PROOFS OF

DEPOPULATION.

25

Ancient songs and genealogies of Hawaiian kings, preserved by tradition, give two thousand and ten years as the time elapsed since their settlement, allowing thirty years to a reign, which the linguist of the Exploring Squadron thinks allowable. These genealogies, however, can not be relied upon as accurate; but significant facts in connection with both the Sandwich, Society, and Friendly Islands show that the periods of commencing depopulation in each of these groups nearly synchronize with the times of their discovery by Europeans, or but a little precede it.

This melancholy decay has, doubtless, been hastened by contact with a new race, but it has by no means been caused by it. The accumulating vices of the Polynesian races, from bad to worse, had been slowly digging their graves for several generations prior to their discovery; and the crisis of their fate, when the natural laws they had been violating by their unnatural vices and crimes began to enforce their penalty, seems to have arrived coetaneously with, perhaps was precipitated by, their intercourse with foreigners.

Mr. Ellis says,* in respect to the Society and other neighboring islands, that, although no ancient monuments are found indicating that they were ever inhabited by a race much further advanced in civilization than those found on their shores by Wallis, Cook, and Bougainville, yet that race has evidently, at no very remote period, been much more numerous than it was when discovered by Europeans. "In the bottom of evPolynesian Researches, vol. i., p. 103.

B

ery valley, even to the recesses in the mountains, on the sides of the inferior hills, and on the brows of almost every promontory in each of the islands, monuments of former generations are still met with in great abundance. Stone pavements of their dwellings and court-yards, foundations of houses, and ruins of family temples, are numerous. All these relics are of the same kind as those observed among the natives at the time of their discovery, evidently proving that they belong to the same race, though to a more populous era of their history."

At the time when the nation renounced idolatry, the population was so much reduced that many of the more observant natives thought an old prophecy of a priest was about to be literally fulfilled, which said, The feau (hibiscus) shall grow, the farero (coral) shall spread or stretch out its branches, but man shall cease. Tati, the chief of Papara, talking with Mr. Davies on this subject in 1815, said with great emphasis, that "if God had not sent his word at the time he did, wars, infant murder, human sacrifices, &c., would have made an end of the small remnant of the nation."

A similar declaration was pathetically made by Pomare soon after, when some visitors from England waited upon him at his residence. He addressed them to this effect: "You have come to see us under circumstances very different from those under which your countrymen formerly visited our ancestors. They came in the era of men, when the islands were inhabited, but you are come to behold just the remnant of the people."