in this year, 1873, the natives of these islands
are, there is reason to believe, the most generally educated people in the
world. There is scarcely a Hawaiian--man, woman, or child--of suitable
age but can both read and write. All the towns and many country localities
possess substantial stone or, more often, framed churches, of the oddest
New England pattern; and a compulsory education law draws every child into
the schools, while a special tax of two dollars on every voter, and an
additional general tax, provide schools and teachers for all the children
and youth.

[Illustration: KAWAIAHO CHURCH--FIRST-NATIVE CHURCH IN HONOLULU.]

Nine hundred and three thousand dollars were given by Christian people in
the United States during thirty-five years to accomplish this result; and
to-day the islands themselves support a missionary society, which sends
the Gospel in the hands of native missionaries into other islands at its
own cost, and not only supports more than a dozen "foreign" missionaries,
but translates parts of the Bible into other Polynesian tongues.

Nor was exile from their homes and kindred the only privation the
missionaries suffered. They came among a people so vile that they had not
even a conception of right and wrong; so prone to murder and pillage that
the first Kamehameha, the conqueror, gave as excuse for his conquest that
it was necessary to make the paths safe; so debauched in their common
conversation that the earlier missionaries were obliged for years rigidly
to forbid their own children not only from acquaintance with the natives
among whom they lived, but even from learning the native language, because
to hear only the passing speech of their neighbors was to suffer the
grossest contamination.

Of those who began this good work but few now remain. Most of them have
gone to their reward, having no doubt suffered, as well as accomplished,
much. Of the first band who came out from the United States, the only one
living in 1873 is Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston, a bright, active, and lively old
lady of seventy-five years, who drives herself to church on Sundays in a
one-horse chaise, and has her own opinions of passing events. How she has
lived in the tropics for fifty years without losing even an atom of the
New England look puzzles you; but it shows you also the strength which
these people brought with them, the tenacity with which they clung
to their habits of dress and living and thought, the remorsele