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Respecting the establishment of the first permanent mission in Hawaii and Maui; the conversion, baptism, and death of Keopuolani, the first Hawaiian convert; the first admission of natives to the Christian church; the remarkable and general attention paid to instruction; the character of the present young prince and princess of the Sandwich islands; the determination of the late king to visit Great Britain; the flagrant outrages of several Europeans who have visited the islands; the first intelligence received by the natives of the death of the king and queen; the arrival of the bodies of the deceased sovereign and his consort; the honorable conduct of lord Byron; the circumstances connected with the visit of the Blonde; and the eruption of the great volcano, which took place during an excursion, which, in company with lord Byron and a party of officers and gentlemen from the Blonde, he made to this grand and stupendous natural phenomenon Mr. Stewart has furnished a mass of information that cannot fail to be deeply interesting.

I have read his journal with great pleasure, and doubt not it will be very favorably received, even should my warm attachment to the writer have led me to found a partial opinion of its merits. Of this, however, the public will decide. For myself, I must confess I esteem the friendship I formed with Mr. Stewart and his family in the Sandwich islands, among the happiest of the many pleasing events connected with my transient labors there. The striking resemblance between our circumstances has also united our hearts. We have both, from the same painful cause, been obliged to leave interesting and important fields of labor. Mr. Stewart on his way home spent some time in Britain, while I could only reach England by way of America. We have both been engaged, since our return, in promoting the interest of the missionary enterprise; are at length both favored with some faint hopes of resuming our labors; are cheered by the anticipations of meeting again in our former stations, and combining our efforts in promoting the best interests of the inhabitants of Hawaii, with those of our colleagues who have been privileged to remain on the field.

The progress of Christianity among the people, and their gradual improvement in morality, intelligence, and civilization, have not been less decisive and encouraging since the departure of Mr.

Stewart, than they were during his residence in the islands. Since his return, the instruction of the inhabitants has produced so rapid an advancement in the acquisition of useful knowledge as to awaken feelings of astonishment and delight. On the island of Maui, in the year 1826, not less than eight thousand scholars received instruction in the schools; and it was presumed that, with a larger supply of books, the number might be increased. Forty schools existed in Hawaii; and the missionaries, in writing to America, express their conviction, that had they the means of extending their schools, ten thousand might in the course of the year be taught to read with facility and correctness the word of God in their own language. Early in the same year, sixty-nine schools, containing between two and three thousand scholars, attended a public examination at Honolulu. And during the preceding year, 1825, seventy-eight thousand and four hundred spelling-books and tracts had issued from the press. In January, 1827, the schools in the same island contained eight thousand, three hundred and three scholars. The translation of the Gospel by Matthew was finished about the same time, and, having been revised by the missionaries, was sent to America, where it will probably be printed by the American Bible Society, and forwarded to the islands; twenty thousand copies of which, it is estimated, may be advantageously distributed among the people of Hawaii alone.

The progress of a work so decisive in its nature, and so extensive in its influence, affecting not only the religious, civil, and political institutions of the people, but changing entirely the principles and habits which had heretofore marked their intercourse with those by whom they were occasionally or periodically visited, would, it was natural to expect, be branded with opprobrium, and resisted with virulence, by those whose interests it would oppose and whose inclinations it would restrain. This has been the case; and, indeed, had it not been so, the moral change that has taken place in these islands would have wanted one of the strongest demonstrations of that unequivocal origin and character under which it now appears before the world. Some account of the nature and causes of the opposition to that process, which is now rapidly transforming the face of Hawaiian society, will be met with in the following sheets. Numerous additional instances might be cited, were it necessary, to show the influence of mis

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sionary efforts in restraining the vices, and proportionably diminishing the miseries, of the people. But I am convinced that those recorded in Mr. Stewart's volume, with others already before the public, will be sufficient to remove whatever erroneous impressions may have thereby been made from any minds open to conviction and influenced in reference to missionary efforts, only by the simple declarations of honest truth. I was recently informed by an officer, who, in his majesty's ship Cornwallis, visited Hawaii some few years ago, that not less than four hundred females came on board the vessel on the night of her anchoring in one of the harbors; but such is the change since that time, that when the Blonde arrived, not one female ascended her sides. Yet so violent has the opposition been in the islands, that the persons and the lives of the missionaries have only been safe under the protection of bodies of armed natives, by whom their dwellings have been surrounded and defended.

The most injurious misrepresentations have also been circulated both in England and America, by those of whom better things might have been expected; and it is greatly to be regretted, that a leading literary journal,* in our own metropolis, should have so far indulged its prejudices as even to hazard its claim to public confi. dence in the correctness of its communications, by giving its authority as the verification of a document bearing the marks of improbability and self-refutation on the very front of its assertions. It will be evident that I refer to the fabricated letter from Boki, the chief, and which appeared in the beginning of 1827. Convinced, as soon as I saw the letter, that it had not been written by the individual whose name was appended to it, I communicated to the editor my reasons for believing he had been mistaken, at least, in supposing it genuine. In the following number I received a public reply, asserting "that the letter certainly did come from the Sandwich islands," — which I had never questioned — and stating at the same time, "that its genuineness neither has been, nor is, doubted either by the officer of the Blonde who received it, or by his Captain." This statement being at entire variance with a communication I had received from lord Byron personally, I wrote to ask his lordship's opinion, and received shortly afterwards, in reference to that part of my letter, the following reply:

* London Quarterly Review.

“You ask my opinion respecting the letter said to be written by our friend Boki, and signed with his name. I have no hesitation in saying, that I do not believe Boki either wrote or dictated that letter. It is not his manner of expressing himself, and you are aware that he can scarcely form his letters. I do not mean to say that the letter did not come from the islands, but it certainly was manufactured by some other person."

This answer, which his lordship has so obligingly returned, is decisive, and shews most distinctly the snare into which the editor of the Quarterly Review has fallen on this point, as well as on other matters in relation to the Sandwich islands. I should not have alluded to these facts, but from the connection in which they stand with this volume; and from the republication of the suppositious letter from the islands in other periodicals, and the daily papers, and the extensive circulation thus given to it through the country. It is therefore an act of justice to give the public the means of correcting any erroneous opinion which may have been formed; although, to every unprejudiced mind, the letter itself would convey an antidote to the poison it was designed to instil.

W. ELLIS.

HOXTON COLLEGE,
APRIL 2, 1828.

}

A RESIDENCE

IN THE

SANDWICH ISLANDS.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE GROUP.

THE Sandwich Islands are situated, in the Pacific ocean, between 18° 50′ and 22° 20′ north latitude, and between 154° 53′ and 160° 15′ west longitude from Greenwich. They are about 2800 miles distant from the coast of Mexico on the east; about 5000 from the shores of China on the west; and 2700 from the Society Islands on the south.

The islands are ten in number, stretching, as may be seen from a chart, in a flattened curve, E. S. E. and W. N. W. in the following order: HA-WAI-I, MAU-I, MO-LO-KINI, KA-HU-LA-WE, LA-NAI, MO-LO-KAI, O-A-HU, KAU-AI, NIHAU, and KAU-LA.

HAWAII, the most southern and eastern island, is the largest of the group. It is about ninety-seven miles long; seventy-eight broad-covering a surface of 4000 square miles, and containing 85,000 inhabitants.

MAUI lies north-west from Hawaii, and is separated from it by a channel twenty-four miles wide. This island formed by two mountainous peninsulas, connected by a narrow neck of low land, is forty-eight miles long, and at its greatest width twenty-nine miles wide. It covers about 600 square miles, and is supposed to have a population of 20,000 people.