The “contributions” in this translation of Mr. Brigham were privately printed by him some years ago, and the following note by him explains their origin.  It will be seen that Mr. Brigham translated the Mele, or chant of Kawelo, from the original.]

One evening, in the month of March, 1853, I landed at Hoopuloa, on the western shore of Hawaii.  Among the many natives collected on the beach to bid me welcome and draw my canoe up over the sand, I noticed an old man of average size, remarkably developed chest, and whose hairs, apparently once flaxen, were hoary with age.  The countenance of this old man, at once savage and attractive, was furrowed across the forehead with deep and regular wrinkles.  His only garment was a shirt of striped calico.

A sort of veneration with which his countrymen seemed to me to regard him only increased the desire I at first felt to become acquainted with the old islander.  I was soon told that his name was Kanuha, that he was already a lad when Alapai[1] died (about 1752), that he had known Kalaniopuu, Cook, and Kamehameha the Great.  When I learned his name and extraordinary age, I turned toward Kanuha, extending my hand.  This attention flattered him, and disposed him favorably toward me.  So I resolved to take advantage of this lucky encounter to obtain from an eye-witness an insight into Hawaiian customs before the arrival of Europeans.

A hut of pandanus had been prepared for me upon the lava by the care of a missionary.  I made the old man enter, and invited him to partake of my repast of poi,[2] cocoa-nut, raw fish, and roast dog.  While eating the poi with full fingers, Kanuha assured me that he had lived under King Alapai, and had been his runner, as well as the courier of Kalaniopuu, his successor.  So great had been Kanuha’s strength in his youth that, at the command of his chiefs, he had in a single day accomplished the distance from Hoopuloa to Hilo, more than forty French leagues.  When Cook died, in 1779, the little children of Kanuha’s children had been born.  When I spoke of Alapai to my old savage, he told me that it seemed to him a matter of yesterday; of Cook, it was a thing of to-day.

From these facts it may be believed that Kanuha was not less than one hundred and sixteen years old when I met him on this occasion.  This remarkable example of longevity was by no means unique at the Hawaiian Islands a few years since.  Father Marechal knew at Ka’u, in 1844, an aged woman who remembered perfectly having seen Alapai.  I had occasion to converse at Kauai with an islander who was already a grandfather when he saw Captain Cook die.  I sketched, at this very Hoopuloa, the portrait of an old woman, still vigorous, Meawahine, who told any who would hear her that her breasts were completely developed when her chief gave her as wife to the celebrated English navigator.

Old Kanuha was the senior of all these centenaries.  I took advantage of his willing disposition to draw from him the historical treasures with which his memory was stored.  Here, in my own order, is what he told me during a night of conversation, interrupted only by the Hawaiian dances (hulahula), and by some pipes of tobacco smoked in turn, in the custom of the country.