120 



HA WAIL 



[letter xit. 



worst. Her husband and many others tried to dissuade her, 

 but she was resolute, and taking with her a large retinue, she 

 took a journey of one hundred miles, mostly on foot, over the 

 rugged lava, till she arrived near the crater. There a priestess 

 of Pele met her, threatened her with the displeasure of the 

 goddess if she persisted in her hostile errand, and prophesied 

 that she and her followers would perish miserably. Then, as 

 now, ohelo berries grew profusely round the terminal wall of 

 Kilauea, and there, as elsewhere, were sacred to Peld, no one 

 daring to eat of them till he had first offered some of them to 

 the divinity. It was usual on arriving at the crater to break a 

 branch covered with berries, and turning the face to the pit 

 of fire, to throw half the branch over the precipice, saying, 

 " Pele, here are your ohelos. I offer some to you, some I also 

 eat," after which the natives partook of them freely. Kapiolani 

 gathered and eat them without this formula, after which she and 

 her company of eighty persons descended to the black edge of 

 Hale-mau-mau. There, in full view of the fiery pit, she thus 

 addressed her followers : — "Jehovah is my God. He kindled 

 these fires. I fear not Pele. If T perish by the anger of Pele, 

 then you may fear the power of Pele ; but if I trust in Jehovah, 

 and he should save me fro?n the wrath of Pele, when I break 

 through her tabus, then you must fear and serve the Lord 

 yehovah. All the gods of Hawaii are vain ! Great is 

 yehovaKs goodness in sending teachers to turn us from these 

 vanities to the living God and the way of righteousness ! " Then 

 they sang a hymn. I can fancy the strange procession winding 

 its backward way over the cracked, hot, lava sea, the robust 

 belief of the princess hardly sustaining the limping faith of her 

 followers, whose fears would not be laid to rest until they 

 reached the crater's rim without any signs of the pursuit of an 

 avenging deity. It was more sublime than Elijah's appeal on 

 the soft, green slopes of Carmel, but the popular belief in the 

 Goddess of the Volcano survived this flagrant instance of her 

 incapacity, and only died out many years afterwards. 



Besides these interesting reminiscences, I have been hearing 

 most thrilling stories from Mrs. Lyman and Mr. Coan of 

 volcanoes, earthquakes, and tidal waves. Told by eye-wit- 

 nesses, and on the very spot where the incidents occurred, they 

 make a profound, and, I fear, an incommunicable impression. 

 I look on these venerable people as I should on people who 

 had seen the Deluge, or the burial of Pompeii, and wonder that 

 they eat and dress and live like other mortals ! For they have 



