through the woods down to Waipio, disappeared from his view.
In connection with the foregoing, Professor W. D. Alexander kindly
contributes the following:
"The valley of Waipio is a place frequently celebrated in the songs
and traditions of Hawaii, as having been the abode of Akea and Milu,
the first kings of the island....
"Some said that the souls of the departed went to the _Po_ (place
of night), and were annihilated or eaten by the gods there. Others
said that some went to the regions of Akea and Milu. Akea (Wakea),
they said, was the first king of Hawaii. At the expiration of his
reign, which terminated with his life at Waipio, where we then were,
he descended to a region far below, called Kapapahanaumoku (the island
bearing rock or stratum), and founded a kingdom there. Milu, who was
his successor, and reigned in Hamakua, descended, when he died, to
Akea and shared the government of the place with him. Their land is
a place of darkness; their food lizards and butterflies. There are
several streams of water, of which they drink, and some said that
there were large kahilis and wide-spreading kou trees, beneath which
they reclined." [4]
"They had some very indistinct notion of a future state of happiness
and of misery. They said that, after death, the ghost went first to
the region of Wakea, the name of their first reputed progenitor, and
if it had observed the religious rites and ceremonies, was entertained
and allowed to remain there. That was a place of houses, comforts,
and pleasures. If the soul had failed to be religious, it found no
one there to entertain it, and was forced to take a desperate leap
into a place of misery below, called Milu.
"There were several precipices, from the verge of which the unhappy
ghosts were supposed to take the leap into the region of woe; three in
particular, one at the northern extremity of Hawaii, one at the western
termination of Maui, and the third at the northern point of Oahu." [5]
Near the northwest point of Oahu is a rock called Leina Kauhane, where
the souls of the dead descended into Hades. In New Zealand the same
term, "Reinga" (the leaping place), is applied to the North Cape. The
Marquesans have a similar belief in regard to the northermost island
of their group, and apply the same term, "Reinga," to their Avernus.
VI
LONOPUHA; OR, ORIGIN OF THE ART OF HEALING IN HAWAII
_Translated by Thos. G. Thrum_
During the time that Milu was residi
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