THROUGH HAWAII. 
325 
many spare only one; all the others are destroyed 
sometimes shortly after birth, generally during the first 
year of their age. 
The means by which it is accomplished, though 
numerous, it would be improper to describe. Kuakini, 
the governor of the island, in a conversation I had with 
him at Kairua, enumerated many different methods, 
several of which frequently proved fatal to the mother 
also. Sometimes they strangle their children, but more 
frequently bury them alive. 
Among the Society Islanders, who, while they were 
idolaters, probably practised infanticide more than any 
other natives in the Pacific, if the intended victim sur¬ 
vived only one day, and frequently not more than a few 
hours, it was generally saved. Depraved as they were, 
they could not afterwards sacrifice to a barbarous cus¬ 
tom an innocent babe, who seemed to look with confi¬ 
dence to its mother or its nurse, and unconsciously 
smiled upon those who stood by: hence the parties in¬ 
terested in the child’s destruction, which were the pa¬ 
rents themselves, or their relations, generally strangled 
it soon after its birth. But among the Sandwich 
Islanders, the infant, after living a week, a month, or 
even a year, was still insecure, as some were destroyed 
when nearly able to walk. 
It is painful to think of the numbers thus murdered. 
All the information we have been able to obtain, and 
the facts that have come to our knowledge in the 
neighbourhood where we resided, afford every reason 
to believe, that from the prevalence of infanticide two- 
thirds of the children perished. We have been told 
by some of the chiefs, on whose word we can depend, 
that they have known parents to murder three or four 
