Trcnlitloiial Ihrn'oiiaii Stories. 241 



was one, seven .generations are left between the time of the shi]3wreck (and landing of the 

 foreigners), mentioned in the tradition, and the birth of Kamehameha I.' 



Whether that arrival of foreigners of European extraction was the only one 

 which occurred during the time that the Spaniards monopolized the navigation in the 

 \orth Pacific, I have found nothing positive in the native traditions, to either affirm or 

 deny; though I have inferential reasons to believe that others besides those alluded to 

 above did touch at some of these islands. In the well-known pule or chant of Kapaahu- 

 lani, the King of Oahu, Kualii, — who during some portion of his life at least was con- 

 temporary with Keawe, the great grandfather of Kamehameha — is made to say of him- 

 self that he knew Tahiti. 1 quote the verse as it has been handed down: 



Ua ike hoi wan ia Tahiti, 



He mokii leo paliaohao wale Tahiti. 



No Tahiti kanaka i pii a luna 



A ka iwikuanioo o ka lani 



A luna keehi iho, 



Nana iho ia lalo. 



Aole o Tahiti kanaka ; 



Hookahi o Tahiti kanaka, he haole. 



Me ia la he Akua, 



Me oe la he kanaka 



He kanaka no.^ 



At the time when Kualii lived and ruled, (say 1675 as the central epoch of his ex- 

 ploits, ) the visits and excursions of the Hawaiians in their own canoes to foreign lands 

 had been discontinued for many generations, and, while the memories of former jour- 

 neys were kept green in numerous families, yet since the days of no song 



nor saga records such journeys by the boldest and bravest of Hawaiian heroes, until this 

 avowal of Kualii stands forth in its solitary grandeur, awakening discussion on the follow- 

 ing points: — i. Which was the Tahiti that Kualii visited? 2. Did he visit it in his 

 own vessel, canoe or pelclcu, or was he, like Kaiana in after years, taken away by a for- 

 eign vessel and returned by the same? 



I. To the Hawaiian people, in their own language, Tahiti means generally a for- 

 eign country, — a country outside of and beyond their own group. When reference is 

 made in the Hawaiian songs and sagas to any of the Tahitis with which they had fre- 

 quent and intimate intercourse up to a certain period, the particular Tahiti is generally 

 specified with some special epithet affixed, as Tahiti-ku, Tahiti-moe, Holani-ku, Nuume- 

 alani, Holani-moe, Lulokapu, etc., but these and others, representing islands to the 

 south and southwest of this group, are nowhere spoken of as with a Ico paliaohao — an 

 entirely dififerent language — not diiferent in dialect, but ditTerent in kind. When there- 

 fore Kualii about the middle or latter part of the seventeenth century speaks of the Ta- 

 hiti which he visited as being a country with a leo pahaohao, he did not and could not 



'Perhaps thirty years should be allowed for a genera- the time of Keliiokaloa's middle-age or the birth of Ku- 



tion, considering that, as a general practice, the sue- kailani at about 1526. Compare with the account by 



cesser to a chief and inheritor of the Kapu-moe was not Galvaom, reported in Burney's Discoveries in the South 



always the hrst-born, but more frequently from a later Seas. 



alliance. In that case the seven generations will bring =Por translation see B. P. B. Mus. Mem. IV., p. 374. 



