irS 



HA WAIT. 



[letter XII, 



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 6 feet 5 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 after- 

 wards, 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 proba- 

 tionary 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 assem- 

 blages 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 bear 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 20 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 



