1832.] SANDWICH ISLANDS. 415 
and all proclamations are issued in his name. Of course, the 
queen regent has her sway over him, and always will. But it is 
to be hoped that he will rule with more wisdom, in some things, 
when he assumes the affairs of government altogether. 
The government is not, by any means, complicated in its forms ; 
every thing is plain and consistent. Taxes are paid in money, mats, 
articles of food, or sandal-wood. The public treasury is very low. 
The king pays for what he obtains from merchants in mats, &c., 
which are sold on the coast of Chili and Peru. The revenue amounts 
to something considerable in port cTiargeSj when the whalers 
come in after their cruise. Some months, sixty and seventy ves- 
sels are at anchor at the same time. But the government ac- 
knowledges a very heavy debt to our merchants, which it is de- 
sirous of paying. Some months before the arrival of the Potomac, 
Governor Boki, with many other chiefs, and about eighty natives, 
in the brig Tamehameha, sailed for an island where it was said 
much sandal-wood was to be had. They never returned, nor 
have they been heard of; and it has been supposed that they blew 
up the vessel, as there was a considerable quantity of powder on 
board, and the natives smoke at all times. By some carelessness 
of this kind it must have happened. Thus they lost the vessel, 
for which they have not yet paid, and the means of obtaining 
wherewith to pay most of their debts. 
The king owns one or two small vessels, but no men-of-war. 
There is little export among the islands, save the sandal-wood, and 
that is becoming very scarce, and the price much reduced in the 
Canton market. Many of the natives go on board whalers, and 
other vessels stopping at the island ; so that the Sandwich Islands 
will have many sailors, in course of time ; . and they are said to 
make remarkably good ones, and active ones too, though they 
have not that appearance. But they have no vessels of their own 
to go in, and but one or two are owned by merchants at the island. 
These islands must always be places of interest in the Pacific 
Ocean, lying, as they do, between the tracks of vessels bound to 
China and the East Indies, from the coast of California, and the 
whole of South America. They are also important as places of 
refreshment for whalers, after their long and hazardous cruise to 
capture the leviathan of the ocean. All these circumstances tend 
to render the Sandwich Islands of peculiar interest to the naviga- 
