first imparted to Kamehameha some idea of civilized society and of the Christian religion. On the 21st of February, 1794, in a grand council of chiefs, called by the king, on board the Discovery, the Islands were formally placed under the protectorate of Great Britain; and the British flag was raised and saluted. The cession was never ratified by the British government; and a promise made by Vancouver to send out to them missionaries and artisans, to instruct them in religion and the arts of civilization, was never fulfilled. This work was left to be performed by the new republic of the west.

In 1809, Baránoff, the Russian governor of Alaska, is said to have entertained some idea of forming a colony at the Islands; and several Russian vessels between the years 1809 and 1815 touched here for brief periods. At Honolulu the crew of one of these vessels built a block-house, mounted a few guns, and hoisted the Russian flag. A fort of considerable size was also built at Waimea, and the Russian flag displayed. Negotiations were opened for the lease of the whole island, but these were never consummated.

By the advice of John Young a native fort was built at Honolulu, to command the harbor. It was constructed of coral rock, and cannon were mounted. When this was completed, Kamehameha requested the Russians to withdraw from his dominion; and the request was complied with. The aggression was afterward disavowed by the Russian gov

ernment.

The death of Kamehameha I occurred in May, 1819, at the age of eighty-two years. Before his death he forbade the sacrifice of human victims,- a ceremony believed to prolong life.

The slight civilizing influences which contact with a few whites had brought during his reign had led to the feeling that a better system of religion somewhere existed. But, although the king was willing to make the concession noted, he could not separate himself from the traditions of his fathers in which he had been brought up, and in which he had lived so long a life. His queen, Kaa-...... humanu, however, had a greater breadth of vision. Having been appointed by the dying king to be the guardian of the young Prince Liholiho, soon to be King Kamehameha II,

and also to be premier, to exercise equal authority with the king, she almost immediately, upon coming to power, proposed that the tabus should no longer be recognized. Through her influence they were soon formally broken, Liholiho and his chiefs, both men and women, participating in a feast together, thus disregarding the most sacred of the tabus. By its open violation by the king and chiefs the entire elaborate system of tabus fell to the ground, and with it the system of idol-worship. The idols and their temples were burned, the high-priest himself setting the fire.

The deeply rooted custom could not, however, be easily eradicated; and an armed insurrection against the king occurred. This was soon quelled, and the new order established; but Hawaii exhibited the remarkable spectacle of a nation without a religion, waiting for some far-distant, unknown people to bring to them that for which they longed, but concerning which their ideas were but vague and uncertain. The annals of Christian civilization have few more remarkable passages.

CHAPTER II.

THE COMING OF THE MISSIONARIES. SUCH was the social and political condition of the Hawaiian Islands at the time of their discovery, and for some years thereafter. The brief visits of trading or merchant vessels to some part of the coast brought the natives in only occasional contact with white civilization; and these experiences, as already seen, scarcely served to give to these simple people an impression of admiration and respect for the white man. They had now no written language, no system of hieroglyphics or pictographs. They had, it is true, a vast number of traditions, which had been transmitted from generation to generation doubtless for centuries. Many of their religious and semi-religious rites and ceremonies were shocking to the civilized eye, in what seemed their immorality and indecency. The rise of the whale-fishery served to increase the number of the visiting vessels, the whale-ships employing the Islands as places of rendezvous for fresh supplies and water. The personal morality of the people was in no manner improved by these visits. A vessel in the offing