368 
MISSIONARY TOUR 
ing with respect to the separate existence of the soul, 
the resurrection of the body, and the general judgment 
at the last day. The account of the raising of the 
widow’s son, and the calling of Lazarus from the grave 
after he had been dead four days, seemed greatly to 
interest the natives. We afterwards endeavoured to 
learn from them something respecting their opinions 
of a state of existence after death. But all they said 
upon the subject was so contradictory, and mixed with 
fiction, that it could not be discovered whether they 
had any definite idea of the nature, or even the exist¬ 
ence, of such a state. Some said that all the souls of 
the departed went to the Po, (place of night,) and were 
annihilated, or eaten by the gods there. Others said, 
that some went to the regions of Akea and Miru. Akea, 
they said, was the first king of Hawaii. At the expi¬ 
ration of his reign, which terminated with his life at 
Waipio, the place where we then were, he descended 
to a region far below, called Kapapahanaumoku,* (the 
island-bearing rock, or stratum,) and founded a king¬ 
dom there. Miru, who was his successor, and reigned 
in Hamakua, descended, when he died, to Akea, and 
shared the government of the place with him. Their 
land is a place of darkness; their food lizards and 
butterflies. There are several streams of water, of 
which they drink, and some said there were large 
Kahiris,+ and wide-spreading kou-trees, beneath which 
* Compounded of Ka papa , the rock, or stratum of rock 
hanau, to bear or bring forth; and moku> an island. 
+ Though the Kahiris were usually small, resembling the one 
represented in the plate of the native dance at Kairua, they 
were sometimes upwards of twenty feet high; the handle twelve 
or fifteen feet long, beautifully covered with tortoise shell and 
the ivory of whales’ teeth; and the upper part formed with red, 
