letter xxii.] NATIVE PECULIARITIES. 



213 



trouble is just a pilikia. They can't help it If they lose your 

 horse from neglecting to tether it, they only laugh when they 

 find you are wanting to proceed on your journey. Time, they 

 think, is nothing to any one. " What's the use of being in a 

 hurry ? " Their neglect of their children, a cause from which 

 a large proportion of the few that are born perish, is a part of 

 this universal carelessness. The crime of infanticide, which 

 formerly prevailed to a horrible extent, has long been extinct ; 

 but the love of pleasure and the dislike of trouble which par- 

 tially actuated it, are apparently still stronger among the women 

 than the maternal instinct, and they do not take the trouble 

 necessary to rear their infants. They give their children away, 

 too, to a great extent, and I have heard of instances in which 

 children have been so passed from hand to hand, that they are 

 quite ignorant of their real parents. It is an odd caprice in 

 some cases, that women who have given away their own 

 children are passionately attached to those whom they have 

 received as presents, but I have nowhere seen such tender- 

 mess lavished upon infants as upon the pet dogs that the 

 women carry about with them. Though they are so deficient 

 in adhesiveness to family ties, that wives seek other husbands, 

 and even children desert their parents for adoptive homes, the 

 tie of race is intensely strong, and they are remarkably affec- 

 tionate to each other, sharing with each other food, clothing, 

 and all that they possess. There are no paupers among them 

 but the lunatics and the lepers, and vagrancy is unknown. 

 Happily on these sunny shores no man or woman can be 

 tempted into sin by want. 



With all their faults, and their intolerable carelessness, all 

 the foreigners like them, partly from the absolute security 

 which they enjoy among them. They are so thoroughly 

 good-natured, mirthful, and friendly, and so ready to enter 

 heart and soul into all haole diversions, that the islands would 

 be dreary indeed if the dwindling race became extinct. 



Among the many misfortunes of the islands, it has been a 

 fortunate thing that the missionaries' families have turned out 

 so well, and that there is no ground for the common reproach 

 that good men's sons turn out reprobates. 



The Americans show their usual practical sagacity in mis- 

 sionary matters. In 1853, when these islands were nominally 

 Christianised, and a native ministry consisting of fifty-six pastors 

 had been established, the American Board of Missions, which 

 had expended during thirty-five years nine hundred and three 



