HILO, February 22.
My sojourn here is very pleasant, owing to the kindness and
sociability of the people. I think that so much culture and such a
variety of refined tastes can seldom be found in so small a
community. There have been pleasant little gatherings for sewing,
while some gentlemen read aloud, fern-printing in the verandah,
microscopic and musical evenings, little social luncheons, and on
Sunday evenings what is colloquially termed, "a sing," at this most
social house. One of the things I have specially enjoyed has been
spending an afternoon at the Rev. Titus Coan's. He is not only one
of the most venerable of the remaining missionaries, but such an
authority on the Hawaiian volcanoes as to entitle him to be
designated "the high-priest of Pele!" In his modest, quiet way he
told thrilling stories of the old missionary days.
As you know, the islands cast off idolatry in 1819, but it was not
till 1835 that Mr. and Mrs. Coan arrived in Hilo, where Mr. and Mrs.
Lyman had been toiling for some time, and had produced a marked
change on the social condition of the people. Mr. C. was a fervid
speaker, and physically very robust, and when he had mastered the
language, he undertook much of the travelling and touring, and Mr.
Lyman took charge of the home mission station, and the boarding and
industrial school which he still indefatigably superintends. There
were 15,000 natives then in the district, and its extremes were 100
miles apart. Portions of it could only be reached with peril to
limbs and even life. Horses were only regarded as wild animals in
those days, and Mr. C. traversed on foot the district I have just
returned from, not lazily riding down the gulch sides, but climbing,
or being let down by ropes from tree to tree, and from crag to crag.
In times of rain like last week, when it was impossible to ford the
rivers, he sometimes swam across, with a rope to prevent him from
being carried away, through others he rode on the broad shoulders of
a willing native, while a company of strong men locked hands and
stretched themselves across the torrent, between him and the
cataract, to prevent him from being carried over in case his bearer
should fall. This experience was often repeated three or four times
a day. His smallest weekly number of sermons was six or seven, and
the largest from twenty-five to thirty. He often travelled in
drowning rain, crossed dangerous streams, climbed slippery
precipices, and frequently preached in wind and rain with all his
garments saturated. On every occasion he received aid from the
natives, who were so kind and friendly, that when he used to sleep
in the woods at night, he hung his watch on a tree, knowing that it
was perfectly safe from pilfering or curious touch. Indeed the
Christian teachers seem to have been regarded as tabu.
Before the end of that year, Mr. Coan had made the circuit of
Hawaii, a foot and canoe trip of 300 miles, in which he nearly
suffered canoe-wreck twice. In all, he has admitted into the
Christian church by baptism, 12,000 persons, besides 4000 infants.
He gave a most interesting account of one great baptism. The
greatest care was previously taken in selecting, teaching, watching,
and examining the candidates. Those from the distant villages came
and spent several months here for preliminary instruction. Many of
these were converts of two years' standing, a larger class had been
on the list for more than a year, and a smaller one for a lesser
period. The accepted candidates were announced by name several
weeks previously, and friends and enemies everywhere were called
upon to testify all that they knew about them. On the first Sunday
in July, 1838, 1705 persons, formerly heathens, were baptised. They
were seated close together on the earth-floor in rows, with just
space between for one to walk, and Mr. Lyman and Mr. Coan passing
through them, sprinkled every bowed head, after which Mr. C.
admitted the weeping hundreds into the fellowship of the Universal
Church by pronouncing the words, "I baptise you all in the Name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." After this,
2400 converts received the Holy Communion. I give Mr. C.'s own
words concerning those who partook of it, "who truly and earnestly
repented of their sins, and steadfastly purposed to lead new lives."
"The old and decrepit, the lame, the blind, the maimed, the
withered, the paralytic, and those afflicted with divers diseases
and torments; those with eyes, noses, lips, and limbs consumed; with
features distorted, and figures depraved and loathsome: these came
hobbling upon their staves, or led and borne by others to the table
of the Lord. Among the throng you would have seen the hoary priest
of idolatry, with hands but recently washed from the blood of human
victims, together with thieves, adulterers, highway robbers,
murderers, and mothers whose hands reeked with the blood of their
own children. It seemed like one of the crowds the Saviour
gathered, and over which He pronounced the words of healing."
Though the people cast off idolatry in 1819, before the arrival of
the missionaries, they were very indifferent to Christian teaching
until 1837, the year before the great baptism, when a great
religious stir began, and for four years affected all the islands.
I wish you could have heard Mr. C. and Mrs. Lyman tell of that
stirring time, when nearly all the large population of the Hilo and
Puna districts turned out to hear the Gospel, and how the young
people went up into the mountains and carried the news of the love
of God and the good life to come to the sick and old, who were
afterwards baptized, when often the only water which could be
obtained for the rite was that which dripped sparingly from the
roofs of caves. The Hawaiian notions of a future state, where any
existed, were peculiarly vague and dismal, and Mr. Ellis says that
the greater part of the people seemed to regard the tidings of ora
loa ia Jesu (endless life by Jesus) as the most joyful news they had
ever heard, "breaking upon them," to use their own phrase, "like
light in the morning." "Will my spirit never die, and can this poor
weak body live again?" an old chiefess exclaimed, and this delighted
surprise seemed the general feeling of the natives. From less
difficult distances the sick and lame were brought on litters and on
the backs of men, and the infirm often crawled to the trail by which
the missionary was to pass, that they might hear of this good news
which had come to Hawaii-nei.
There were but these two preachers for the 15,000 people scattered
for 100 miles, who were all ravenous to hear, and could not wait for
the tardy modes of evangelization. "If we die," said they, "let us
die in the light." So this strange thing fell out, that whole
villages from miles away gathered to the mission station. Two-
thirds of the population of the district came in, and within the
radius of a mile the grass and banana houses clustered as thick as
they could stand. Beautiful Hilo in a short time swelled from a
population of 1000 to 10,000; and at any hour of the day or night
the sound of the conch shell brought together from 3000 to 6000
worshippers. It was a vast camp-meeting which continued for two
years, but there was no disorder, and a decent quiet ruled
throughout the strangely extemporized city. A new morality, a new
social order, new notions on nearly all subjects, had to be
inculcated as well as a new religion. Mrs. C. and Mrs. L. daily
assembled the women and children, and taught them the habits and
industries of civilization, to attend to their persons, to braid
hats, and to wear and make clothes.
During this time, on November 7, 1837, one of the striking phenomena
which make the islands remarkable occurred. The crescent sand-
beach, said to be the most beautiful in the Pacific, the fringe of
palms, the far-reaching groves behind, and the great ocean, slept in
summer calm, as they sleep to-day. Four sermons, as usual, had been
preached to audiences of 6000 people. There had been a funeral, the
natives say, though Mr. C. does not remember it, and his text had
been "Be ye also ready," and larger throngs than usual had followed
the preachers to their homes. The fatiguing day was over, the
natives were singing hymns in the still evening air, and Mr. C. "had
gathered his family for prayers" in the very room in which he told
me this story, when they were startled by "a sound as if a heavy
mountain had fallen on the beach." There was at once a fearful cry,
wailing, and indescribable confusion. The quiet ocean had risen in
a moment in a gigantic wave, which, rushing in with the speed of a
racehorse, and uplifting itself over the shore, swept everything
into promiscuous ruin; men, women, children, dogs, houses, food,
canoes, clothing, floated wildly on the flood, and hundreds of
people were struggling among the billows in the midst of their
earthly all. Some were dashed on the shore, some were saved by
friends who hurried to their aid, some were carried out to sea by
the retiring water, and some stout swimmers sank exhausted; yet the
loss of life was not nearly so great as it would have been among a
less amphibious people. Mr. C. described the roaring of the ocean,
the cries of distress, the shrieks of the perishing, the frantic
rush of hundreds to the shore, and the desolation of the whole
neighbourhood of the beach, as forming a scene of the most thrilling
and awful interest.
You will remember that I wrote from Kilauea regarding the terror
which the Goddess of the Crater inspired, and her high-priest was
necessarily a very awful personage. The particular high-priest of
whom Mr. Coan told me was six feet five inches in height, and his
sister, who was co-ordinate with him in authority, had a scarcely
inferior altitude. His chief business was to keep Pele appeased.
He lived on the shore, but often went up to Kilauea with sacrifices.
If a human victim were needed, he had only to point to a native, and
the unfortunate wretch was at once strangled. He was not only the
embodiment of heathen piety, but of heathen crime. Robbery was his
pastime. His temper was so fierce and so uncurbed that no native
dared even to tread on his shadow. More than once he had killed a
man for the sake of food and clothes not worth fifty cents. He was
a thoroughly wicked savage. Curiosity attracted him into one of the
Hilo meetings, and the bad giant fell under the resistless,
mysterious influence which was metamorphosing thousands of
Hawaiians. "I have been deceived," he said, "I have deceived
others, I have lived in darkness, and did not know the true God. I
worshipped what was no God. I renounce it all. The true God has
come. He speaks. I bow down to Him. I wish to be His son." The
priestess, his sister, came soon afterwards, and they remained here
several months for instruction. They were then about seventy years
old, but they imbibed the New Testament spirit so thoroughly that
they became as gentle, loving, and quiet as little children. After
a long probationary period they were baptized, and after several
years of pious and lowly living, they passed gently and trustfully
away.
The old church which was the scene of these earlier assemblages,
came down with a crash after a night of heavy rain, the large
timbers, which were planted in the moist earth after the fashion of
the country to support the framework, having become too rotten to
support the weight of the saturated thatch. Without a day's loss of
time the people began a new church. All were volunteers, some to
remove from the wreck of the old building such timbers as might
still be of service; some to quarry stone for a foundation, an
extravagance never before dreamed of by an islander; some to bring
sand in gourd-shells upon their heads, or laboriously gathered in
the folds of bark-cloth aprons; some to bring lime from the coral
reefs twenty feet under water; whilst the majority hurried to the
forest belt, miles away on the mountain side, to fell the
straightest and tallest trees. Then 50 or 100 men, (for in that day
horses and oxen were known only as wild beasts of the wilderness,)
attached hawsers to the butt ends of logs, and dragged them away
through bush and brake, through broken ground and river beds, till
they deposited them on the site of the new church. The wild,
monotonous chant, as the men hauled in the timber, lives in the
memories of the missionaries' children, who say that it seemed to
them as if the preparations for Solomon's temple could not have
exceeded the accumulations of the islanders!
I think that the greater number of the converts of those four years
must have died ere this. In 1867 the old church at Hilo was divided
into seven congregations, six of them with native pastors. To meet
the wants of the widely-scattered people, fifteen churches have been
built, holding from 500 up to 1000. The present Hilo church, a very
pretty wooden one, cost about $14,000. All these have been erected
mainly by native money and labour. Probably the native Christians
on Hawaii are not much better or worse than Christian communities
elsewhere, but they do seem a singularly generous people. Besides
liberally sustaining their own clergy, the Hilo Christians have
contributed altogether $100,000 for religious purposes. Mr. Coan's
native congregation, sorely dwindled as it is, raises over $1200
annually for foreign missions; and twelve of its members have gone
as missionaries to the islands of Southern Polynesia.
Poor people! It would be unfair to judge of them as we may
legitimately be judged of, who inherit the influences of ten
centuries of Christianity. They have only just emerged from a
bloody and sensual heathenism, and to the instincts and volatility
of these dark Polynesian races, the restraining influences of the
Gospel are far more severe than to our cold, unimpulsive northern
natures. The greatest of their disadvantages has been that some of
the vilest of the whites who roamed the Pacific had settled on the
islands before the arrival of the Christian teachers, dragging the
people down to even lower depths of depravity than those of
heathenism, and that there are still resident foreigners who corrupt
and destroy them.
I must tell you a story which the venerable Mrs. Lyman told me
yesterday. In 1825, five years after the first missionaries landed,
Kapiolani, a female alii of high rank, while living at Kaiwaaloa
(where Captain Cook was murdered), became a Christian. Grieving for
her people, most of whom still feared to anger Pele, she announced
that it was her intention to visit Kilauea, and dare the fearful
goddess to do her worst. Her husband and many others tried to
dissuade her, but she was resolute, and taking with her a large
retinue, she took a journey of one hundred miles, mostly on foot,
over the rugged lava, till she arrived near the crater. There a
priestess of Pele met her, threatened her with the displeasure of
the goddess if she persisted in her hostile errand, and prophesied
that she and her followers would perish miserably. Then, as now,
ohelo berries grew profusely round the terminal wall of Kilauea, and
there, as elsewhere, were sacred to Pele, no one daring to eat of
them till he had first offered some of them to the divinity. It was
usual on arriving at the crater to break a branch covered with
berries, and turning the face to the pit of fire, to throw half the
branch over the precipice, saying, "Pele, here are your ohelos. I
offer some to you, some I also eat," after which the natives partook
of them freely. Kapiolani gathered and eat them without this
formula, after which she and her company of eighty persons descended
to the black edge of Hale-mau-mau. There, in full view of the fiery
pit, she thus addressed her followers:--"Jehovah is my God. He
kindled these fires. I fear not Pele. If I perish by the anger of
Pele, then you may fear the power of Pele; but if I trust in
Jehovah, and he should save me from the wrath of Pele, when I break
through her tabus, then you must fear and serve the Lord Jehovah.
All the Gods of Hawaii are vain! Great is Jehovah's goodness in
sending teachers to turn us from these vanities to the living God
and the way of righteousness!" Then they sang a hymn. I can fancy
the strange procession winding its backward way over the cracked,
hot, lava sea, the robust belief of the princess hardly sustaining
the limping faith of her followers, whose fears would not be laid to
rest until they reached the crater's rim without any signs of the
pursuit of an avenging deity. It was more sublime than Elijah's
appeal on the soft, green slopes of Carmel, but the popular belief
in the Goddess of the Volcano survived this flagrant instance of her
incapacity, and only died out many years afterwards.
Besides these interesting reminiscences, I have been hearing most
thrilling stories from Mrs. Lyman and Mr. Coan of volcanoes,
earthquakes, and tidal waves. Told by eye-witnesses, and on the
very spot where the incidents occurred, they make a profound, and, I
fear, an incommunicable impression. I look on these venerable
people as I should on people who had seen the Deluge, or the burial
of Pompeii, and wonder that they eat and dress and live like other
mortals! For they have felt the perpetual shudder of earthquakes,
and their eyes, which look so calm and kind, have seen the inflowing
of huge tidal waves, the dull red glow of lava streams, and the
leaping of fire cataracts into deep-lying pools, burning them dry in
a night time. There were years in which there was no day in which
the smoke of underground furnaces was out of their sight, or night
which was not lurid with flames. Once they traced a river of lava
burrowing its way 1500 feet below the surface, and saw it emerge,
break over a precipice, and fall hissing into the ocean. Once from
their highest mountain a pillar of fire 200 feet in diameter lifted
itself for three weeks 1000 feet into the air, making night day, for
a hundred miles round, and leaving as its monument a cone a mile in
circumference. We see a clothed and finished earth; they see the
building of an island, layer on layer, hill on hill, the naked and
deformed product of the melting, forging, and welding, which go on
perpetually in the crater of Kilauea.
I could fill many sheets with what I have heard, but must content
myself with telling you very little. In 1855 the fourth recorded
eruption of Mauna Loa occurred. The lava flowed directly Hilo-
wards, and for several months, spreading through the dense forests
which belt the mountain, crept slowly shorewards, threatening this
beautiful portion of Hawaii with the fate of the Cities of the
Plain. Mr. C. made several visits to the eruption, and on each
return the simple people asked him how much longer it would last.
For five months they watched the inundation, which came a little
nearer every day. "Should they fly or not? Would their beautiful
homes become a waste of jagged lava and black sand, like the
neighbouring district of Puna, once as fair as Hilo?" Such
questions suggested themselves as they nightly watched the nearing
glare, till the fiery waves met with obstacles which piled them up
in hillocks, eight miles from Hilo, and the suspense was over. Only
gigantic causes can account for the gigantic phenomena of this lava-
flow. The eruption travelled forty miles in a straight line, or
sixty, including sinuosities. It was from one to three miles broad,
and from five to two hundred feet deep, according to the contours of
the mountain slopes over which it flowed. It lasted for thirteen
months, pouring out a torrent of lava which covered nearly 300
square miles of land, and whose volume was estimated at thirty-eight
thousand millions of cubic feet! In 1859 lava fountains 400 feet in
height, and with a nearly equal diameter, played on the summit of
Mauna Loa. This eruption ran fifty miles to the sea in eight days,
but the flow lasted much longer, and added a new promontory to
Hawaii.
These magnificent overflows, however threatening, had done little
damage to cultivated regions, and none to human life; and people
began to think that the volcano was reformed. But in 1868 terrors
occurred which are without precedent in island history. While Mrs.
L. was giving me the narrative in her graphic but simple way, and
the sweet wind rustled through the palms, and brought the rich scent
of the ginger plant into the shaded room, she seemed to be telling
me some weird tale of another world. On March 27, five years ago, a
series of earthquakes began, and became more startling from day to
day, until their succession became so rapid that "the island
quivered like the lid of a boiling pot nearly all the time between
the heavier shocks. The trembling was like that of a ship struck by
a heavy wave." Then the terminal crater of Mauna Loa (Mokuaweoweo)
sent up columns of smoke, steam, and red light, and it was shortly
seen that the southern slope of its dome had been rent, and that
four separate rivers of molten stone were pouring out of as many
rents, and were flowing down the mountain sides in diverging lines.
Suddenly the rivers were arrested, and the blue mountain dome
appeared against the still blue sky without an indication of fire,
steam, or smoke. Hilo was much agitated by the sudden lull. No one
was deceived into security, for it was certain that the strangely
pent-up fires must make themselves felt.
The earthquakes became nearly continuous; scarcely an appreciable
interval occurred between them; "the throbbing, jerking, and
quivering motions grew more positive, intense, and sharp; they were
vertical, rotary, lateral, and undulating," producing nausea,
vertigo, and vomiting. Late in the afternoon of a lovely day, April
2, the climax came. "The crust of the earth rose and sank like the
sea in a storm." Rocks were rent, mountains fell, buildings and
their contents were shattered, trees swayed like reeds, animals were
scared, and ran about demented; men thought the judgment had come.
The earth opened in thousands of places, the roads in Hilo cracked
open, horses and their riders, and people afoot, were thrown
violently to the ground; "it seemed as if the rocky ribs of the
mountains, and the granite walls and pillars of the earth were
breaking up." At Kilauea the shocks were as frequent as the ticking
of a watch. In Kau, south of Hilo, they counted 300 shocks on this
direful day; and Mrs. L.'s son, who was in that district at the
time, says that the earth swayed to and fro, north and south, then
east and west, then round and round, up and down, in every
imaginable direction, everything crashing about them, "and the trees
thrashing as if torn by a strong rushing wind." He and others sat
on the ground bracing themselves with hands and feet to avoid being
rolled over. They saw an avalanche of red earth, which they
supposed to be lava, burst from the mountain side, throwing rocks
high into the air, swallowing up houses, trees, men, and animals;
and travelling three miles in as many minutes, burying a hamlet,
with thirty-one inhabitants and 500 head of cattle. The people of
the valleys fled to the mountains, which themselves were splitting
in all directions, and collecting on an elevated spot, with the
earth reeling under them, they spent the night of April 2 in prayer
and singing. Looking towards the shore, they saw it sink, and at
the same moment a wave, whose height was estimated at from forty to
sixty feet, hurled itself upon the coast, and receded five times,
destroying whole villages, and even strong stone houses, with a
touch, and engulfing for ever forty-six people who had lingered too
near the shore.
Still the earthquakes continued, and still the volcano gave no sign.
The nerves of many people gave way in these fearful days. Some
tried to get away to Honolulu, others kept horses saddled on which
to fly, they knew not whither. The hourly question was, "What of
the volcano?" People put their ears to the quivering ground, and
heard, or thought they heard, the surgings of the imprisoned lava
sea rending its way among the ribs of the earth.
Five days after the destructive earthquake of April 2, the ground
south of Hilo burst open with a crash and roar which at once
answered all questions concerning the volcano. The molten river,
after travelling underground for twenty miles, emerged through a
fissure two miles in length with a tremendous force and volume. It
was in a pleasant pastoral region, supposed to be at rest for ever,
at the top of a grass-covered plateau sprinkled with native and
foreign houses, and rich in herds of cattle. Four huge fountains
boiled up with terrific fury, throwing crimson lava, and rocks
weighing many tons, to a height of from 500 to 1000 feet. Mr.
Whitney, of Honolulu, who was near the spot, says:--"From these
great fountains to the sea flowed a rapid stream of red lava,
rolling, rushing, and tumbling, like a swollen river, bearing along
in its current large rocks that made the lava foam as it dashed down
the precipice and through the valley into the sea, surging and
roaring throughout its length like a cataract, with a power and fury
perfectly indescribable. It was nothing else than a RIVER OF FIRE
from 200 to 800 feet wide and twenty deep, with a SPEED VARYING FROM
TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE MILES AN HOUR!" This same intelligent observer
noticed as a peculiarity of the spouting that the lava was ejected
by a ROTARY MOTION, and in the air both lava and stones always
rotated TOWARDS THE SOUTH. At Kilauea I noticed that the lava was
ejected in a southerly direction. From the scene of these fire
fountains, whose united length was about a mile, the river in its
rush to the sea divided itself into four streams, between which it
shut up men and beasts. One stream hurried to the sea in four
hours, but the others took two days to travel ten miles. The
aggregate width was a mile and a half. Where it entered the sea it
extended the coast-line half a mile, but this worthless accession to
Hawaiian acreage was dearly purchased by the loss, for ages at
least, of 4000 acres of valuable pasture land, and a much larger
quantity of magnificent forest. The whole south-east shore of
Hawaii sank from four to six feet, which involved the destruction of
several hamlets and the beautiful fringe of cocoa-nut trees. Though
the region was very thinly peopled, 200 houses and 100 lives were
sacrificed in this week of horrors, and from the reeling mountains,
the uplifted ocean, and the fiery inundation, the terrified
survivors fled into Hilo, each with a tale of woe and loss. The
number of shocks of earthquake counted was 2000 in two weeks, an
average of 140 a day; but on the other side of the island the number
was incalculable.
I.L.B.