LETTER XII.] 



KAPIOLANI. 



119 



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 ex- 

 reeded 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 com- 

 munities elsewhere, but they 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 disadvan- 

 tages has been that some of the vilest of the whites who roam 

 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 mis- 

 sionaries 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 inten- 

 tion to visit Kilauea, and dare the fearful goddess to do her 



