the dead. When the missionary William Ellis was conversing with some of
the natives on that subject, they said that they had heard of it before
from a native priest named Kapihe, who had lived at their village in the
time of King Kamehameha. The priest told the king that at his death he
would see his ancestors, and that hereafter all the kings, chiefs, and
people of Hawaii would live again. When Ellis asked them how this would
be effected, and with what circumstances it would be attended, whether
they would live again in Hawaii or in Miru (Milu), the Hades of the
Sandwich Islands, they replied that there were two gods, who conducted
the departed spirits of their chiefs to some place in the heavens, where
the souls of kings and chiefs sometimes dwelt, and that afterwards the
two divine conductors returned with the royal and princely souls to
earth, where they accompanied the movements and watched over the
destinies of their survivors. The name of one of these gods was
Kaonohiokala, which means the eyeball of the sun; and the name of the
other was Kuahairo. Now Kapihe was priest to the latter god, and
professed to have received a revelation, in accordance with which he
informed King Kamehameha that, when the monarch should depart this life,
the god Kuahairo would carry his spirit to the sky and afterwards
accompany it back to earth again, whereupon his body would be restored
to life and youth; that he would have his wives again and resume his
government in Hawaii; that at the same time the existing generation
would see and know their parents and ancestors, and that all the people
who had died would rise again from the dead.[168] It is to be feared,
however, that the priest was a deceiver; for King Kamehameha has not yet
come to life again, and up to the present time the general resurrection
has not taken place in Hawaii.

[168] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iv. 144 _sq._

That must conclude what I have to say about the belief in immortality
and the worship of the dead in Polynesia, The notions which the
Polynesians entertained on this subject cannot but strike a civilised
European as childish, while the customs which they based on them must
appear to him in great part foolish, even where they were not barbarous
and cruel. How far such childish notions and foolish customs tend to
confirm or to refute the widespread, almost universal, belief in the
survival of the human soul after death, is a question which I mu