his class belonged the
famous shark Niuhi (verse 5).]

[Footnote 419: _Papa-ku o Lono_. This was one of the underlying
strata of the earth that must be passed before reaching
_Milu_, the hades of the Hawaiians. The cosmogony of the
southern Polynesians, according to Mr. Tregear, recognized
ten _papa_, or divisions. "The first division was the earth's
surface; the second was the abode of Rongo-ma-tane and
Haumia-tiketike; ... the tenth was Meto, or Ameto, or
Aweto, wherein the soul of man found utter extinction." (The
Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, by Edward Tregear,
F.R.G.S., etc., Wellington, New Zealand, 1891.)]

[Footnote 420: Verses 8 and 9 are from an old proverb which the
Hawaiians put into the following quatrain:

A pua ka wiliwili,
A nanahu ka mano;
A pua ka wahine u'i,
A nanahu ke kanawai.

[Translation]

When flowers the wiliwili,
Then bites the shark;
When flowers a young woman.
Then bites the law.

The people came to take this old saw seriously and literally,
and during the season when the wiliwili (Erythrina
monosperma) was clothed in its splendid tufts of brick-red,
mothers kept their children from swimming into the deep sea
by setting before them the terrors of the shark.]

[Translation]

_Song_

Alas! I am seized by the shark, great shark!
Lala-kea with triple-banked teeth.
The stratum of Lono is gone,
Torn up by the monster shark,
5 Niuhi with fiery eyes,
That flamed in the deep blue sea.
Alas! and alas!
When flowers the wili-wili tree,
That is the time when the shark-god bites.
10 Alas! I am seized by the huge shark!
O blue sea, O dark sea,
Foam-mottled sea of Kane!
What pleasure I took in my dancing!
Alas! now consumed by the monster shark!

Who would imagine that a Hawaiian would ever picture th