50 BRIG HAM ON HAWAIIAN FEATHER WORK. 



H. B. M. Ship Havannah and bought by Kapiolani for $600 and returned to Hawaii." 

 This purchase was made during the Queen's visit to England in 1S87 to attend the 

 Jubilee of Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India. 



THE KAPIOLANI CAPES. 



Kapiolani the daughter of the Moi Keawemauhili and wife of Naihe a high 

 chief, was usually distinguished from others of the same name by the qualifying Nui 

 (Great), and in her case it was well applied, for her coiirage and determination to do 

 the right thing as it was revealed to her was far beyond any of her people of that day. 

 As one of the pioneer missionaries was walking on the seashore of his new field of labor 

 he saw "sitting on a rock, a large, finely proportioned native woman saturating her 

 skin with the fragrant coconut oil, and basking in a noonday tropical sun, like a seal 

 or sea elephant. 



"When first visited by a missionary in her home, she was lying on the mat with 

 her two husbands, all nearly nude, and in a state of beastly intoxication." In spite of 

 this terrible introduction, she was one of the first to listen to the teaching of the Gospel, 

 and her acceptance of the new views of life, and her practical application to her own 

 conduct would have been a bright example to the converts of any race: "The standard 

 in her own mind of propriety and purity was like an intuition born of the cleansing 

 power of the Holy Spirit". 



It is not needful to enumerate all the pleasant proofs of her new and exalted 

 womanhood; these are told elsewhere," but the most striking event in her life was per- 

 haps her visit to the crater of Kilauea and of her defiance of the still worshipped Pele, 

 the most dreaded of the host of the Hawaiian Pantheon on that island of Hawaii where 

 her supposed "evil deeds" were only too conspicuous. 



In 1824 Kapiolani undertook the toilsome journey from her home at Kealakekua 

 to the crater, the Haleniaunuui (enduring house) of Pele, a wearisome journey of about 

 a hundred miles mostly on foot, by a rough, forbidding path.' At the brink of the 

 crater she was met by Mr. Goodrich of the American Mission, then a young man, who 

 had come up from Hilo. She and her company of about eighty, with her solitary 

 white man, descended from the rim to the black ledge (I quote from Bingham). 



"There in full view of the terrific panorama before them, the effects of an agency 

 often appalling, she calmly addressed the company thus: ']^\iov2\i. is my god. He 

 kindled these fires. I fear not Pele. If I perish by the anger of Pele, then you may 



'Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, Hiram Bingham, A.M., p. 254. Kapiolani; a Memorial 

 prepared by Mrs. Persis G. Taylor, Honolulu, 1897. Kapiolani, the Heroine of Hawaii, Rufus Anderson, D.D., from 

 "Hours at Home", May, 1866. 



^ Forty years after this the author rode on mule back over this same path not mucli improved, and it was indeed in 

 many places a rough way. 



