CHARLES.  “The Sandwich Islands appear to me one of the most interesting groups, although the most isolated of all in North Polynesia.  They are ten in number,—­eight inhabited,—­and were named by their discoverer, Captain Cook, in honor of the Earl of Sandwich, a minister who had warmly promoted his labors.  The island of Owyhee, or more properly Hawaii, is the largest, being 415 miles in circumference.  It obtained a celebrity, as the scene of Captain Cook’s death, who was killed by the natives on the 14th of February, 1779.  A celebrity of a different kind now awaits it, as the focus of civilization in Polynesia.  The inhabitants have, with the assistance of the English and Americans, built twenty merchant-ships, with which they perform voyages to the north-west coast of America, and even visit Canton.  They used to sacrifice human victims, but were never cannibals; they tattoo their bodies, and the women tattoo the tips of their tongues.  Hawaii contains a tremendous volcano, the top of which is 16,000 feet above the level of the sea.  The whole island, indeed, is one complete mass of lava.  Christianity was introduced by the American missionaries in 1820, and is now the religion of the state.  Schools have been established, and churches built.  Honoruru, in the Island of Cahu, is the capital of the group.  Some of the houses are built of stone; but the natives still prefer living in their huts, so that the town is grotesquely irregular.  The principal public building is the English school, where children of both sexes are taught to read and write.  The place is altogether in a flourishing condition, and so advanced in the refinements of life, that the news-paper, lately established in the town, sets forth the following articles for sale:—­’Ladies’ shoes from Paris, Ices, and Eau de Cologne.’”

GRANDY.  “It is a great cause for thankfulness, that religion is spreading her benign influence over these volcanic isles.  The women who, truly speaking, were the most callous and obdurate, have exhibited bright and numerous proofs of that change of heart, which is the single end and aim of pure Christianity.  Kekupuhe, who in Cook’s days was one of the wives of the king of Hawaii, evinced the sincerity of her conversion, which took place in 1828, by learning to read when she was more than eighty years of age, and by inditing hymns in honor of the God of her old age.”

GEORGE.  “I cannot understand why they killed Captain Cook; and I have never read the account of his first visit to the Sandwich Islands:  have you, Charles?”

CHARLES.  “Yes, and a very interesting account it is.  On the first appearance of the English ships, the chiefs and priests, taking them for floating islands, imagined that their long-expected guardian spirit, ‘Etuah Orono,’ was arrived.  Hence Captain Cook was received with honor approaching to adoration, as they imagined him to be their ‘Orono.’  The king was absent at the time of his arrival; but