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Oahu that the Russians, through their agent, Dr. SCHOOF, were about to seize the island of Kauai. KAMEHAMEHA the GREAT, and KALAIMOKU, a high chief of Oahu, viewed the proceedings with alarm. A messenger was sent to the King of Kauai ordering him to expel the doctor forthwith. The mandate was immediately complied with, and the ambitious agent was banished from his possessions.

But widely different was that half-finished fortress at the time of my visit from its condition at the time the Russian agent was expelled. Then it was impregnable to the fiery assaults of the rebel forces, and the engines of death sent their echoes far over the bay and up the peaceful river. But now every gun was dismounted; the powder magazine was used as a native dwelling; while the interior of the old ruin was cultivated for the purpose of raising sweet potatoes (Convolvulus batatus). Some half dozen shoeless and stockingless— and almost every thing else-less-soldiers, without arms and ammunition, were lounging over the useless guns, or stretched on their backs upon the hard stones, and under a tropical sun, with mouths wide open, and fast asleep. I knew not which looked the most desolate, the ruin itself, or its ruined defenders, ycleped soldiers.

As a mission station, Waimea is extremely uninviting. There is no special incentive to any man to go there and reside as a missionary, and a life-devotion to a people living in such a region as that is the strongest evidence that a man is actuated solely by the purest motives for the furtherance of moral good. The scenery is of a bleak and changeless character; the climate is warm, dry, and choking. The eye rests on no splendid groves and foliage-clad hills, as it does at nearly every other station on the group. A comparative desolation frowns back the tourist's gaze. The only feature of physical beauty is the river and a portion of the valley through which it flows.

I spent one Sunday at Waimea. It was one of such a nature as I can never forget, nor can I repel the desire to attempt a partial description of it. On going to the native

Church, I found the audience nearly all assembled. A solemn silence and decorum pervaded that audience and the entire scene. The building in which services were conducted had formerly been occupied as a private dwelling-house. It was now in a state of rapid decay; the grass was nearly all torn off the outsides, and the roof was about tumbling in. Through the wide apertures caused by the lost thatch from the side facing the south, an extensive view of the ocean could be obtained, and its foaming surges could be seen at a few yards' distance. The missionary commenced the services of the day with a brief invocation. A hymn was sung, in which all the congregation appeared to unite. As their song of praise ascended on high, the everlasting hymn of the ocean mingled with it, and produced such an effect on my own entire being as I had never before felt. The text was announced. It spoke of eternal life and eternal death. Every auditor hung with an intense attention on the words of the missionary. A daguerreotype of that audience, as it then appeared, would be invaluable to a physiognomist. There was every variety of countenance. There were the young, just starting out upon life's great race, but gay and cheerful. There were others who could look down from the summit of life's meridian, with either shore of life's ocean in view. There sat the far advanced in age, their gray locks sprinkled thinly over their deepfurrowed foreheads, and their limbs bearing many a scar from engagements under the standards of KAMEHAMEHA I. In front of the pulpit sat the old ex-queen KAPULE, absorbed in what she heard. And, as that dusky audience sat there, with the most profound attention to the words of their teacher, the ever-glorious sun gilded the sky, and land, and ocean with his matchless light; and there was a continuation of that same ocean anthem, solemn, grand, impressive, as though it felt the impress of its Maker's footsteps, and had opened its many lips to proclaim his presence.

At the close of that sacred day, when I sought the repose of my pillow, I was wakeful from the most vivid feelings. It was not because that Hawaiian congregation had wielded such

MISSIONARY LABOR.

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other part

a moral influence over me that I had become a proselyte-not that they were more moral than the people in of the group; but that sea-side dilapidated house of worship, the solemn attention of that varied audience, and that same sublime ocean anthem rolled before me in quiet succession. Then came the grand and imposing truth: "Jehovah dwelleth not in temples made with hands!" and yet I felt His presence that day, in that old house of worship, and in that hymn of the restless waves. Then came the stern conviction that, whatever may be said of the hypocrisy of native Christians, they were not all insincere whom I had seen that day—no, not all! And, as I continued to reflect on these themes, I could not help wishing that I myself was a better man.

The best mode

On few topics connected with the islands has more been said and written than on missionary labor. It is an incontrovertible truth, that it is not all a farce! of testing the truth of this position is for a man to lay aside every preconceived opinion, and quietly traverse the hills, mountains, plains, and valleys, where missionary labor has been performed, and then form an estimate of things as he finds them! He must then compare the present with the PAST of thirty years ago, with just the same sense of responsibility as though things of the mightiest moment awaited his decisions; and, unless I am entirely mistaken in what constitutes an honest conscience, his conclusion will be, that such men as the missionary at Waimea have done much good. It is a self-evident fact, that, to a certain extent, the Hawaiians are morally and physically happier now than they were before the introduction of Christianity.

There is a great proneness to fling around missionary enterprise a few touches of romance and poetry, and this is usually done when a ship is about leaving her moorings, to convey a band of missionaries to a distant region of the globe. There is a good deal of poetry in those throbbing bosoms, and dewy eyes, and warm grasps of the hand, as the ship leaves her wharf to proceed on her way-leaving woods and mountains, literary institutions, friends and firesides, far behind, until

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they seem to have sunk beneath the wave that reflects the pale and trembling twilight. All this, however, is perfectly natural, and ought not to call forth the least surprise from a mere looker-on.

But the poetry which invests such scenes is of an abstract character, and more properly belongs to the Churches at home than the stations of the right kind of men abroad. I have seen that in the work of some missionaries on the Sandwich group and elsewhere, which has convinced me that the life of a thoroughly philanthropic Christian teacher is a stern reality. I found a new church in process of erection at Waimea. For five long years it had been in progress, and the missionary has accompanied the natives to the mountains, fifteen miles distant, to hew wood, and to the quarry, several miles over the plains to the westward, to procure stone. That building was nearly completed when I saw it, and when finished it would be a credit to any town in the United States.

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This fabric was only a portion of that missionary's labor; but it will be his monument when the hands that have reared it have gone back to their primitive dust, 'and the mind that designed it has gone to expand in a clime where there are no evening shadows. When human destiny receives its final seal, such an epitaph as this will be of more value than the thrones of ALEXANDER and CÆSAR.

CHAPTER XIX.

FROM WAIMEA TO KOLO.

Volcanic Features. -Tobacco Plantations. -Wild Cotton.-Plains and Vegetation.-Nohili, or Sounding Sands.-Probable Theory of Sound.-A Night at Kolo.-Proceedings of a Hawaiian Family. -Kindness to the Traveler.-Poi-making.-Evening Devotions. -Return to Koloa.-Departure from Kauai.—The "Middle Passage."-A Tribute to Neptune.-Recent Steam-boat Project.-Its Importance and Necessity.

BEYOND the village of Waimea the traveler's path stretches over the plains forming the seaward portion of the district of Mana. These plains are twelve miles in length, and their average width two. Their physical character is strictly alluvial. The substratum is a fine oceanic sand, mingled with fine coral and shells; the upper formation is composed of decayed vegetable matter, mingled with a rich deposit of decomposed lava, washed down by the rains from the adjacent mountains.

These plains are bounded on the north by a lofty range of volcanic hills, resembling, in some places, the Palisades on the banks of the Hudson. Upon them are superimposed rugged table-lands, of a gradual ascent as far as the central peaks of the island. These table-lands are formed by a continuation of layers that were originated during the periodical eruptions of Mauna Waialeale. This formation has evidently progressed when the sea swept over the plains stretching from Waimea to Kolo. The first strata that was formed above the sea