The greatest of their disadvantages has been that some of
the vilest of the whites who roamed the Pacific had settled on the
islands before the arrival of the Christian teachers, dragging the
people down to even lower depths of depravity than those of
heathenism, and that there are still resident foreigners who corrupt
and destroy them.
I must tell you a story which the venerable Mrs. Lyman told me
yesterday. In 1825, five years after the first missionaries landed,
Kapiolani, a female alii of high rank, while living at Kaiwaaloa
(where Captain Cook was murdered), became a Christian. Grieving for
her people, most of whom still feared to anger Pele, she announced
that it was her intention to visit Kilauea, and dare the fearful
goddess to do her worst. Her husband and many others tried to
dissuade her, but she was resolute, and taking with her a large
retinue, she took a journey of one hundred miles, mostly on foot,
over the rugged lava, till she arrived near the crater. There a
priestess of Pele met her, threatened her with the displeasure of
the goddess if she persisted in her hostile errand, and prophesied
that she and her followers would perish miserably. Then, as now,
ohelo berries grew profusely round the terminal wall of Kilauea, and
there, as elsewhere, were sacred to Pele, no one daring to eat of
them till he had first offered some of them to the divinity.
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