The origin of all the islands is purely volcanic. They were evidently formed by repeated eruptions from the bed of the ocean, depositing layer upon layer of volcanic matter, until, by this process and the gradual retirement of the sea, they have attained their present elevation. That process may still be seen going on in the largest of these islands (Hawaii), the interior of which would seem to be a vast reservoir or chamber of pent-up mineral fire, that lets off now and then some of its redundant elements by violent emission, as the lancet does from the arm of a man threatened with apoplexy. Kauai, the northwesternmost of the group, is the oldest made, as proved by the lava there being most disintegrated and frequently formed into basalt, like that of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Hawaii, which Captain Cook naturally enough miscalled Owyhee, is the southeasternmost and latest formed, being the only one where there is an active volcano, and that in the southern portion of this large island. Volcanic fire seems to be working to the south and east, toward the great furnaces in the range of the Andes, on the continent of South America.

When these islands first came to be inhabited can not be conjectured: whence is probable. Tradition reaches not to their origin, although curious fables of Hawaiian cosmogony do. But the natives preserve the genealogy of seventy-three kings, have the names of some of the South Pacific islands, knew the direction of the Society Islands, the nearest inhabited group, and have tales of their ancestors' coming thence; and their language is a dialect of the one great family of Polynesian tongues.

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When but a few years ago a Japanese junk came ashore at Waialua, on the Island of Oahu, and the natives saw the few survivors, men looking much like themselves, who had been drifting out of their course for nearly a year, and were five thousand miles from their homes, the missionary there told me that the first inference and talk of the natives was, "Now we know whence our fathers came from." A number of wellauthenticated facts like this point to the way in which all the islands of the Pacific may have been populated, and indicate, too, how the highly-civilized aborigines of South America may have had their beginning directly in a pair of Japanese blown off by a typhoon from the shores of Eastern Asia, instead of our having to trace them down from Behring's Straits through the length of North America.

The temperature of the Hawaiian Islands is equable, and the climate in every way salubrious. The Northeast Trades fan them perpetually on the windward side, and there is a regularly alternating, gentle land and sea breeze on the leeward side. The heat experienced is at no place in the group so great as at New Orleans in the summer time, or often at New York. For the year round there is always the purest ocean air, and a variety of climate can be commanded by change of situation that is not to be had elsewhere in the world within the same area. American constitutions, debilitated by the uniform heat of a leeward residence, find repair and health by moving to a station where they can be fanned by the trades; and persons constitutionally inclined to pulmonary disease when living at the sea-side, are benefited by recourse to the mountains.

The highest elevation of the mercury observed in ten years at Lahaina (the port on the leeward side of Maui, where most of the whale ships recruit) was 86 degrees of Fahrenheit; the lowest, 54 degrees; greatest difference in any one day, 19 degrees, a diurnal range which is of very rare occurrence, the difference between noon and morning, or noon and night, being seldom more than 10 degrees. The highest range observed is in June, the lowest in January. The greatest heat noted at Honolulu for twelve years was 90 degrees; greatest cold, 53 degrees; yearly mean, 75 degrees. Sudden weather-changes are unknown, nor are there storms of long continuance; and in every view the Sandwich Islands may be deemed one of the most healthful countries in the world. Families are reared in great safety, as the remarkable increase of the missionaries shows. Children there do not yet have to run the gauntlet of those formidable diseases that invade families in climes less favored with genial skies and perpetual summer.

The human constitution, it is evident, had attained to great perfection at the Sandwich Islands, and, their barbarism and sensuality to the contrary notwithstanding, there was high physical health and beauty before it was poisoned and marred by the mixture of abandoned foreigners, and the fresh provocatives to profligacy thereby given. The reverse is now painfully true, for disease is rife, and there is evidence of fatal, we fear irremediable, detriment having been done to the native constitution. Still, the physical aspect of Hawaiians, as a race, is pleasing. Their complexion is a clear olive brown, like that of the Spanish

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gipsy, or as near in color to the kernel of an English walnut as any thing we are familiar with. They call themselves KA-ULU, the red skin, in contrast with the KEOKEO race, or white skin.

Their features would make them to be classed by physiologists with the Malay division of the human family, from which, doubtless, they have sprung. They have generally thick lips and large nostrils, but the nose is not flat, nor the hair woolly, but uniformly strait and black. They have rather high cheek bones, like the North American Indian, and the erect European forehead, certainly not depressed or retreating, as one of the Sandwich Island histories erroneously characterizes it.

The national Hawaiian head is of a good size, and phrenologically well shaped, though it has a rather unduly large base,* and is flattened and straight at the back. This unnatural flatness of the occiput is thought to be owing to the way the mother holds her babe, which is by the left hand, supporting the back of its head. Frequently, too, they lay its little head in a hard gourd-shell on purpose to flatten it; and the way of all Hawaiians, when sleeping, is to lie upon the back, which tends to keep the skull of the form given it in childhood. It is deemed becoming to a man to have his hair very short behind; and manly beauty, in their view, depends more upon the plane figure

* Of three Polynesian skulls compared in the tables of Dr. Morton, the largest capacity of brain was eighty-four cubic inches. Whether either of the skulls was Hawaiian, does not appear — probably not. We think the average capacity of the Hawaiian head would be found larger, and to come much nearer to the mean of the modern Teutonic family, which is, by the same table, ninety-two cubic inches.

and breadth of the occiput than upon the height and fullness of the forehead. We have often heard them wonder at what they deem the fondness of foreigners for round heads.

In person the Hawaiians are well formed, large limbed, and somewhat taller than the average of Americans. The race of the high chiefs especially was large, athletic, and finely proportioned. We have seen among the few that survive specimens of muscular power and manly beauty that might be the archetypes of Jupiter Tonans or Apollo Belvidere. The chief women are enormously big and unwieldly; but the impression of their greatness, as of the size of unclad savages generally, and of all people that dress loosely, like the Moors and Turks, is apt to be exaggerated and deceptive in the view of those that are not used to the sight of the human form in flowing robes or the state of nature. This consideration alone may account, in great part, for the tales of early voyagers as to the giant size of Patagonians and certain tribes of South Sea islanders; and it has had much to do in originating the idea so generally prevalent of the peculiar handsomeness of Persians, Greeks, and Turks. Let them be seen in the close coat, or strait jacket, or fashionable corset-boards of the occidental dress, and the illusion will straightly vanish.

Ethnologically considered, the Hawaiian race must rank high, both in its physique and morale. The forehead, as we have intimated, rises after the European model, and the common facial angle is nearer to the Caucasian than the Malayan type. I have had in possession a skull with all the teeth, which I picked