ple they are now, must be no less than divine; and the benevolence of Americans is richly paid back in the improvement effected in society, and the amelioration of man's temporal condition there, to say nothing of the souls we believe to have been saved, and the revenue of glory to God and the Lamb, from thousands of ransomed Hawaiians. History, in all its annals, shows nothing like this; compared with all other progressive improvements, it is A NATION BORN

IN A DAY.

Thus when Religion bids her spirit breathe,
And opens bliss above and woe beneath;

When God reveals his march through Nature's night,

His steps are beauty, and his presence light:

His voice is life-the dead in conscience start;

They feel a new creation in the heart.

And then, Humanity, thy hopes, thy fears,

How changed, how wond'rous! On this tide of years,
Though the frail barks in which thine offspring sail,
Their day, their hour, their moment with the gale,
Must perish, shipwreck only sets them free.

With joys unmeasured as eternity,

They ply on seas of glass their golden oars,
And pluck immortal fruits along the shores:
Nor shall THEIR cables fail, THEIR anchors rust,
Who wait the resurrection of the just.
Moor'd on the Rock of Ages, though decay
Molder the weak terrestrial frame away,
The trumpet sounds, and lo! wherever spread,
Earth, air, and ocean render back their dead;
And souls with bodies, spiritual and divine,
In the new heavens, like stars, forever shine.
TAWNY HAWAIIANS THEN THE IMAGE WEAR

OF HIM WHO ALL THEIR SINS ON HIS OWN CROSS DID BEAR.

CATALOGUE OF PRODUCTS.

99

CHAPTER V.

NATURAL PRODUCTIONS AND PHYSICAL PHENOMENA.

In placid indolence supinely bless'd,

A feeble race these beauteous isles possess'd;
Untamed, untaught, in arts and arms unskill'd,
Their patrimonial soil they rudely till'd,
Chased the free rovers of the savage wood,
Ensnared the wild bird, swam the scaly flood:
Or when the halcyon sported on the breeze,
In light canoes they skimm'd the rippling seas.
The passing moment all their bliss or care,
Such as their sires had been the children were:
From age to age, as waves upon the tide
Of stormless time, they calmly lived and died.
MONTGOMERY.

THE nutrimental products indigenous to the Sandwich Islands are simple and few in number; but the list of naturalized exotics is large, and constantly increasing by fresh imports from other lands, inasmuch as there is scarcely a plant of the torrid or temperate zones that will not readily make its home on the Hawaiian soil. The kalo, of several species, sweet potato, yam, brake-root, pia or arrow-root, and a plant which the natives call ki, were the only edible roots of consequence to be found at the time of their discovery. The two former, kalo and sweet potato, still constitute the Hawaiian staple for food. The natives, indeed, do not allow the name of ai, or food, to

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any thing but kalo, of which they are extravagantly fond.

This root is the Arum esculentum of botanists, or the plant commonly known as the wild Indian turnip. As found and cultivated at the Sandwich Islands, it is highly nutritious, mealy, and wholesome. It is of two kinds, the wet and dry kalo; the former grown always under water, which, when there is a brook, is let into a series of square beds or plats, sunk two or four feet below their borders, and let out again at one corner, when it has risen so as to cover all the plants, thus keeping a run of water through all the patches. It is estimated that forty square feet so cultivated will. support a man. The root is eleven months gaining its full size. The natives then pull it, cut off the tops, and reserve them for planting, and bake the root in stone ovens made in the ground. They then peel it with a shell, and pound it with a stone pestle in large, flat, wooden trays, that may correspond to the kneading-troughs of the ancient Israelites as an article of household furniture.

If it is to be kept some time or carried away, it is then done up very neatly in bundles of forty and fifty pounds, made of the long leaves of a species of the aloe, and called holoai. If to be immediately used for food, it is mixed with a little water in a calabash, or large gourd, from the size of a bushel to that of a peck, and set away to ferment. By that process it becomes a slightly acid and pasty food, of a bluish white color, called poi, which no Hawaiian would exchange for the best turtle soup or macaroni. You will see a party squatting around a calabash and dipping success

NATURALIZED

EXOTICS.

101

ively their forefingers into the pasty mass, and then with certain dexterous maneuvers, which a Hawaiian only knows, bring the poi-laden finger to a junction with the lips, with a smack of hearty satisfaction, such as no gourmand or toper could equal after a dram of Rhenish or best Madeira.

Foreigners make use of the root, boiled or baked, like a potato. The first missionaries had to subsist upon it almost entirely for some time, and it is now generally seen upon their tables, with or without the potato. Tolerable bread can be made of the poi and arrow-root mixed, which has to be resorted to sometimes at the out-stations of missionaries, when flour, brought round Cape Horn, is so hard that it has to be cut out with an ax, or so sour that saleratus can not cure it. The only indigenous fruits to be named are bananas of a very superior quality, the bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, a kind of native apple, called ohia, the wild. strawberry, and a species of whortle-berry, called ohelo, formerly sacred to the goddess of the volcano, the Cape gooseberry or poha, and the sugar cane.

A list of plants and fruits introduced from abroad, comprise wheat and barley (cultivated, as yet, but slightly), rice, raised by parties of Chinese settlers, Indian corn, and the Irish potato; the lime-tree, orange, lemon, fig, pomegranate, papaya, custard-apple, mango-tree, tamarind, guava, mulberry; anetto, pride of China; then the peach-tree, coffee-tree, cotton, tobacco, and indigo plants, delicious melons of every kind, the grape-vine, and a great variety of flowers and shrubs, all of which, except the peach-tree, attain to great perfection.

Forest-trees are the ko-a and ko-u; the first being the proper Hawaiian mahogany-tree, out of which the natives used to excavate their canoes, and which is now worked up into very beautiful furniture. Next are the ohia, a very hard and superior wood for fuel and timber; the fragrant sandal-wood, now almost extinct; the kukui or candle-nut-tree, from which there is made a very good paint-oil; the hau-tree; different species of acacia and mimosa, the kamana, laauhala, wiliwili, and other sui generis trees that have no English common name.

The ko-u is very ample and superb as a shade-tree, found chiefly by the sea-side. The ko-a belongs to the mountains, where it attains to great size and longevity; when young, it is a tree of rare beauty, with laurel-green, moon-shaped leaves, and sweet mimosalike blossoms. I have seen war canoes made of this tree in the canoe-house of Kuakini, alias John Adams, late governor of Hawaii, that were seventy feet long, and more than three feet deep, and would carry seventy men. They came down from Kamehameha the Great, and were those in which he passed with his warriors from island to island, when this Napoleon of the Pacific made the conquest of the entire Hawaiian Group, and meditated an expedition to the Society Islands also, twenty-seven hundred miles off.

Groves of the cocoa-nut palm-tree, one of the characteristic symbols of the tropics, are every where to be found growing in the sands by the sea-side, and in clefts of the grizzly lava, where nothing else will thrive. When young, no vegetable product in the whole range of nature can exceed the beauty of such