A CHAPTER ON HAWAIIAN 

 HISTORY. 



In the pre-historic days of Hawaii, for 500 years, as the 

 bards sing, before Captain Cook landed, and indeed for some 

 years afterwards, each island had its king, chiefs, and internal 

 dissensions ; and incessant wars, with a reckless waste of human 

 life, kept the whole group in turmoil. Chaotic and legendary 

 as early Hawaiian history is, there is enough to show that there 

 must have been regularly organized communities on the islands 

 for a very long period, with a civilization and polity which, 

 though utterly unworthy of Christianity, were enlightened and 

 advanced for Polynesian heathenism. 



The kingly office was hereditary, and the king's power abso- 

 lute. On the different islands the kings and chiefs who together 

 constituted a privileged class, admitted the priesthood to some 

 portion of their privileges, probably with the view of enslaving 

 the people more completely through the agency of religion, 

 and held the lower classes in absolute subserviency by the most 

 rigorous of feudal systems, which included hana poalima, or 

 forced labour, and the tabu, well known throughout Polynesia. 



A very interesting history begins with Kamehameha the 

 Great, the Conqueror, or the Terrible j the " Napoleon of the 

 Pacific," as he has been called. He united an overmastering 

 ambition to a singular gift of ruling, and without education, 

 training, or the help of a single political precedent to guide 

 him, animated not only by the lust of conquest, but by the 

 desire to create a nationality, he subjugated every thing that 

 his canoes could reach, and fused a rabble of savages and 

 chieftaincies into a united nation, every individual of which 

 to this day inherits something of the patriotism of the Con- 

 queror. 



