and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon them.  He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of noble presence.  He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago.  A knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this:  “This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at a time when no missionary’s foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had never heard of the white man’s God; has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King—­and now look at him; an educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical information.  Look at him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are white men—­a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had never been out of it in his life time.  How the experiences of this old man’s eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!”

The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them.  I have just referred to one of these.  It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it and pray you to death.  Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of damaging prayer.  This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.

In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise.  Some native women of noble rank had as many as six husbands.  A woman thus supplied did not reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each in turn.  An understood sign hung at her door during these months.  When the sign was taken down, it meant “Next.”