HA W All AN Q UIDE B OK. 63 



of Hawaii. Though now barren and destitute, it was, 

 in Captain Cook's and in Vancouver's day, an import- 

 ant place, thronged with inhabitants. The slopes now 

 denuded of trees, and desolate, save for the cattle and 

 sheep that have been the prime cause of their destruc- 

 tion, were from the summit to the shore covered with 

 ferns, creepers, ti, flowering plants and all kinds of per- 

 ennial vegetation and the beach was studded with vil- 

 lages. 



To the archaaologist, nearly the whole coast line 

 of the island of Hawaii would be deeply interesting, in 

 its ruins of dwellings, cultivated spots, ancient water- 

 courses and heathen temples of a race, diminished, dur- 

 ing a hundred years, from 400,000 to less than 50,000 

 people. The causes that contributed in the past were 

 war, oppressions by the rulers, chiefs, and priests, 

 drunkenness and heathen sacrifices. Ellis in his tour 

 through Hawaii, says : "In the days of Umi, they 

 said, that king after being victorious in battle over the 

 kings of six of the divisions of Hawaii, was sacrificing 

 captives at Waipio, when the voice of Kuakino, his god, 

 was heard from the clouds, requiring more men. The 

 king kept sacrificing and the voice continued, calling 

 for more, till he had slain all his men except one, whom, 

 as he was a great favorite, he refused at first to give up ; 

 but the god being urgent, he sacrificed him also, and 

 the priest and himself alone remained. Upwards of 

 eighty victims, they added, were offered at that time, 

 in obedience to the audible demands of the insatiate de- 

 mon. About the year 1807, in the reign of Kameha- 

 meha the Great, a pestilence, called the Jeau okuu, the 

 exact nature of which is not known, swept off a vast 



