TRAVELS IN THE CALXFORNIAS. 41 
Hawaii came forth, communicated to the pulpy land a gyra¬ 
tory motion, made it come around him, and assume a per¬ 
manent form. Vancouver replied, ‘ right.’ 
a I am sixty-five years old and must die soon.” 
I was exceedingly interested in these conversations with 
this remarkable woman. She had been one of the waves ot 
Kamehameha the First; had commanded his navy of war- 
canoes, during his conquests, and was at the time of my in¬ 
terview with her the acting executive of Maui, and a 
scholar in the Missionary Sabbath school! 
I remained three months in these beautiful islands, en¬ 
joying the revelations of these chronicler of old and curious 
times. The king, chiefs, foreign residents and Missionaries, 
perceiving my avidity in gathering information respecting 
the country and its people, rendered me every aid in their 
power to facilitate my inquiries. Nor do I ever expect 
again to find a richer field of the strange, the beautiful, the 
■wonderful and the sublime, than wras there presented to me. 
The legends of a thousand generations of men, living 
apart from the rest of mankind, among the girding depths 
of the Pacific seas ; the stories of their gods and goddesses ; 
the tales of their wars ; the fate of bad princes whom their 
deities reprimanded from the skies ; the beatification of the 
good on whom their divinities scattered blessings; their 
forms of government; their religious ceremonies ; their 
genealogies; their poetry, more of it than Greece ever had, 
and still sung by bards travelling from village to village; 
their dances; their rejoicings at a birth; their wailings 
over the dead, and, the solemn ceremonies of their burials ; 
are a few of the interesting subjects investigated. 
The intense interest, as w T ell as the amount of writing re¬ 
quired to exhibit these matters, will furnish my best apology 
for passing them in this place. They may hereafter appear 
in a separate volume. But I cannot allow my readers to 
pass from the Hawaiian kingdom, without presenting to their 
notice the interesting fact, that a hundred and seven thorn 
