VILLAGE OF KA-WAI-HAE.

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I have but a single comment to make on this human fiend. He had studied and graduated at Lahainaluna a few years since, and in 1852 he was judge of the very district in which he now lived.

CHAPTER XXXI.

FROM WAI-PIO TO KA-WAI-HAE.

Village of Ka-wai-hae.-Another Pagan Temple.-Cause of its Erection.-False Predictions.-Moral taught by Paganism.-Ravages of the Small-pox.-Solitary Village.—Outrageous Mode of Vaccination.-Preposterous Conduct of the "Board of Health."-Indignation of the Foreign Population.-Testimony of Physicians.— Native Quackery.—Terrible Influences of a certain Superstition. -Total Defeat of a long-cherished Enterprise.

KA-WAI-HAE is a small, dreary village, on the shores of Kawai-hae Bay, without the least object to attract a resident to it. Excepting a few sickly-looking cocoa-nut-trees, which stood near the tide-mark, I found scarcely a piece of foliage in the entire region. Hot, dry, and dusty, it is a perfect Sahara; yet this is a port of entry, and vessels have to pay for the privilege of anchoring in the unsafe waters.

It really seems a mystery why any living thing should have concluded to reside in this desolate region. The food used by the natives is brought all the way from the Valley of Wai-pio. There is a Custom-house and Post-office, and both are conducted in a miserable native house. The house built many years ago by JOHN YOUNG, the friend and counselor of KAMEHAMEHA the GREAT, I found yet standing; but the old Englishman had gone to the grave, and the house was tenanted by the former teacher of the Oahu Charity-school, now y'clept District Judge.

A short distance to the south of this forlorn village I found another heiau, as perfect as when it was erected. It stands on the seaward side of a sloping hill, near the sea-shore. The massive walls are composed of lava stones; and there stood

the rude altars which had once been baptized with human blood. There were also the niches in which grim idols once stood, while assembled thousands paid them a soul-felt homage.

This heiau is called Puukohala. It was built at the instigation of a priest during the reign of KAMEHAMEHA I., and under the assurance that it would be a safeguard against all the perils of war.

But the prophet was false. The walls were not completed when hostilities actually commenced. The war chiefs of the old conqueror assembled a powerful army, and marched to Ka'u to exterminate KEOUA, their recent antagonist. KEOUA'S course lay by the great crater of Kilauea. An eruption anticipated the carnage of battle, and his troops, exposed to a heavy shower of stones, cinders, ashes, sand, and blasts of sulphurous gas, were nearly all overwhelmed. With the wreck of his army he met KAMEHAMEHA and his warriors a few days afterward, and a fiery contest commenced. For a long time the struggle was doubtful. At length, one of KAMEHAMEHA's warriors, disguised as a friend, went over to KEOUA and advised him personally to seek the favor of the king, then at Ka-wai-hae. Retreating by the way he came, Kɛoua led off his warriors, and proceeded by water to obtain an interview with the monarch. On arriving at Ka-wai-hae, he received the most solemn assurances of royal clemency. But the very

moment he and his followers landed on the beach, they were seized, treacherously slaughtered, and their mangled remains were laid upon the altars of the unfinished temple, and sacrificed to the gods!

Such was the mercy shown to warriors who had reposed implicit confidence in the word of a pagan king! Such was the spirit which paganism inculcated into the bosoms of its votaries!

But there is a moral in paganism which ought never to be forgotten. A man may stand on those altars where hundreds have been immolated, and shudder at the mere remembrance that human blood flowed from them like water, and that the very men who toiled to raise these walls were the first who

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But the

fell victims to the accursed despotisms of priests. moral of these hellish orgies is this-that these debased islanders felt their immortality, and deemed these immolations the nearest way to secure it.

This was the last pagan temple ever built on the group, and it is a remarkable coincidence in Hawaiian history, that, while it was built at Ka-wai-hae, the first blow which eventually laid the tabu system in the dust was struck in the same place, and at a time, too, when human victims were piled on the bloody altars of that temple to insure its consecration.

On my return to Ka-wai-hae, I found the village almost desolated by the small-pox. Out of a population of about fifty, twenty-three had already gone to the graves of their fathers. It was mournful to take a glance over that afflicted village. A few dwellings had already been consumed by fire. At nearly every door of the few houses that yet stood, a small yellow flag was flying, to indicate that none but physicians were permitted to enter, under pain of fines and imprisonment. In the shades of their homes sat women and children, nearly as still as statues, and as desolate as lepers among the ancient Hebrews. It seemed as though a wave from Lethe had swept over that village. Not to this dreary spot only was the epidemic confined. The following report of the Commissioners of Public Health in Honolulu, for the week ending July 22d, 1853, shows its ravages on the island of Oahu :

The number of new cases of small-pox which have been reported during the past week for the island of Oahu, is 626; deaths reported are 216.

cases reported are 40; of cases reported, 2342.

From the other islands, the new deaths reported, 19. Total number Total number of deaths reported, 808. "Whole number of cases reported during the week ending July 28th, for the island of Oahu, is 480; the number of deaths reported in the same time is 219.

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'From the other islands the new cases are 54; deaths, 26. The total number of cases reported is 2886; deaths reported, 1027.

"The total number of burials under the direction of the

commissioners, by the police and others, in Honolulu and vicinity, since June 26th, is 663.

"Forty houses at Waikiki, and thirty on the Ewa side of Honolulu, more than two miles from the market, are being erected by the commissioners, under the direction of the clerk of the Bureau of Public Improvements."

Accounts which have come to hand since I left the group give the following information:

"The small-pox is still raging. At Honolulu there are only nineteen cases, but in other parts of Oahu it is still destructive. The total number of cases till the 9th of September was 5049; total deaths, 1805. The number of new cases for the week ending September 9th was 214; the previous week, 295. There are no authentic reports from other islands, but rumor said that the disease was increasing at Lahaina.

"Office of the Commissioners of Public Health Report.The number of new cases of small-pox which have been reported during the past week, for the island of Oahu, are 214; the number of deaths reported in the same time are 68.

"From the other islands, the new cases reported are 4; deaths, 2.

"Total number of cases reported, 5049; total deaths, 1805. "Number of cases remaining in Honolulu this day are 13. "LIHOLIHO, Chairman.

"Honolulu, September 9, 1853."

When this terrible scourge first appeared in Honolulu, it naturally created an intense excitement. Vaccination became the order of the day. Physicians, native and foreign, and persons who boasted of their ignorance of Materia Medica, were induced to enter the lists as "knights of the lance." A Board of Health was established, under the specious guise of aiding the sick. The disease spread like a whirlwind far and near, and every effort was made to arrest its progress. Consummate quacks, both native and foreign, followed or superseded the movements of skillful physicians. This prostitution of the calamity drew from two of the most skillful med

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ical men in town a bitter censure, which was published in one of the town journals.* The "constituted authorities" had appointed non-professional men to vaccinate the natives. Thus armed with a "little brief authority," they sallied forth on their mission; and their doings were portrayed by the medical men just alluded to. 'Old scabs, sometimes of doubtful character, taken indiscriminately from children or grown persons, were mixed, on homeopathic principles, with a sufficient quantity of aqua fontana to set any therein supposed to be dormant spirits at liberty, and inserted faithfully into the skin by means of half a dozen cross-cuts, which at times would produce such a gush of blood as to be alone a sufficient safeguard against the introduction of the pretended regenerator." Much of this labor was entirely lost, but where it took, it produced in some cases a broad, dirty-looking, pustule-like mass, which might have been taken by an inadvertent examiner for what is called ecthyma or rupia;" in others it produced "large festering sores of an undeterminable character, spreading into real ulcers, and surrounded by a secondary eruption."

*

One of these educated physicians remarked, "Excellent vaccine' (?) is daily shown me, that is so active that in a day or two it has formed a large pustule; and hundreds of arms I have seen with horrible ulcers, which can not be cured for months, many of them presenting piles of scab very much resembling the rough piles of rock upon the mountain top. * * * Verily the poor natives are sorely beset. It does seem as if their condition was bad enough, even though these newly-fledged knights of the lancet should desist from so actively propagating the most loathsome ulcers from arm to arm. Humanity demands that they should let alone what they do not understand, and occupy themselves in some more harmless amusement suited to their capacities."

Nor is this all. The "vaccine virus" (?) employed by some of these disciples of Hippocrates has, in some cases, been productive of syphilitic disease, for it was procured from per* The “Weekly Argus,” June 15, 1853.