he general number would seem to
have been ten or twelve.[151] But when King Kamehameha died in 1819, the
priest declared somewhat differently the custom in regard to human
sacrifice on such an occasion. When the corpse had been removed from the
king's own dwelling to a consecrated house for the performance of the
proper rites, a sacred hog was baked and offered to it by the priest;
for the dead king was now deemed to be a god. Then addressing the chiefs
and the new king, the priest spoke as follows: "I will now make known to
you the rules to be observed respecting persons to be sacrificed on the
burial of his body. If you obtain one man before the corpse is removed,
one will be sufficient; but after it leaves this house four will be
required. If delayed until we carry the corpse to the grave, there must
be ten; but after it is deposited in the grave, there must be fifteen.
To-morrow morning there will be a tabu, and if the sacrifice be delayed
until that time, forty men must die." However, on this occasion, no
human blood was shed, but three hundred dogs were sacrificed.[152] The
victims who were killed at the death of the king, princes, and
distinguished chiefs, and were buried with their remains, belonged to
the lowest class of society. In certain families the obligation of dying
with the different members of such or such a noble house was hereditary,
so that at the birth of a child it was known at whose death he must be
sacrificed. The victims knew their destiny, and their lot seems to have
had no terror for them.[153]

[151] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 145; U. Lisiansky, _op. cit._ p.
122.

[152] J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 189, 190. Compare J. Remy,
_op. cit._ pp. 125, 127; H. Bingham, _Residence of Twenty-one
Years in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 71.

[153] O. von Kotzebue, _Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea
and Beering's Straits_ (London, 1821), iii. 247.

At Honaunau, in the island of Hawaii, there was a sort of mausoleum in
which the bones of dead kings and princes were deposited. For some
reason it was spared in the general destruction of pagan monuments which
took place in 1819, and it was still almost intact when the missionary
Ellis visited and described it a few years later. It was a compact
building, twenty-four feet long by sixteen feet wide, built of the most
durable timber, and thatched with leaves. It stood on a bed of lava
jutting out into the sea, and was surrounded b