] Hers were the roosts for the gamecocks.
The wilds of Ka-liu-wa'a my home,
30 That too my craft back to Kahiki;
This my farewell to Hawaii,
Land of the God's immigration.
Strangers we came to Hawaii;
A stranger thou, a stranger I,
35 Called Broad-edged-Ax:
I've read the cloud-omens in heaven.
It curls, it curls! his tail--it curls!
Look, it clings to his buttocks!
Faugh, faugh, faugh, faugh, uff!
40 What! Ka-haku-ma'a-lani your name!
Answer from heaven, oh Kane!
My song it is done!

If one can trust, the statement of the Hawaiian who
communicated the above mele, it represents only a portion of
the whole composition, the first canto--if we may so term
it--having dropped into the limbo of forgetfulness. The
author's study of the mele lends no countenance to such a
view. Like all Hawaiian poetry, this mele wastes no time with
introductory flourishes; it plunges at once in medias res.

Hawaiian mythology figured Pele, the goddess of the volcano,
as a creature of passion, capable of many metamorphoses; now
a wrinkled hag, asleep in a cave on a rough lava bed, with
banked fires and only an occasional blue flame playing about
her as symbols of her power; now a creature of terror, riding
on a chariot of flame and carrying destruction; and now as a
young woman of seductive beauty, as when she sought
passionate relations with the handsome prince, Lohiau; but in
disposition always jealous, fickle, vengeful.

Kama-pua'a was a demigod of anomalous birth, character, and
make-up, sharing the nature and form of a man and of a hog,
and assuming either form as suited the occasion. He was said
to be the nephew of Olopana, a king of Oahu, whose kindness
in acting as his foster father he repaid by the robbery of
his henroosts and other unfilial conduct. He lived the
lawless life of a marauder and freebooter, not confining his
operations to one island, but swimming from one to another as
the fit took him. On one occasion, when, the farmers of