APPENDIX
The author of this volume arrived at Tahiti the very day that theiniquitous designs of the French were consummated by inducing thesubordinate chiefs, during the absence of their queen, to ratify anartfully-drawn treaty, by which she was virtually deposed. Both menacesand caresses were employed on this occasion, and the 32-pounders whichpeeped out of the port-holes of the frigate were the principal argumentsadduced to quiet the scruples of the more conscientious islanders.
And yet this piratical seizure of Tahiti, with all the woe and desolationwhich resulted from it, created not half so great a sensation, at least inAmerica, as was caused by the proceedings of the English at the SandwichIslands. No transaction has ever been more grossly misrepresented than theevents which occurred upon the arrival of Lord George Paulet at Oahu.During a residence of four months at Honolulu, the metropolis of thegroup, the author was in the confidence of an Englishman who was muchemployed by his lordship; and great was the author's astonishment on hisarrival at Boston, in the autumn of 1844, to read the distorted accountsand fabrications which had produced in the United States so violent anoutbreak of indignation against the English. He deems it, therefore, amere act of justice towards a gallant officer briefly to state the leadingcircumstances connected with the event in question.
It is needless to rehearse all the abuse that for some time previous tothe spring of 1843 had been heaped upon the British residents, especiallyupon Captain Charlton, Her Britannic Majesty's consul-general, by thenative authorities of the Sandwich Islands. High in the favour of theimbecile king at this time was one Dr. Judd, a sanctimoniousapothecary-adventurer, who, with other kindred and influential spirits,were animated by an inveterate dislike to England. The ascendancy of ajunta of ignorant and designing Methodist elders in the councils of ahalf-civilised king, ruling with absolute sway over a nation just poisedbetween barbarism and civilisation, and exposed by the peculiarities ofits relations with foreign states to unusual difficulties, was notprecisely calculated to impart a healthy tone to the policy of thegovernment.
At last matters were brought to such an extremity, through the iniquitousmaladministration of affairs, that the endurance of further insults andinjuries on the part of the British consul was no longer to be borne.Captain Charlton, insultingly forbidden to leave the islands,clandestinely withdrew, and arriving at Valparaiso, conferred withRear-Admiral Thomas, the English commander-in-chief on the Pacificstation. In consequence of this communication, Lord George Paulet wasdespatched by the admiral in the _Carysfort_ frigate, to inquire into andcorrect the alleged abuses. On arriving at his destination, he sent hisfirst lieutenant ashore with a letter to the king, couched in terms of theutmost courtesy, and soliciting the honour of an audience. The messengerwas denied access to His Majesty, and Paulet was coolly referred to Dr.Judd, and informed that the apothecary was invested with plenary powers totreat with him. Rejecting this insolent proposition, his lordship againaddressed the king by letter, and renewed his previous request; but heencountered another repulse. Justly indignant at this treatment, he penneda third epistle, enumerating the grievances to be redressed, and demandinga compliance with his requisitions, under penalty of immediatehostilities.
The government was now obliged to act, and an artful stroke of policy wasdecided upon by the despicable councillors of the king to entrap thesympathies and rouse the indignation of Christendom. His Majesty was madeto intimate to the British captain that he could not, as the conscientiousruler of his beloved people, comply with the arbitrary demands of hislordship, and in deprecation of the horrors of war, tendered to hisacceptance the _provisional cession_ of the islands, subject to the resultof the negotiations then pending in London. Paulet, a bluff andstraight-forward sailor, took the king at his word, and after somepreliminary arrangements, entered upon the administration of Hawaiianaffairs, in the same firm and benignant spirit which marked the disciplineof his frigate, and which had rendered him the idol of his ship's company.He soon endeared himself to nearly all orders of the islanders; but theking and the chiefs, whose feudal sway over the common people waslaboriously sought to be perpetuated by their missionary advisers,regarded all his proceedings with the most vigilant animosity. Jealous ofhis growing popularity, and unable to counteract it, they endeavoured toassail his reputation abroad by ostentatiously protesting against hisacts, and appealing in Oriental phrase to the _wide universe_ to witnessand compassionate their _unparalleled wrongs_.
Heedless of their idle clamours, Lord George Paulet addressed himself tothe task of reconciling the differences among the foreign residents,remedying their grievances, promoting their mercantile interests, andameliorating, as far as lay in his power, the condition of the degradednatives. The iniquities he brought to light and instantly suppressed aretoo numerous to be here recorded; but one instance may be mentioned thatwill give some idea of the lamentable misrule to which these poorislanders are subjected.
It is well known that the laws at the Sandwich Islands are subject to themost capricious alterations, which, by confounding all ideas of right andwrong in the minds of the natives, produce the most pernicious effects. Inno case is this mischief more plainly descernible than in the continuallyshifting regulations concerning licentiousness. At one time the mostinnocent freedoms between the sexes are punished with fine andimprisonment; at another the revocation of the statute is followed by themost open and undisguised profligacy.
It so happened that at the period of Paulet's arrival the Connecticut bluelaws had been for at least three weeks steadily enforced. In consequenceof this, the fort at Honolulu was filled with a great number of younggirls, who were confined there doing penance for their slips from virtue.Paulet, although at first unwilling to interfere with regulations havingreference solely to the natives themselves, was eventually, by theprevalence of certain reports, induced to institute a strict inquiry intothe internal administration of General Kekuanoa, governor of the island ofOahu, one of the pillars of the Hawaiian Church, and captain of the fort.He soon ascertained that numbers of the young females employed during theday at work intended for the benefit of the king, were at night smuggledover the ramparts of the fort--which on one side directly overhangs thesea--and were conveyed by stealth on board such vessels as had contractedwith the General to be supplied with them. Before daybreak they returnedto their quarters, and their own silence with regard to these secretexcursions was purchased by a small portion of those wages of iniquitywhich were placed in the hands of Kekuanoa.
The vigour with which the laws concerning licentiousness were at thatperiod enforced, enabled the General to monopolise in a great measure thedetestable trade in which he was engaged, and there consequently flowedinto his coffers--and some say into those of the governmentalso--considerable sums of money. It is indeed a lamentable fact that theprincipal revenue of the Hawaiian government is derived from the fineslevied upon, or rather the licences taken out by Vice, the prosperity ofwhich is linked with that of the government. Were the people to becomevirtuous the authorities would become poor; but from present indicationsthere is little apprehension to be entertained on that score.
Some five months after the date of the cession, the _Dublin_ frigate,carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas, entered the harbour of Honolulu.The excitement that her sudden appearance produced on shore wasprodigious. Three days after her arrival an English sailor hauled down thered cross which had been flying from the heights of the fort, and theHawaiian colours were again displayed upon the same staff. At the samemoment the long 42-pounders upon Punchbowl Hill opened their iron throatsin triumphant reply to the thunders of the five men-of-war in the harbour;and King Kammahammaha III, surrounded by a splendid group of British andAmerican officers, unfurled the royal standard to assembled thousands ofhis subjects, who, attracted by the imposing military display of theforeigners, had flocked to witness the formal restoration of the islandsto their ancient rulers.
The admiral, after sanctioning the proceedings o
f his subaltern, hadbrought the authorities to terms; and so removed the necessity of actingany longer under the provisional cession.
The event was made an occasion of riotous rejoicing by the king and theprincipal chiefs, who easily secured a display of enthusiasm from theinferior orders, by remitting for a time the accustomed severity of thelaws. Royal proclamations in English and Hawaiian were placarded in thestreets of Honolulu, and posted up in the more populous villages of thegroup, in which His Majesty announced to his loving subjects there-establishment of his throne, and called upon them to celebrate it bybreaking through all moral, legal, and religious restraint for tenconsecutive days, during which time all the laws of the land were solemnlydeclared to be suspended.
Who that happened to be at Honolulu during those ten memorable days willever forget them! The spectacle of universal broad-day debauchery, whichwas then exhibited, beggars description. The natives of the surroundingislands flocked to Honolulu by hundreds, and the crews of two frigates,opportunely let loose like so many demons to swell the heathenish uproar,gave the crowning flourish to the scene. It was a sort of Polynesiansaturnalia. Deeds too atrocious to be mentioned were done at noon-day inthe open street, and some of the islanders, caught in the very act ofstealing from the foreigners, were, on being taken to the fort by theaggrieved party, suffered immediately to go at large and to retain thestolen property--Kekuanoa informing the white men, with a sardonic grin,that the laws were "hannapa" (tied up).
The history of these ten days reveals in their true colours the characterof the Sandwich islanders, and furnishes an eloquent commentary on theresults which have flowed from the labours of the missionaries. Freed fromthe restraint of severe penal laws, the natives almost to a man hadplunged voluntarily into every species of wickedness and excess, and bytheir utter disregard of all decency plainly showed that, although theyhad been schooled into a seeming submission to the new order of things,they were in reality as depraved and vicious as ever.
Such were the events which produced in America so general an outbreak ofindignation against the spirited and high-minded Paulet. He is not thefirst man who, in the fearless discharge of his duty, has awakened thesenseless clamours of those whose narrow-minded suspicions blind them to aproper appreciation of measures which unusual exigencies may have renderednecessary.
It is almost needless to add that the British cabinet never had any ideaof appropriating the islands; and it furnishes a sufficient vindication ofthe acts of Lord George Paulet, that he not only received the unqualifiedapprobation of his own government, but that to this hour the great body ofthe Hawaiian people invoke blessings on his head, and look back withgratitude to the time when his liberal and paternal sway diffused peaceand happiness among them.
FOOTNOTES
1 The word "kannaka" is at the present day universally used in the South Seas by Europeans to designate the islanders. In the various dialects of the principal groups it is simply a sexual designation applied to the males; but it is now used by the natives in their intercourse with foreigners in the same sense in which the latter employ it.
A "tabooed kannaka" is an islander whose person has been made, to a certain extent, sacred by the operation of a singular custom hereafter to be explained.
2 I presume this might be translated into "Strong Waters." Arva is the name bestowed upon a root, the properties of which are both inebriating and medicinal. "Wai" is the Marquesan word for water.
3 White appears to be the sacred colour among the Marquesans.
4 The word "Artua," although having some other significations, is in nearly all the Polynesian dialects used as the general designation of the gods.
5 The strict honesty which the inhabitants of nearly all the Polynesian Islands manifest towards each other, is in striking contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that, according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a hatchet or a wrought nail from a European is looked upon as a praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that bearing in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal. This consideration, while it serves to reconcile an apparent contradiction in the moral character of the islanders, should in some measure alter that low opinion of it which the reader of South Sea voyages is too apt to form.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors were corrected:
page vi, "Mysterious" changed to "mysterious" page 2, "attentuated" changed to "attenuated" page 3, quote mark added after first "Marquesas!" page 7, double primes changed to primes in first coordinate page 18, "coacoa-nut" changed to "cocoa-nut" page 23, period changed to comma after "home" page 26, "tatooed" changed to "tattooed" page 52, "Decend" changed to "Descend" page 62, "hairbreath" changed to "hairbreadth" page 66, "inceased" changed to "increased" page 89, "interwined" changed to "intertwined" page 112, "preverse" changed to "perverse" page 120, "kemp" changed to "kelp" page 123, "As" changed to "At" page 150, period added after "enemy" page 199, "Figneroa" changed to "Figueroa" page 242, "as" changed to "is" page 273, "tumultous" changed to "tumultuous" page 281, comma added after "course"
Spelling variations were not normalized (e. g. "figure head","figure-head" and "figurehead", "forefinger" and "fore-finger", "clamor"and "clamour", "verd-antique" and "verde-antique", "incumbrances" and"encumber").
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