of social existence which they
have known in their native lands. Indeed Oahu, though without the
salubrious, agreeable climate of Maui, is still a place of much
interest; and from its delightful position, and fine scenery, well
worthy of all the commendation that voyagers bestow upon it.

CHAPTER XLIV.

King Kammehamma, or Kamme, as he is familiarly called, is the third of
his race: his ancestors were fierce, ungovernable gentlemen, who, in the
good old times, clubbed and killed--perhaps ate, too--nobody knows--a
great number of their enemies; but without tracing the historic truth of
these remote events, it is only necessary to state, that his present
majesty has been invested with the purple, and is, to all formal
appearances, the chief potentate of the islands.

The government is a complicated piece of political machinery, with a
constitution, and masses of subtle laws, equal in magnitude to the huge
proportions of a Chinese dictionary. There is a Legislative Assembly of
Kanakas, Ministers of State, War, Finance, Solicitors-general, an army,
a navy, and a court! This is not half, but it makes one dizzy to think
of it all at once: however, on due reflection, it is not quite so
complicated an affair after all! The government is simplified by two
bosom friends of the King--Mr. Robert Crichton Wyllie, Minister of
foreign relations; and Mr. G. P. Judd, Minister of finance. The former
is a very clever Scotch gentleman, somewhat inflated with the royal
trust reposed in him, and has, moreover, the _cathoethes scribendi_ to a
most melancholy and voluminous extent; yet he is an agreeable person,
and gives good dinners, and I have not the heart to say a syllable to
his disparagement, although I have not had the felicity of testing his
cuisine!

But Mr. Judd is the Magnus Apollo of the Island. Kamme, or the Lonely
One--as the word signifies--is his puppet, and most particularly lonely
he keeps him! The King is Punch, and Judd is Judy, and the Lonely One is
jumped about and thumped, and the wires are pulled unremittingly. Judd
is his prime counsellor, his parliament, father confessor and ghostly
adviser--his temperance lecturer, purse-bearer, and factotum generally.
There was a rumor, too, in courtly circles, that an order of nobility
was to be established, and then we shall have, probably, Baron Judd,
Peer of the Realm and Regent of the Kingdom. One would naturally suppose
that a staunch democrat from the Model Repub