stitution of the women took
place. The queens, and the widow of the deceased, were alone exempted.
When the captain of a ship that lay in the harbour remonstrated with the
king upon these disgraceful scenes, he answered, that such was the law,
and he could not prevent them."[145]

[145] A. Campbell, _Voyage round the World_, pp. 142 _sq._

To these enormities the French navigator L. de Freycinet bore similar
testimony a few years later. He says: "The despair which is affected
after the loss of royal personages or great nobles presents also a
remarkable resemblance to what takes place under similar circumstances
among the inhabitants of the Marianne Islands. When we landed in Owhyhi
[Hawaii], signs of sorrow everywhere presented themselves to our eyes
and witnessed to the excesses that had been committed at the recent
death of Tamehameha. At such a crisis anarchy displays all its horrors:
the laws and the rules of taboo are broken without shame: the prohibited
foods are devoured without scruple, chiefly by the women: the rights of
property are ignored; force becomes the supreme law: the voice of chiefs
is powerless: old enmities are avenged by blood or pillage: in a word,
incredible scenes of disorder, of cruelty, and of lust are everywhere
renewed under the stimulus of impunity. Calm does not begin to reign
again until the heir is definitely invested with the royal power. Such
is the mode in which the common people, freed for the moment from all
restraint, express the grief which they are supposed to feel at the
death of their sovereign."[146]

[146] L. de Freycinet, _Voyage autour du Monde, Historique_, ii.
602.

The early missionaries to Hawaii also testified to the disorders which
prevailed on these occasions, though they seem not to have witnessed
them. From their accounts we gather that at such times the rights of
property were as little respected as the chastity of women. "On such an
occasion," says Stewart, "every restraint was cast off, and all were in
the habit of following the impulse of any and every wild passion that
might seize them. Rights of person or of property were no longer
regarded; and he who had the greatest muscular powers committed whatever
depredation he chose, and injured any one he thought proper. Even the
chiefs lost their ordinary pre-eminence, and could exert no influence of
restraint on the excesses of their subjects. It was the time of
redressing private wrongs, by committ