the taboo house on the
borders of Tahiti.

Then, The Woman of the Twilight placed the government upon the seer; so
did Laieikawai, the one called The Woman of the Twilight, and she lived
as a god, and to her the seer bowed down and her kindred, according to
Moanalihaikawaokele's word to her. And so Laieikawai lived until her
death.

And from that time to this she is still worshiped as The Woman of the
Twilight.

(THE END)

NOTES ON THE TEXT

CHAPTER I

[Footnote 1: Haleole uses the foreign form for wife, _wahine mare_,
literally "married woman," a relation which in Hawaiian is represented
by the verb _hoao_. A temporary affair of the kind is expressed in
Waka's advice to her granddaughter, "_O ke kane ia moeia_," literally,
"the man this to be slept with".]

[Footnote 2: The chief's vow, _olelo paa_, or "fixed word," to slay all
his daughters, would not be regarded as savage by a Polynesian audience,
among whom infanticide was commonly practiced. In the early years of the
mission on Hawaii, Dibble estimated that two-thirds of the children born
perished at the hands of their parents. They were at the slightest
provocation strangled or burned alive, often within the house. The
powerful Areois society of Tahiti bound its members to slay every child
born to them. The chief's preference for a son, however, is not so
common, girls being prized as the means to alliances of rank. It is an
interesting fact that in the last census the proportion of male and
female full-blooded Hawaiians was about equal.]

[Footnote 3: The phrase _nalo no hoi na wahi huna_, which means literally
"conceal the secret parts," has a significance akin to the Hebrew rendering
"to cover his nakedness," and probably refers to the duty of a favorite to
see that no enemy after death does insult to his patron's body. So the
bodies of ancient chiefs are sewed into a kind of bag of fine woven coconut
work, preserving the shape of the head and bust, or embalmed and wrapped in
many folds of native cloth and hidden away in natural tombs, the secret of
whose entrance is intrusted to only one or two followers, whose
superstitious dread prevents their revealing the secret, even when offered
large bribes. These bodies, if worshiped, may be repossessed by the spirit
and act as supernatural guardians of the house. See page 494, where the
Kauai chief sets out on his wedding embassy with "the embalmed bodies of
his ancestors." Compare, for the service