u, clad in a red robe and crowned with his
English diadem, it was almost as an equal that she met and spoke to him.
"(Son of) heaven, I name to you the possessions of your father; here are
the chiefs, there are the people of your father; there are your guns,
here is your land. But let you and me enjoy that land together." He must
have known already she was a free-eater, and there is no doubt he
trembled at the thought of that impiety and of its punishment; yet he
consented to what seems her bold proposal. The same day he met his own
mother, who signed to him privately that he should eat free. But
Liholiho (the poor drunkard who died in London) was incapable of so much
daring: he hung long apart from the court circle with a clique of the
more superstitious; and it was not till five months later, after a
drinking bout in a canoe at sea, that he was decoyed to land by stronger
spirits, and was seen (perhaps scarce conscious of his acts) to eat of
a dog, drink rum, and smoke tobacco, with his servant women. Thus the
food tabu fell finally at court. Ere it could be stamped out upon
Hawaii, a war must be fought; wherein the chief of the old party fell in
battle; his brave wife Manono by his side, mourned even by the
missionary Ellis.

The fall of one tabu involved the fall of others; the land was plunged
in dissolution; morals ceased. When the missionaries came (April 1820),
all the wisdom in the kingdom was prepared to embrace the succour of
some new idea. Kaahumanu early ranged upon that side, perhaps at first
upon a ground of politics. But gradually she fell more and more under
the influence of the new teachers; loved them, served them; valorously
defended them in dangers, which she shared; and put away at their
command her second husband. To the end of a long life, she played an
almost sovereign part, so that in the ephemerides of Hawaii, the
progresses of Kaahumanu are chronicled along with the deaths and the
accessions of kings. For two successive sovereigns and in troublous
periods, she held the reins of regency with a fortitude that has not
been called in question, with a loyalty beyond reproach; and at last, on
5th June 1832, this Duke of Wellington of a woman made the end of a
saint, fifty-seven years after her marriage with the conqueror. The date
of her birth, it seems, is lost; we may call her seventy.

Kaahumanu was a woman of the chiefly stature and of celebrated beauty;
Bingham admits she was "_beautiful for