SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
187 
greatest acts of moral courage, which has perhaps ever been 
performed; and the actor was a woman, and, as we are 
pleased to call her, a savage. 
Kapiolani, the wife of Nahi, a female chief of the highest 
rank, had recently embraced Christianity; and desirous of 
propagating it, and of undeceiving the natives as to their 
false gods, she resolved to climb the mountain, descend into 
the crater, and, by thus braving the volcanic deities in their 
very homes, convince the inhabitants of the Island that God 
is God alone, and that the false subordinate deities existed 
only in the fancies of their weak adorers. Thus determined, 
and accompanied by a missionary, she, with part of her 
family, and a number of followers, both of her own vassals 
and those of other chiefs, ascended Peli. At the edge of 
the first precipice that bounds the sunken plain, many of 
her followers and companions lost courage and turned back: 
at the second, the rest earnestly entreated her to desist from 
her dangerous enterprise, and forbear to tempt the powerful 
gods of the fires. But she proceeded; and on the very verge 
of the crater, caused the hut we were now sheltered in to 
be constructed for herself and people. Here she was as¬ 
sailed anew by their entreaties to return home, and their 
assurances, that if she persisted in violating the houses of 
the goddess, she would draw on herself, and those with 
b b 2 
