A year had passed. There was no iron on the island, consequently no means of building a vessel, which could carry the exiles back to Mexico. Their only hope lay in the possibility that some caravel, equipped as theirs had been for discovery, might sight Hawaii and explore its coasts. But this hope was so faint as rarely to form a theme of discussion; so they wisely identified themselves with the interests and welfare of their generous host, whose kindness and confidence grew with their stay.
Kiana and Juan became firm friends. The former had long since learned the origin and history of the shipwrecked party, as indeed had the more intelligent among his chiefs, but their superior knowledge, and the polite deference of the nobles towards them, continued to keep them in the same sacred relation to the common people as at first. This was the more useful, that it gave to their efforts to instruct them the sanction of religion.
To properly understand the condition of the people under the government of Kiana, it will be necessary to go more into detail. I have already observed, that their climate and soil combined that happy medium of salubrity and fertility, which gave ample returns in health and harvests, but did not dispense with care and labor. Hence, they were an active and industrious race. Nature was indeed a loving, considerate mother to them. As yet no noxious reptiles or insects infested the land; ferocious animals were equally unknown; storms were so rare as scarcely to be ever thought of, while the temperature was so even, that their language had no term to express the various changes and conditions of physical comfort or discomfort, we combine into the word weather. This, of course, was a sad loss to conversation, but no doubt a compensation for lack of this prolific topic existed somehow in their domestic circles.
The households of the chiefs were in one sense almost patriarchally constructed. “My people” had a meaning as significant as upon a slave plantation in America, with the difference that here they were only transferred with the soil. They were literally “my people;” and as with all purely despotic institutions, their welfare depended mainly upon the character of their lords.