which would not interest the reader as it
interested me, till he has learned what manner of woman Kaahumanu was.

CHAPTER IV

KAAHUMANU

Kamehameha the first, founder of the realm of the Eight Islands, was a
man properly entitled to the style of great. All chiefs in Polynesia are
tall and portly; and Kamehameha owed his life in the battle with the
Puna fishers to the vigour of his body. He was skilled in single combat;
as a general, he was almost invariably the victor. Yet it is not as a
soldier that he remains fixed upon the memory; rather as a kindly and
wise monarch, full of sense and shrewdness, like an old plain country
farmer. When he had a mind to make a present of fish, he went to the
fishing himself. When famine fell on the land, he remitted the tributes,
cultivated a garden for his own support with his own hands, and set all
his friends to do the like. Their patches of land, each still known by
the name of its high-born gardener, were shown to Ellis on his tour. He
passed laws against cutting down young sandal-wood trees, and against
the killing of the bird from which the feather mantles of the
archipelago were made. The yellow feathers were to be plucked, he
directed, and the bird dismissed again to freedom. His people were
astonished. "You are old," they argued; "soon you will die; what use
will it be to you?" "Let the bird go," said the King. "It will be for my
children afterwards." Alas, that his laws had not prevailed! Sandal-wood
and yellow feathers are now things of yesterday in his dominions.

The attitude of this brave old fellow to the native religion was, for
some while before his death, ambiguous. A white man (tradition says) had
come to Hawaii upon a visit; King Kalakaua assures me he was an
Englishman, and a missionary; if that be so, he should be easy to
identify. It was this missionary's habit to go walking in the morning
ere the sun was up, and before doing so, to kindle a light and make tea.
The King, who rose early himself to watch the behaviour of his people,
observed the light, made inquiries, learned of and grew curious about
these morning walks, threw himself at last in the missionary's path, and
drew him into talk. The meeting was repeated; and the missionary began
to press the King with Christianity. "If you will throw yourself from
that cliff," said Kamehameha, "and come down uninjured, I will accept
your religion: not unless." But the missionary was a man of parts; he
wro