10 
SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
sures of the chiefs, and were generally laid up in caverns, 
the secret of which was seldom intrusted to many persons, 
and which might not be approached by a kaneka on pain of 
death. 
The ancient religion of the Sandwich Islands is as yet 
but imperfectly known to us. It probably varied but little 
from that of the South Sea Islands described in Cook’s 
Voyages*. The belief in a supreme being, the author of 
all nature, and the peculiar protector and father of the 
human race, was the foundation of their creed, in common 
with that of all the tribes of men who have begun to think 
of more than the supply of their physical wants. They 
deified the operations of nature, and placed between man 
and the supreme Creator a race of intermediate and gene¬ 
rally benevolent beings to support and comfort him. The 
progress to a grosser idolatry was necessarily the same as in 
other nations. Evil was personified, fear produced a depre¬ 
cating worship of hurtful divinities, and at the period of the 
discovery of these Islands the worship of the war-gods was 
the most conspicuous. We shall have occasion to notice 
frequently the adoration of the volcanic deities peculiar 
* See the 19th Chapter of Cook’s First Voyage, also Ellis’s Missionai-y Tour 
in Hawaii, p. 408. Also the Appendix to the first Missionary Voyage, pub¬ 
lished 1799, where there is an account of the superstitions of all the other 
Islands of the Pacific. 
