five sisters as they recall their native land.  In the songs in the Halemano which the lover sings to win his lady and the chant in Lonoikamakahiki with which the disgraced favorite seeks to win back his lord, those places are recalled to mind in which the friends have met hardship together, in order, if possible, to evoke the same emotions of love and loyalty which were theirs under the circumstances described.  Hawaiians of all classes, in mourning their dead, will recall vividly in a wailing chant the scenes with which their lost friend has been associated.  I remember on a tramp in the hills above Honolulu coming upon the grass hut of a Hawaiian lately released from serving a term for manslaughter.  The place commanded a fine view—­the sweep of the blue sea, the sharp rugged lines of the coast, the emerald rice patches, the wide-mouthed valleys cutting the roots of the wooded hills.  “It is lonely here?” we asked the man. “Aole! maikai keia!” ("No, the view is excellent”) he answered.

The ascription of perfection of form to divine influence may explain the Polynesian’s strong sense for beauty.[5] The Polynesian sees in nature the sign of the gods.  In its lesser as in its more marvelous manifestations—­thunder, lightning, tempest, the “red rain,” the rainbow, enveloping mist, cloud shapes, sweet odors of plants, so rare in Hawaii, at least, or the notes of birds—­he reads an augury of divine indwelling.  The romances glow with delight in the startling effect of personal beauty upon the beholder—­a beauty seldom described in detail save occasionally by similes from nature.  In the Laieikawai the sight of the heroine’s beauty creates such an ecstasy in the heart of a mere countryman that he leaves his business to run all about the island heralding his discovery.  Dreaming of the beauty of Laieikawai, the young chief feels his heart glow with passion for this “red blossom of Puna” as the fiery volcano scorches the wind that fans across its bosom.  A divine hero must select a bride of faultless beauty; the heroine chooses her lover for his physical perfections.  Now we can hardly fail to see that in all these cases the delight is intensified by the belief that beauty is godlike and betrays divine rank in its possessor.  Rank is tested by perfection of face and form.  The recognition of beauty thus becomes regulated by express rules of symmetry and surface.  Color, too, is admired according to its social value.  Note the delight in red, constantly associated with the accouterments of chiefs.

Footnotes to Section III, 2:  Nomenclature

[Footnote 1:  In the Hawaiian Annual, 1890, Alexander translates some notes printed by Kamakau in 1865 upon Hawaiian astronomy as related to the art of navigation.  The bottom of a gourd represented the heavens, upon which were marked three lines to show the northern and southern limits of the sun’s path, and the equator—­called the “black shining road of Kane” and “of Kanaloa,”