“See man from Nature rising slow to Art.”—POPE.
Mauna Kea, the highest mountain of Hawaii, occupies the northern portion of the island. In some places it descends in grassy slopes, sufficiently gentle to form plains, dotted here and there with the many armed pandanus and the thickly leaved kukui trees. From the resinous nuts of the latter the natives obtained their torches, while its rich foliage and grand proportions made it equally valuable for timber or shade.
At the distance of some twenty miles from the bay where the caravel was wrecked, there was a level and extensive plain fringed with forests of the above named trees, and backed by the snow-topped mountains. The front afforded a wide-spread view of the ocean, the breezes from which, added to an elevation of several thousand feet, gave it a climate much cooler and more bracing than that of the coast. On this account, and from its natural beauties, it had from time immemorial been used by the Hawaiians as a spot on which to celebrate public games or sacred festivals. Its verdant and carefully irrigated soil afforded food for the numerous priests who belonged to the different “heiaus” or temples to be seen within its limits. These were built of basaltic stones, some of which were of great size, and nicely adjusted together without cement, according to their natural fractures. Within the walls, which were massive and high, were the houses of the priests and the shrines where were deposited the most sacred images. Each chief of importance had his family temple, around which had grown up villages, to accommodate himself and retainers in their periodical visits to this upland region.
For a month previous to the wreck, many thousands of the islanders had been gathered under their chiefs to engage in their annual athletic games. Their principal object was, however, to celebrate the festival of Lono. Now Lono was one of those mythic beings so common in America and Polynesia, who in ages long gone by, after having done many notable things for the benefit of their fellow men, disappear like Moses in some inexplicable manner, leaving behind them a memory always green, and a sort of implied promise to return with greater benefits in store. Indeed, heroes of this character appear amid much traditionary fog, in the youth of almost all nations. In this instance, Lono had killed his wife in a fit of jealousy, instigated by a Hawaiian Iago out of malice equal to the Venetian’s. Love’s reaction and contrition drove him frantic. After founding games in honor of his victim, he put out to sea in an oddly shaped canoe,—so the tradition runs,—promising to return some future day with many good things to enhance his welcome. Whether it was from love to him, or from faith in the expected increase of comforts and riches, that they so venerated his memory, I am at this day unable to say, but certain it is that a more popular god did not exist in Hawaii. His festival was therefore celebrated with peculiar unction.