Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/252

 the island by the heavy rolling of the surf upon the beach.

About one-third of the distance from the shore to the ship we discovered a spring. We pulled out to it and found that the water was fresh and boiling hot.

While here at this island we visited Kealakeakua Bay, the place where Captain Cook was massacred. His monument was the stump of a cocoanut tree, on which  was a sheet of copper with the following inscription:

This sheet of copper and cap put on by Sparrowhawk,

September 13th, 1839,

In order to preserve this monument to the memory of Cook.

Give this a coat of tar.

Formerly the natives were very superstitious, and they sacrificed a great deal to the gods. They would visit the crater of Kilauea and throw in rolls of tapa, hogs, both  cooked and alive, bunches of bananas, and cocoanuts, as  offerings to the goddess Pele.

The evening before we left the volcano, one of the natives was caught in the act of throwing a calabash of  poe into the volcano as an offering to the dread goddess. He was ever after called by his Christian countrymen a "backslider."