dwich Islands_, pp. 31 _sq._; J. J. Jarves,
_op. cit._ pp. 50-52; J. Remy, _op. cit._ pp. xxxviii _sq._, 159
_sqq._

The system seems to have been found at last too burdensome to be borne
even by the king, who under it was forbidden to touch his food with his
own hands, and had to submit to having it put into his mouth by another
person, as if he were an infant.[33] Whatever his motive, Liholiho, son
of Kamehameha, had hardly succeeded his father on the throne of Hawaii
when he abolished the system of taboo and the national religion at a
single blow. This remarkable reformation took place in November 1819.
When the first Christian missionaries arrived from America, some months
later, March 30th, 1820, they were astonished to learn of a peaceful
revolution, which had so opportunely prepared the way for their own
teaching.[34]

[33] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 388.

[34] L. de Freycinet, _Voyage autour du Monde, Historique_, ii.
603; O. von Kotzebue, _Neue Reise um die Welt_, ii. 109 _sqq._;
W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 30, 126 _sqq._, 137, 204, 312; C. S.
Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, pp. 31, 32 _sq._;
Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 378 _sq._, 397 _sq._, 442
_sq._; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 197 _sq._, 201; J. Remy,
_op. cit._ pp. lxv, 133 _sqq._; H. Bingham, _Residence of
Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands_ (Hartford, 1849), pp.
69 _sqq._ King Kamehameha the First died 8th May 1819.

Sec. 5. _Religion, the Gods_

Of the native Hawaiian religion, as it existed before the advent of
Europeans and the conversion of the people to Christianity, we possess
no adequate account. The defect is probably due in great measure to the
readiness with which the islanders relinquished their old faith and
adopted the new one. The transition seems to have been effected with
great ease and comparatively little opposition; hence when the
missionaries settled in the islands a few months after the formal
abolition of the ancient religion, paganism was already almost a thing
of the past, and the Christian teachers were either unable or perhaps
unwilling to record in detail the beliefs and rites which they regarded
as false and pernicious. Be that as it may, we possess no such
comparatively full and accurate records of the old Hawaiian religion, as
we possess, for example, of the old pagan religion of the Tongans and
the Samoans, who clung much more pertinaciously to the