THROUGH HAWAII, 
327 
criminal. Some of the natives have told us that chil¬ 
dren were formerly sacrificed to the sharks infesting 
their shores, and which through fear they had deified; 
but as we have never met with persons who have ever 
offered any, or seen others do it, this possibly may be 
only report. The principal motive with the greater 
part of those who practise it, is idleness; and the 
reason most frequently assigned, even by the parents 
themselves, for the murder of their children, is, the 
trouble of bringing them up. In general they are of a 
changeable disposition, fond of a w andering manner of 
life, and find their children a restraint, preventing 
them, in some degree, from following their roving incli¬ 
nations. Like other savage nations, they are averse 
to any more labour than is absolutely necessary. 
Hence they consider their children a burden, and are 
unwilling to cultivate a little more ground, or under¬ 
take the small additional labour necessary to the sup¬ 
port of their offspring during the helpless periods of 
infancy and childhood. In some cases, when the child 
has been sickly, and the parents have grown tired of 
nursing and attending it* they have been known, in 
order to avoid further attendance and care, to bury it 
at once; and we have been credibly informed, that 
children have been buried alive, merely because of the 
irritation they have discovered. On these occasions, 
when the child has cried more than the parents, parti¬ 
cularly the mother, could patiently bear, instead of 
clasping the little sufferer to her bosom, and soothing 
by caresses the pains which, though unable to tell 
them, it has probably felt, she has, to free herself from 
this annoyance, stopped its cries by thrusting a piece 
of tapa into its mouth, dug a hole in the floor of the 
