Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/62



there were those who taught how "to strangle and break men's bones, and how to despatch a man with one blow of the fist without bruising him." Any weakness or infirmity was a reason for abuse. Their old men, whose tenacity of life was a source of displeasure to them, they hurried into their graves, reversing the ancient sequence of death and burial; and little children, who had not begun to make any figure in life, they sent too hastily to their last accounts. They recognized nothing like the marriage relation, every man attaching to himself as many women as he chose, and every woman as many men as her desires prompted. What was a brother or a sister no one knew; who was one's father he could not tell, and after a few years of age mothers could hardly designate their offspring. They were a nation having none but brutal ideas, and it is not strange that in their language is no expansion or elasticity, and no synonyms by which it is possible to express any delicate shade of thought. Their life was the life of alternate crimes and repose, and their language is full of words to designate the former state; but in the current of their monotonous degradation, there was no ripple of virtue, and in their language is no word for chastity, for modesty, for virtue, or for any noble or refined sentiment. There is nothing like gratitude in the race, and their is no word in their language for rendering thanks. Yet, in view of the moral darkness that impended over them, it is perhaps doubtful whether they were absolutely a bad race. After nearly half a century of lifting up, it is much more doubtful if we can say they are a good people.

In the hands of the chiefs were held the lives and fortunes of every one of the people. They were the most eminent, physical representatives of the race. In the time of peace they indulged to its fullest extent their indolence, one of the characteristics of the people, gorging

themselves with food, reclining upon couches of mats made from the split leaf of an indigenous tree. By them stood servants to brush away the flies, feed them and dress them, and who were employed in luxurious kneading, shampooing, cracking the chieftainsjoints to renovate their system and excuse them from other exercise. Sometimes they were borne about upon the shoulders of their servants, but this custom became afterwards unfashionable, it being narrated of one chief, that being crabbed and petulant when carried to the brink of the precipice, the bearers retorted and relieved themselves of their burden by pitching him headlong over the steep place, "which," adds the historian, "put an end to him and the custom."

The chiefs had generally permanent establishments of their own, and held in menial service as officers of the household, "purloiners," "assassins," "cooks," "kahili (bunches of feathers) bearers," "spittoon carriers," and "pipe lighters;" the whole retinue eating, drinking, cooking and sleeping in common. Having complete control over the property, lives and liberty of the people, the record of their lives was often dark and bloody beyond description. The prisoners in war, especially if ancient enemies, 'were sacrificed to some god, or were roasted and eaten, for then the victors were certain of their destiny. Most of them died violent deaths, and it is noted as a marked and wonderful event in their history, that one, Luamuo, actually died a natural death amid his court, which was accounted as a reward for his extraordinary merits. But there were degrees of brutality even among these savage despots. It is remembered that Huakau, an ancient king of Maui, seeing a face more handsomely tattooed than his own, would have the head removed and in his presence horribly mangled; and a hand or a leg comelier than his own would be cut down as