3330 NIMROD OF THE SEA.; OR, 



little grains which restrain the power of the sea, were victo- 

 rious over the volcanic rage of Pele. The sand ran back 

 and back forever, giving no rest to Pele. It filled her eyes 

 that she might not see, it filled her throat that she could not 

 breathe. Then she shook the land with earthquakes, and 

 the affrighted people fled to their canoes, lest the land should 

 sink in the sea; but the God of the Waters brought great 

 armies of little worms to prop the land with coral rocks. 

 Thus the sand and the worm restrained the earthquake and 

 volcano. Then Pele fled to Hawaii, and built up Mauna 

 Kea and Mauna Loa out of the solid lava rocks, and carried 

 her walls into the kingdom of the ice-king, where the feath- 

 ered snow caught the sand and carried it over the water- 

 falls into the ocean, whence it came, so that no longer do 

 the winds lift the beaches to war against Pele in Hawaii. 



The peculiarity of the crater of Haleakala at the present 

 time is the presence of vast beds and banks of sand and 

 gravel, which doubtless gave rise to this legend of the war 

 of the elements. 



The more I see of the Kanakas of the Sandwich Islands, 

 the more am I drawn to them. In my poor estimation, they 

 rise infinitely above the populations we sailors meet on the 

 main-land. The thriftlessness, dirt, indolence, superstition, 

 cowardice, and treachery which one meets in the mixed 

 breeds of the Spanish Main contrast badly with the un- 

 selfishness, the unfailing good -nature, the poetic tempera- 

 ment, and the courage to back us, in boat or on the yard- 

 arm, which characterize the brown-visaged children of the 

 isles. 



April 3 (Sunday). At daylight we were close in to the 

 outer harbor of Honolulu, and by the rising sun we dropped 

 anchor outside the coral reefs. The people are such rigid 

 Sabbatarians, under missionary influence, that no pilot is 

 permitted to point the way to the coming mariner on this 



