muscles
were those of a bull, and his strength prodigious. Brute force was his
tenure of power, for with all the respect of the Hawaiians for inherited
rank, he was so bad a tyrant, that nothing but a convenient opportunity
had been wanting for them long before to have rid themselves of him. So
malicious was his vanity, that he had been known to cut off the leg of
a man more richly tattooed than his own. To mangle faces, whose beauty
inspired him with jealousy, was a common pastime. Thankful were the
possessors if their entire heads were spared. Even a handsome head of
hair was sufficient provocation to cause the owner to be beheaded. To
this malevolence he joined a mania for building. What with his wars,
cruelties and constant consumption of time in his rude works, his
immediate tenants had a hard service, so that it was not surprising that
they took every occasion to desert to the territories of Kiana, who
kindly received all who claimed his protection. Others retreated farther
into the savage wilderness, and there became petty robbers, a further
pest to the little industry that could exist under such a ruler, and on
so precarious a soil. The whole population, therefore, bred to hardihood
and tyranny, were ever ripe for every opportunity which would unite them
in any enterprise that savored of danger and plunder.
[Illustration]