LIFE IN HAWAII
An Autobiographic Sketch Of Mission Life
And Labors
by
Titus Coan
Preface
A PILGRIM of four-score years, standing near the margin of the Border
Land, essays to give a sketch of his life - and why?
Because many personal and Christian friends have long urged it as a duty
to my beloved Master to leave my testimony behind me of His
faithfulness and grace.
To publish my autobiography was far from my thoughts.
It is a difficult, delicate, and dangerous task. One does not choose to
publish his own follies and sins, and surely it is not modest for one to
proclaim his own goodness. I will, therefore, only say in the words of the
great Apostle, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this
grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the un-searchable
riches of Christ.”
Let me then ask, if in reading this narrative there shall seem to be the
weakness of egotism or of vain boasting, that the fault may lie at the door
of the writer, or be pardoned on account of the great difficulty of relating
one's own experiences and observations without often repeating the
pronoun I.
On the other hand, if it shall appear that during a ministry of almost half
a century a blind man has been led into the light, a lame man has been
helped to walk in the Way of Life, a leprous soul has been washed in the
Fountain opened for sin and uncleanness; if a heathen has found the true
God, and cast away his dead idols, if a fierce cannibal has been persuaded
to cease to eat the flesh of his enemies, and taught to trust the Son of Man
for pardon, or if some who were dead in trespasses and sins have been
raised to life by the quickening power of the Gospel, then let God have all
the glory.
T. C.
Notes On The Electronic Edition
This document was created by scanning and OCR of the 1882 printed
edition given by Phillip Coan, the grandson of Titus Coan and my
grandfather, to my father, Edward Morel Coan.
I have retained the general typographical characteristics of the original,
except for correction of a few minor and obvious spelling errors, and
deletion of the Index, which was felt to be unnecessary in an
electronically searchable document. The overall mixed American/British
spellings have been preserved to maintain the historical sense.
In lieu of the lack of an index, an overview of the contents might be
helpful for reference purposes:
Chapters II and I cover primarily Titus' early life and the sail to Hawaii
(Chapter XV contrasts this with his post-Civil-War visit to the mainland).
Chapters II through XII describe primarily missionary activities.
Chapter X describes the Hawaiian Royalty from Kamehameha I to David
Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani, including his personal experiences with
them.
Chapters XIII and XIV describe two visits to the Marquesas in the 1860s,
with much sociological detail.
Chapter XVI describes the other Hawaiian Islands briefly in the mid 1800s. Chapter XVII describes his experiences with, and impressions of, native Hawaiians of the time. Chapters XVIII through XXIII describe volcanic activities on the island of
Hawaii from 1840 to 1881.
Dates and other numerical data have been carefully checked against the
original book for accuracy. However, several of his measurements are
known to be inaccurate (e.g., the distance from Oahu to Kauai is given as
75 miles, which distance is nearer 99 miles; and the highest peak on Kauai
is given as 8,000 feet, which height is nearer 5,200 feet). The accuracy of
other reported measurements may therefore be suspect.
The document format is Microsoft Word97 for Windows®, and may best
be viewed with Quickview, available by right-clicking the file in the MS
Windows95® Explorer. It contains one photo image (of the author).
Although the file is protected against modification, comments are
welcome via e-mail to me at ed@aloha.net.
Chapter 1.
Parentage, Childhood, and Early Years - Militia Service -
Asahel Nettleton - Years in Western New York - Sickness -
Home Again - Auburn Seminary.*
MY father was Gaylord Coan, of Killingworth, Middlesex Co.,
Connecticut. He was a thoughtful, quiet, and modest farmer, industrious,
frugal, and temperate, attending to his own business, living in peace with
his neighbors, eschewing evil, honest in dealing, avoiding debts,
abhorring extravagance and profligacy, refusing proffered offices, strictly
observing the Sabbath, a regular attendant on the services of the
sanctuary, a constant reader of the Bible, and always offering morning
and evening prayers with the family. He was born Aug. 4, 1768, and died
Sept. 24, 1857, in his 90th year.
My mother was Tamza Nettleton, sister of Josiah Nettleton and aunt of
Asahel Nettleton, D.D., the distinguished Evangelical preacher. She was
the tender, faithful, and laborious mother of seven children, six sons and
one daughter. Of these I was the youngest.
While still in the vigor of womanhood, she was cut down Jan. 14, 1818, by
typhus fever, aged 58. Her death left the house desolate, and the loss was
deeply mourned by all the children.
After this our father married Miss Platt, of Saybrook, by whom he had
one daughter, who died at the age of eighteen.
I was born on the first day of February, Sunday morning, 1801, in the
town of Killingworth, Conn. My physical constitution was good, my
health was perfect, and my childhood happy.
From the age of four to twelve I was sent to the district school, where the
boys and girls were drilled in Webster's spelling book, The American
Preceptor, writing, arithmetic (Daball's), Morse's geography, Murray's
grammar, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Days and weeks and
years went quietly along, with the usual experiences of joyous childhood.
Spring, summer, autumn, and winter each had their peculiar charms,
their duties and diversions, and I moved along the stream with only now
and then a ripple.
Once, when a boy of about seven years, I had a memorable experience.
My father was to be absent during the day. and in the morning he said to
me, “Titus, go straight to school to-day.” When he left, some boys came
along and persuaded me to play truant. Off we started, and spent the day
in as much pleasure as we could enjoy, with some twinges of guilt and
fear. At 4 P.M., the time for the school to close, I managed to fall in with
the children who were returning home.
Evening came - my father returned. We had supper and prayers. My
conscience throbbed a little, and I prepared for bed early. When ready in
my night-robe to leap into bed, my father called me to him. I trembled,
but obeyed. Sitting quietly in his chair, he laid me, face downward, across
his knees, took up a small birch rod and said, “Well, Titus, you are all
ready now for the reward of disobedience - you did not go to school.” He
then gave me a few salutary touches with the birch, and I stole off to bed.
That was one of the best lessons of my childhood It made a distinct
impression upon me which I could not forget. It worked through my skin
and my flesh, and went into my heart. I never played truant again.
Yes, I did get one more lesson which cooled my blood and made me
thoughtful. A deep mill-pond lay between my home and the
school-house. In the winter this pond was often frozen over, and my
father warned me not to venture upon the ice on my way to school. One
morning when I was nine years old, a mate of my age went with me to
school. As we came to the pond we agreed to have a little slide. We went
on half-way across the pond, I leading, and Julius following. Coming to
the deepest part of the pond, the ice broke suddenly under me and I went
under the water, but found no bottom. I rose to the surface in the same
place where I went down, and screamed for help. My companion stood
aghast and feared to come near. I threw up my hands and caught hold of
the ice, but it broke before me. Again and again I struggled to find firm
hold, but still the treacherous ice gave way until I nearly despaired of life.
At length, however, I came to firmer ice, and clung to it as with a death
grasp, calling on Julius for help. The timid boy approached slowly until
his hand reached mine; and with his help and God's mercy I was
delivered from a watery grave. But it was mid winter, and I was sadly
chilled. To avoid freezing we ran all the way, a half mile, to the
school-house, where we found a roaring fire and the master not there. I
stood by the fire, turning round and round, and smoking like a spare-rib,
until the master came, when I took my seat and shivered until noon. The
intermission being one hour, I improved it to dry my clothes, and went
home at evening, charging my schoolmate never to tell anyone of this
event. He kept his promise until I came to the Hawaiian Islands, and then
he told the story. This was another lesson which I report with thanks to
the Lord for sparing my life, and as a warning to all children to “Obey
their parents in the Lord that their days may be long.”
But it is not necessary to enlarge on “the scenes of my childhood,” though
diversified, and very many of them “dear to my heart.”
Nor will I take time to tell all my childhood's faults; and as for its virtues,
I have nothing of which to boast.
When about thirteen I worked with my father on the farm during the
summer months, and attended school in the winter. The next year I was a
pupil in a select school at the house of my honored and excellent pastor,
the Rev. Asa King. In this school I spent two happy winters, while my
summers were passed on the farm, or in fishing on Long Island Sound, or
for shad in early spring in the Connecticut River.
Not satisfied with my knowledge of English grammar derived from
Murray and unskilled teachers, I had private lessons from a teacher fresh
from a grammar school in the city of New York, and under his
instructions gained a more satisfactory insight into the construction of my
mother tongue than from all my winter's study in what seemed to me dry
Murray.
I also read eagerly such worthy books as I was able to buy or borrow; few
indeed, compared with the overwhelming flood of literature of the
present time. I read history, rhetoric, astronomy, philosophy, logic, and
the standard poets. I joined an Academy in East Guilford, now Madison,
where I studied with delight geometry trigonometry, surveying, etc.,
under the instruction of the Principal, an active graduate of Yale College.
At the age of eighteen I was called to teach a school in the town of
Saybrook, and from this time onward my winters were occupied in
teaching in Saybrook, Killingworth, and Guilford, until I left New
England for Western New York.
When the time came for me to enter the militia ranks, according to the
laws of the State, I enlisted in a company of light artillery whose regiment
had been commanded by Col. Bray during the war of 1812-15 and in
which one of my brothers had served in the garrison of my native town
during that war.
In this company I was at once chosen sergeant, and in about two years
was promoted, receiving first the commission of 2nd Lieut., then that of
1st Lieut.
I had been dazzled, while a boy, with the tales of military and naval
exploits, with the flashing of sabers, the waving of plumes, and with the
beauty of uniforms. It had been my delight to watch the evolutions of
cavalry, artillery, and militia regiments on days of drill and of general
review. I had seen the proud war-ships of Britain driving the
fishing-boats the sloops, schooners, brigs, barks, ships, all the floating
commerce of Long Island Sound, into our rivers, lagoons, bays, creeks,
and harbors. I had seen the flashes and heard the thunder of their guns;
had been wakened at midnight by the alarm-bells of the town, and the
quick fire of the garrison. I had heard of Canada, of Buffalo, of the
Northern and Southern Lakes, of the Potomac, of Washington, of New
Orleans, and of the peace with its joyful celebrations, and its
thunder-notes of gladness rolling over the land.
Afterward, when all this died out, and a more rational, a calmer and
purer peace spread over land and sea, there came a change in my military
feelings and aspirations.
While absent from my native town, a memorable season of religious
interest was awakened among all classes in Killingworth.
The Rev. Asahel Nettleton, whose fame as an evangelical preacher has
spread over the land, was invited to return to the place of his birth, to
preach the Gospel to his kindred and townsmen. He came, and the
“Power of the Highest” came with him. Our pastor, Mr. King, was heart
and soul with him. Sinai thundered the law, and Calvary cried pardon to
the penitent. “The axe was laid at the root of the trees” and the
winnowing fan was seen in the hand of the Eternal. Conversions
multiplied. Profanity was hushed. Revelry ceased. “Young men” became
“sober-minded.” The fiddle and the midnight dance were superseded by
the “Village Hymns,” the “Songs of Zion,” the quiet sanctuary, and the
tender, the loving and the happy prayer-meeting. All things be came
new. I heard the fame of them, but was absent. In childhood, tender and
anxious religious thought had often filled my eyes with tears, and my
heart with throbs. I had prayed under the shadows of rocks and lone
trees, but no man knew my spiritual wants or met them. I regretted my
absence from Killingworth while my kind pastor and own beloved cousin
were thus leading thirsty souls to the Fountain of Life. I returned just in
time to see 110 of my companions and neighbors stand up in the
sanctuary and confess the Lord Jehovah to be their Lord and Saviour, and
pledge themselves to love, follow, and obey Him.
I was thoughtful and sober, but passed on much as usual in the ordinary
affairs of life.
In the spring of 1826, with a friend and my sister, I left my native home in
a private carriage, and went via Middletown, Hartford, Stockbridge,
Albany, and Schenectady to Rochester, taking the Erie Canal at
Schenectady and leaving our friend to go on in the carriage.
I had then four brothers in Western New York; the oldest, the Rev.
George Coan, had received that summer a call from the Presbyterian
church at Riga, in Monroe County, to become its pastor. This call he
accepted, and at the same time I was engaged to teach the large school
near the church. Here I often met excellent pastors of the surrounding
churches, whose preaching, religious conversation, and personal
friendship awakened afresh the pious longings of my soul. Most of these
pastors are now in heaven, and I know of but one who is still living, and
now more than fourscore years old. His letters of love still come to me
fresh as the dews of Mount Zion.
During this summer of 1826 I often rode by a school-house in a western
district of Riga, and through the windows I saw a face that beamed on me
like that of an angel. The image was deeply impressed, and is still
ineffaceable.
On inquiry, the young lady proved to be Miss Fidelia Church, of
Churchville. I often saw her sunlit face in the choir on the Sabbath, for she
was a sweet singer, but I did not make her acquaintance for many
months.
During the summer of 1827, after the close of my winter-school, I opened
a select-school in Riga, and Fidelia applied for admittance. In this I
rejoiced greatly, for it gave me a good opportunity to mark the character
of her mind, which proved bright and receptive, and to become
acquainted with her moral and social characteristics.
I was called again to teach the central school during the winter of 1827-8,
and though I had not yet united with the visible Church, I was elected
and urged to become superintendent of the Sabbath-school, which I
reluctantly accepted under the firm resolve to spend the remainder of my
days, not in doubting and inactivity, but in doing what I could to bless
my fellow mortals, and to honor God. And in this resolution, which
formed an era in my life, I was greatly helped, comforted, and
established, so that duty done for Christ was a sweet and joyous pleasure.
On the 2nd day of March, 1828, I was received to the fellowship of the
Presbyterian church in Riga, then under the pastoral care of my brother.
Although I had now publicly devoted myself to the service of the Master,
my profession was not yet chosen.
Soon after this union with the church, I visited Medina, a young and
promising village west of Albion, in Orleans County, where one of my
brothers was established in mercantile business. As this brother had long
urged me to connect myself with him in his business, I went to look into
it and to consider his offer. I spent the summer and winter with him.
Here work for the Master opened before me. The town was new, the
inhabitants were from different parts, and of various professions and
religious opinions. But notwithstanding this, there was much harmony in
the village, so that, if a Methodist, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, an
Episcopalian, or a Congregational minister came along and was invited to
preach, a large portion of the people united harmoniously in listening to
the Gospel; and when there was no clergyman, the layman professors
kept up Sabbath services in reading sermons, and with exhortation and
prayer. I was appointed Sunday-school superintendent, and this with
visiting the sick, attending funerals, and assisting the brethren in
religious services, opened just such a field of labor as I needed.
As winter approached I was again pressed into school-teaching, spending
outside hours with my brother in the store.
Still I had not chosen my life-work. Four paths lay before me. My brother
wished me to become his partner in the mercantile business. A good
physician in Rochester, and several in other places, advised me to become
a physician, offering to teach me free of charge. Some said I was made for
a school teacher, and many clergymen and Christian laymen urged me to
go into the Gospel ministry.
What should I do? What could I do? The subject pressed heavily upon my
mind and heart. I said that teaching is pleasant in youth, but for life it
would not satisfy me. As for the medical profession, I was not adapted to
it, and I dared not make the trial. But how of the sacred ministry? I felt
utterly unfit and unworthy - my natural talent, education, piety, were all
unequal to the exalted calling. As Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah shrank
from the offices of legislator and prophet, so I from being an ambassador
of Christ, yet I was willing to work hard as a layman, and even longed to
go as a servant among the heathen to help the honored missionaries.
Thus my spirit labored under a burden which none but God knew, and to
find relief, I decided to be an active and devoted layman; to return to
Connecticut, finish up my business there, and then settle down to a
mercantile life in Medina.
In April, 1829, I left Medina for the East, and in Bergen met, by
agreement, an old and faithful friend, the Rev. H. Halsey, who had been
chosen by his Presbytery a representative to the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church, which was to meet in Philadelphia the coming May.
With him I agreed to visit Philadelphia, attend the sessions of the General
Assembly, and then go on to Connecticut. We took the canal-boat at
Rochester, and on the next day I had a shake of ague, followed by a fever.
We had no doctor and no medicines, and I kept quiet, thinking to brave it
out.
On the next Saturday we reached Syracuse, my ague shakes becoming
more positive. We left the boat and went to Onondaga Hollow, spending
the Sabbath and Monday with the Principal of an Academy, who was
brother-in-law to Mr. Halsey. Here the ague was heavy and I had little
comfort.
On Tuesday we went on to Albany, and thence by steamer to New York;
my chills and fever growing all the while more and more intense. Here I
gave up going to Philadelphia, parting reluctantly with my companion.
Taking passage up the Sound, I went to Madison, where I had friends. I
was then so prostrated I could go no farther, and was laid at once on a
bed of weakness, from which I did not rise for four months. A good
physician and kind friends ministered to me daily, but the disease held
me fast until I was wasted to a skeleton, so that I could not sit in an
easy-chair without fainting while my bed was being made. This was a
time for reflection.
When the cold winds of autumn came, the disease relaxed, and I was
taken carefully in an easy carriage to my father's house, only seven miles
distant. Here I was ill until the last of October. I then rose through the
mercy of God, and was offered the school where my cousin Nettleton and
where all my brothers and sisters had been taught their A B C.
During all that winter there was a cheering revival in the town and in my
school, and many of my pupils were hopefully born again. This was the
best year of my life up to that time. It was the turning point, the day of
decision. It was the voice of God to me. I could no longer doubt. I had
purposed and the Lord had disappointed. I had chosen, but He had other
work for me. I said, Lead me, Saviour. Tell me where to go and what to
do, and I will go and do.
On my return to Western New York I had a free consultation with many
ministerial friends, and all advised me to pursue a short course of
preparatory study, and enter Auburn Theological Seminary.
I had formed a pleasant acquaintance with the Rev. Lewis Cheeseman,
while he was pastor of a church in Albion. He then seemed like a young
Apollos, fervid, eloquent, and impressive. He had now settled in Byron
and was preaching with great power and success. He invited me to study
and labor with him, as an interesting work of grace was in progress, not
only in Byron, but in Rochester and many other towns of that region.
Accordingly I spent the summer of 1830 in his family, studying and
laboring in the revival; sometimes meeting the Rev. Charles Finney.
In the autumn an earnest invitation came to me from the Rev. David Page
and the church in Knoxville, to come and labor there. I accepted the
invitation, and spent the winter and spring in that place, continuing my
classical studies, and assisting the pastor, and conducting evening
meetings in surrounding villages. The religious interest was widespread,
the meetings were full and solemn, consciences were tender, and many
were turned to the Lord.
On the first day of June, 1831, I entered the middle class of Auburn
Theological Seminary.
The faculty then consisted of the Rev. Doctors Richards, Perrine, and
Mills, all noble men and fine scholars.
Here the months and seasons flowed pleasantly along, and I was very
happy in my studies, in the society of the students and in the instructions
of the professors. Every Sabbath morning I went with other students to
teach the convicts in the Auburn State Prison, numbering seven or eight
hundred, and for a year or more I had the office of Superintendent of the
prison Sunday-school. This work was very interesting, as I had personal
access to every class and to every individual. Many confessed to deeds
and purposes of great depravity, and some professed a radical change of
heart. About 200 professed conversion. A few of these I afterward met in
Rochester and Albany, of gentlemanly bearing, and in citizen's dress. I
did not recognize the men whom I had known in the convict's garb, until
they gave me their names. I was rejoiced to find them members of
Sunday-schools and churches, in good business, and happily settled in
life.
On the 17th of April, 1833, I was licensed to preach the Gospel by the
Presbytery of Cayuga County, at a meeting in Auburn.
I was then invited to preach during the summer vacation in one of the
churches in Rochester, while the pastor was absent as a delegate to the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.
At the close of the vacation, as I was about to return to Auburn, the elders
of the church in which I had labored put the following paper into my
hands:
ROCHESTER, July 8, 1833.
Rev. TITUS COAN:
Dear Sir: - In behalf of the First Free Presbyterian Church and
Congregation of Rochester, we present you this testimonial of our entire
satisfaction of your ministerial labors among us during the absence of our
beloved pastor, Rev. Luke Lyons, who was called from us to attend the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.
You may rest assured that we shall remember you in our prayers, and
may the Lord abundantly reward you for your labors of love among us,
guide you by His counsel, and make you eminently useful in promoting
the Redeemer's Kingdom in whatever situation you may be placed.
We are, dear sir, your friends and brethren in Christ our Lord.
(Signed), A. W. RILEY,
ELISHA ELY,
NATHAN LYMAN,
MANLY G. WOODBURY.
It was but a few days after my entrance upon my last term at the
Seminary, when a letter from the Rev. Rufus Anderson, Secretary of the
A. B. C. F. M., called me to Boston to be ordained, and to sail on a mission
of exploration to Patagonia, on which expedition I embarked on the 16th
of August, 1833. An account of this trip may be found in my “Adventures
in Patagonia.”
Chapter II.
Marriage - Embarkation for Hawaii - Santiago, Callao, and
Lima in 1835 - Arrival in Honolulu - Passage to Hilo - Our
New Home - First Labors.
ON returning from Patagonia I landed in New London, Conn., May 7,
1834. During all the long months of my absence in the South, not a word
had come to me from friends, nor had any tidings from me reached the
land of my birth. There had been many fond recollections and tender
heart-longings, and quires of paper had been filled, but no breath of
heaven, no bird of the air had wafted these yearnings, these burning
thoughts from North to South, and from South to North. Over the
Atlantic or the vast continent no answer had come to anxious inquiries,
no echo to calls of love.
But the perils of the sea and of the howling wilderness of savages were
now past, and I was in the land of liberty, of light, and of Christian love.
I went to Boston and reported; to Killingworth, to surprise with joy my
aged and mourning father; and to Middlebury in Vermont to find the one
whom I had chosen, and who had waited patiently and with out change
of object or of purpose, for seven long years to welcome this glad day.
She was then teaching with the dear mother Cooke, in the Middlebury
Female Seminary.
She went with me to her father's house in Churchville, where on the 3rd of Nov.
1834, we were married in the church on Monthly Concert evening. On Nov. 4th
we left for Boston, visiting friends in New York and Connecticut by the way.
On the 23rd of November we received our instructions as missionaries to
the Sandwich Islands, in Park Street church, together with Miss Lydia
Brown, Miss Elizabeth Hitchcock, Mr. Henry Dimond and wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Edwin O. Hall.
On the same occasion a company of twelve missionaries, destined to
South-eastern Africa, received their instructions. The house was packed
and the occasion was one of great interest.
On the 5th of December 1834, we embarked on board the merchant ship
Hellespont, Capt. John Henry, and bade farewell to Boston, to hundreds of
dear and precious friends, to our dear country, not expecting ever to see
them again. On the 6th we awoke and looked in vain for land. City, hills,
mountains, had sunk in the ocean, and nothing outside of the dancing
Hellespont was seen but the ethereal vault and the boundless blue sea.
We plunged into the Gulf Stream and were handled roughly by current
and wind and foaming wave. The wild winds howled, the clouds
thickened and darkened, and the tempest raged.
Our good ship labored, plunged, rose, trembled, plunged and rose again
amidst the foaming billows, shaking off the feathery spray like a sea-lion,
and rushing along her watery way with grandeur. In the night her
shining pathway was all aglow with countless, sparkling brilliants. Our
voyage soon became pleasant. The weather was favorable, the captain
attentive and kind, the officers faithful, and the crew obedient and
respectful. Our seasickness vanished, our skies brightened, and we were
a happy family, daily becoming better acquainted with each other. Miss
Brown was a maiden lady from New Hampshire, of true devotion to the
work of the Lord. She was appointed to the Islands to teach the women of
Hawaii domestic duties, such as carding, spinning, weaving, etc., in
connection with a civilizing Christianity. Miss Hitchcock was also a
maiden lady, well educated and pious. One of her brothers was already
an active missionary on the Islands, and she was going out to assist in
teaching. She afterward married Mr. Edmund H. Rogers, a missionary
printer.
Mr. Dimond came as a book-binder. His good wife was Miss Ann Anner,
of New York City. Both of them are now living. Mr. E. O. Hall was a
printer from Rochester, N. Y. He also found his wife in New York City, a
Miss Williams, a devoted lady. Mrs. Hall died a few years ago.
This united circle held morning and evening devotions, and our days
were spent in reading, writing, and social intercourse. On Sabbaths when
the weather was favorable we had preaching, at which service the
captain, officers, and crew were present.
But I need not detain the reader with a third voyage in the Atlantic.
Enough to say that we passed pleasantly along to the South, sinking the
Northern constellations one by one, and raising the Southern, seeing no
Equatorial line, no Neptune, and no land until the hills of Terra del Fuego
lifted their snowy heads upon us above the clouds. I had longed to see
the wild coast of Patagonia and the Falkland Islands, where only a year
before I had roamed with the savage tribes, or found more comforts
among the whalers and sealers of those southern islets. But we passed
between the Continent and the Islands, descrying neither.
My heart mourned for this land of Patagonia, a land on which the
shadows of death had always rested, and where no day had yet dawned.
We passed through the Strait of Le Maire, and with all sails set, in a
balmy and bright summer day sailed very near the dreaded Cape Horn.
Only a day after we had set our studdingsails and spread all our canvas,
a stormy wind took us far toward the Southern Cross and the ice
mountains of the Antarctic. But in a few days, more favoring gales
hurried us Northward again, and on the 8th of March the joyful sound of
“land ho!” thrilled all on board, and the lofty Cordillera chain stood out
in grandeur before us. It was Chili, and the city of Valparaiso was in
sight. We came into the roadstead, dropped anchor, furled sails,
congratulated one another, and blessed the Lord for a safe passage thus
far.
As the Hellespont was to remain in port about twenty days, Mr. Dimond
and I engaged a carriage and driver, and made a trip to Santiago, the
capital of Chili, about 100 miles inland and near the foot-hills of the
Andes. Our ride was very exhilarating. This city is one of the most
beautiful in South America, well watered from the mountain snows, and
well shaded with trees. On our way we passed over high hills and broad
plains. The roads over these hills were wide and cut in zigzag lines, with
ample terraces or resting-places at the angles. On ascending one of these
lofty hills at early dawn, we descried the heads of two men, recently
severed, each nailed to a high post at different places, and grinning
ghastly upon us. Our driver told us that these men were highway robbers
and murderers; that they had, on going up this hill, perpetrated the vilest
of crimes, killed a husband and his wife, with two children, stolen their
baggage clothes, and horse, and thrown the dead bodies into a deep
ravine below; and for these horrid crimes their heads had been made
beacons of warning to all who passed along this road.
We left Valparaiso on the 27th of March, and anchored in the harbor of
Callao, Peru, on the 6th of April 1835. Here we spent twenty-one days,
giving us opportunity of going on shore as often as we desired, of visiting
Lima, of attending the gorgeous ceremonies of Passion Week, of looking
into the grand Cathedral and their splendid churches, and of noticing the
monuments of art, and the scars of revolution in that renowned, but often
suffering, desecrated, and vandalized city.
With the courteous Bishop of Lima, we went through the Cathedral, he
bowing and crossing him self as he passed by the various pictures and
statues, telling us of the guardian care of the different saints over the city.
We left Callao on the 27th of April, saw the mountains of Hawaii on the
5th of June, and on the 6th landed in Honolulu. The Hawaiian mission
was then in session, and on the arrival of the Hellespont, the mission
appointed a committee of three to meet us on board, while the meeting
was adjourned, and a large part of the members with wives and children
came down to the wharf to welcome us, and to escort us to the house of
the Rev. Hiram Bingham. The welcome was warm and warmly
reciprocated, and the meeting was joyful. It seemed to us apostolical. We
regarded these veteran toilers with a feeling of veneration. Some looked
vigorous and strong others seemed pallid and wayworn. Here were the
fathers and mothers in Israel, and here the brothers and sisters, with
flocks of precious children. We rejoiced that we were permitted to be
numbered with this honored and happy family. We all united in a hymn
of praise and thanksgiving to God, and then knelt in prayer.
The new reinforcement united in the daily meetings of the mission until
the closing of its sessions, when we went forth to our appointed stations,
my wife and I to Hilo, Hawaii, with Mr. and Mrs. Lyman.
We embarked at Honolulu, in the schooner Velocity, falsely so-called, on
the 6th of July. The schooner was small, a slow sailor, dirty, crowded with
more than one hundred passengers, mostly natives, and badly managed.
The captain was an Irishman given to hard drinking.
We sailed from Honolulu on Monday. The sea was rough and nearly all
of the passengers were very seasick. Our first port was Lahaina, eighty
miles from Honolulu, where we were to land Mr. and Mrs. Richards, Dr.
and Mrs. Chapin, Mr. and Mrs. Spaulding, and other families. On
Wednesday morning the captain announced that the land just ahead was
Maui, and that we should all land in about an hour at Lahaina, where we
might rest a day, bathe, eat grapes and watermelons, and be refreshed for
the rest of the voyage, about 150 miles further.
But the poor captain's eyes were dazed, and he had lost his reckoning.
We had gone about in the night and we were back at Honolulu! This fact
came upon us with a shock of agony. After such seasickness as some of us
had never before endured, the dreadful thought came over us, “Shall we
ever reach our homes on this vessel and with this master?” Many of us
had tasted neither food nor wafer from Monday to Wednesday, and all
had lain crowded on a dirty deck, exposed to wind, rain, and wave, and
how could we live to reach our destination? But there was no alternative.
We said go, and the dull Velocity went about and headed again for
Lahaina, where we landed passengers, and on the 21st we saw the
emerald beauty of Hilo, and disembarked with joy and thanksgiving.
Hundreds of laughing natives thronged the beach, seized our hands, gave
us the hearty “Aloha” and followed us up to the house of our good
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Lyman, who were with us to comfort and inform us
all the way.
The bay of Hilo is a beautiful, spacious, and safe harbor. The outline of its
beach is a crescent like the moon in her first quarter. The beach is
composed of fine, volcanic sand, mixed with a little coral and earth. On
its eastern and western sides, and in its center, it is divided by three
streams of pure water; it has a deep channel about half a mile wide near
the western shore, sufficiently deep to admit the largest ship that floats.
Seaward it is protected by lava reef one mile from the shore. This reef was
formed by a lateral stream of lava, sent out at right angles from a broad
river of molten rocks that formed our eastern coast. This reef is a grand
barrier against the swell of the ocean. Lord Byron, who visited Hilo, when
he brought home the corpses of King Liholiho and his queen, gave the
name of “Byron Bay” to this harbor, but that name is nearly obsolete.
The beach was once beautifully adorned with the cocoa palm, whose lofty
plumes waved and rustle and glittered in the fresh sea-breeze. Beyond
our quiet bay the broad, blue ocean foams or sleeps, with a surface
sometimes shining like molten silver, tumbling in white foam, or gently
throbbing as with the pulsations of life.
Inland, from the shore to the bases of the mountains, the whole landscape
is “arrayed in living green,” presenting a picture of inimitable beauty, so
varied in tint, so grooved with water channels, and so sparkling with
limpid streams and white foaming cascades, as to charm the eye, and
cause the beholder to exclaim, “This is a scene of surpassing loveliness.”
Behind all this in the background, tower the lofty, Snow-mantled
Mountains, Kea and Loa, out of one, which rush volcanic fires. At the first
sight we were charmed with the beauty and the grandeur of the scene,
and we exclaimed, “Surely the lines are fallen to us in pleasant places,
and we have a goodly heritage.”
We were satisfied, yes more, we were delighted, with our location, and to
this day we bless the Lord that He inclined the minds of the mission to
assign us to this field of labor. In this, as in all the past, we see the guiding
hand of Him who has promised to “direct the steps” of all who “commit
their way to Him.”
Hilo had then but one framed house. It was a low, two-story building in
the style of a New England farm-house, built and occupied by the Rev.
Joseph Goodrich, a good and faithful missionary of the A. B. C. F. M.
Mr. Lyman's home, into which we were received, was a small, stone
house, with walls laid up with mud, and a thatched roof. Each family had
but one room about fifteen feet square.
Mr. Goodrich, with his family, left Hilo in November for the United
States, not to return, and we were advised to occupy his house, which
with later additions and improvements has been our habitation ever
since.
Mr. Lyman soon built a comfortable house near us, and the old
stone-and-mud hut was devoted to a schoolroom.
By the advice of the Lymans, who had been two years in Hilo, and whose
experience and wise counsel were of great use to us, we at once began
teaching a school of about a hundred almost naked boys and girls, being
ourselves pupils of a good man named Barnabas, who patiently drilled us
daily in the language of his people. By reading, trying to talk, teach and
write, we crept along, without grammar or dictionary, the mist lifting
slowly before us, until at the end of three months from our arrival, I went
into the pulpit with Mr. Lyman, and preached my first sermon in the
native language. Soon after, I made a tour with him into Puna, one wing
of our field, and then through the district of Hilo, in an opposite
direction. These tours introduced me to the people for whom I was to
labor, and with whom I had a burning desire to communicate freely, and
helped me greatly in acquiring the language.
The General Meeting at Honolulu in June had advised Mr. Lyman and
myself to establish a boarding-school for boys, leaving to us the question
as to which of us should be the principal of the school, and which the
traveling missionary.
He chose the school as his chief work, and I the pastoral and preaching
department. Our labors, however, were not separated for a long time, he
preaching always when I was absent on tours, and often when I was at
home; we always worked in harmony. After a year or two, the school
being enlarged and important, Mr. Lyman requested the mission to
accept his resignation of the joint pastoral of the church and to appoint
me as the sole pastor. This was done harmoniously, and we have labored
side by side until the present day, mutually assisting, and rejoicing in the
success of all departments of the service.
Under the efficient care of Mr. and Mrs. Lyman the school has been a
great success. Its department of manual labor is an important feature in
the institution. It has given a very valuable physical training to the boys,
imparting to them skill and health, and making the school nearly
self-supporting. The young men are well dressed, neat and manly in their
appearance, and give evidence of an elevation above the common masses
around them. In all, the Seminary has graduated about one thousand
pupils. Many of them are among the most useful members of society, and
some of them have become legislators, judges, teachers, Christian
ministers, foreign missionaries, etc.
Mr. Lyman, feeling obliged through declining health to resign his office
as Principal, the Rev. W. B. Oleson was appointed in September 1878, as
his successor.
Chapter III.
The Field - The People - Hilo District - Crossing the
Torrents - Perils of a Canoe Voyage - Puna District.
THE field in which I was called to labor is a belt of land extending by the
coast-line 100 miles on the north-east, east, and south-east shore of
Hawaii, including the districts of Hilo and Puna, and a part of Kau.
The inhabited belt is one to three miles wide, and in a few places there
were hamlets and scattering villages five to ten miles inland. Beyond this
narrow shore belt there is a zone of forest trees with a tropical jungle
from ten to twenty-five miles wide, almost impenetrable by man or beast.
Still higher is another zone of open country girdling the bases of the
mountains, with a rough surface of hill, dale, ravine, scoriaceous lava
fields, rocky ridges, and plains and hills of pastureland. Here wild goats,
wild cattle, wild hogs and wild geese feed. Still higher up tower Mauna
Kea and Mauna Loa, nearly 14,000 feet above the sea, the former being a
pile of extinct craters, often crowned with snow, and the latter a
mountain of fire, where for unknown ages earthquakes that rock the
group and convulse the ocean have been born, and where volcanoes burst
out with awful roar, and rush in fiery rivers down the mountain sides,
across the open plains, through the blazing forest jungle and into the sea.
All but the narrow shore belt is left to untamed bird and beast, and to the
wild winds and raging fires of the mountains, except when bird-catchers,
canoe makers, cattle-hunters, or volcano visitors are drawn thither by
their several interests from the shore.
The population of this shore belt was probably at that time about 15,000
to 16,000, almost exclusively natives. Very few foreigners had then come
here to live. Several missionaries had resided in Hilo for short periods,
but none had settled here permanently except Mr. and Mrs. Lyman.
Occasional tours had been made through Hilo and Puna, and the Gospel
had been preached in most of the villages. Schools had also been
established through the districts and a goodly number could read and
write. Some pupils were in the elements of arithmetic, and many
committed lessons in the Scriptures to memory.
Forms of idolatry were kept out of sight, but superstition and ignorance,
hypocrisy and most of the lower vices prevailed. The people were all
slaves to their chiefs, and no man but a chief owned a foot of land, a tree,
a pig, a fowl, his wife, children, or himself. All belonged to his chief and
could be taken at will, if anger or covetousness or lust called for them. I
have seen families by the score turned out of their dwellings, all their
effects seized, and they sent off wailing, to seek shelter and food where
they could. “On the side of the oppressor there was power, but the poor
man had no comforter.”
Hilo, the northern wing of this field, is a district including about thirty
miles of its shoreline. It is covered with a deep rich soil, clothed with
perennial green of every shade, watered with the rain of heaven and
grooved by about eighty water channels that run on an angle of some
three degrees, leaping over hundreds of precipices of varied heights, from
three or four feet to 500, and plunging into the sea over a cliff rising in
height, from the sand beach of the town, to 700 or 800 feet along the
northern coast-line.
For many years after our arrival there were no roads, no bridges, and no
horses in Hilo, and all my tours were made on foot. These were three or
four annually through Hilo, and as many in Puna; the time occupied in
making them was usually ten to twenty days for each trip.
In passing through the district of Hilo, the weather was sometimes fine
and the rivers low, so that there was little difficulty in traveling. The path
was a simple trail, winding in a serpentine line, going down and up
precipices, some of which could only be descended and ascended by
grasping the shrubs and grasses; and with no little weariness and
difficulty and some danger.
But the streams were the most formidable obstacles. In great rains, which
often occurred on my tours, when the winds rolled in the heavy clouds
from the sea, and massed them in dark banks on the side of the mountain,
the waters would fall in torrents at the head of the streams and along
their channels, and the rush and the roar as the floods came down were
like the thunder of an army charging upon the foe.
I have sometimes sat on the high bank of a streamlet, not more than
fifteen to twenty feet wide, conversing with natives in the bright
sunshine, when suddenly a portentous roaring, “Like the sound of many
waters, or like the noise of the sea when the waves thereof roar,” fell
upon my ears, and looking up-stream, I have seen a column of turbid
waters six feet deep coming down like the flood from a broken mill-dam.
The natives would say to me, “Awiwi! awiwi! o pea oe i ka wai” - “Quick!
quick! or the waters will stop you.”
Rushing down the bank I would cross over, dry shod, where in two
minutes more there was no longer any passage for man or beast. But I
rarely waited for the rivers to run by. My appointments for preaching
were all sent forward in a line for thirty or sixty miles, designating the
day, and usually the hours, when I would be at a given station, and by
breaking one of these links the whole chain would be disturbed. It
therefore seemed important that every appointment should be kept,
whatever the inconvenience might be to me. In traveling, my change of
raiment was all packed in one calabash, or large gourd, covered by the
half of another; a little food was in a second calabash. With these gourds
one may travel indefinitely in the heaviest rains while all is dry within.
Faithful natives carried my little supplies.
I had several ways of crossing the streams.
1st. When the waters were low, large rocks and boulders, common in all
the water-channels, were left bare, so that with a stick or pole eight or ten
feet long, I leaped from rock to rock over the giddy streams and crossed
dry-shod: these same poles helping me to climb up, and to let myself
down steep precipices, and to leap ditches six to eight feet wide. 2nd.
When the streams were not too deep and too swift I waded them; and
3rd, when not too deep, but too swift, I mounted upon the shoulders of a
sturdy aquatic native, holding on to his bushy hair, when he mowed
carefully down the slippery bank of the river, leaning up-stream against a
current of ten knots, and moving one foot at a time, sideways among the
slimy boulders in the bottom, and then bringing the other foot carefully
up. Thus slowly feeling his way across, he would land me safe with a
shout and a laugh on the opposite bank. But this is a fearful way of
crossing, for the cataracts are so numerous, the waters so rapid, and the
uneven bottom so slippery, that the danger of falling is imminent, and the
recovery from a fall often impossible, the current hurrying one swiftly
over a precipice into certain destruction. Both natives and foreigners have
thus lost their lives in these streams, and among them three of the
members of the Hilo church who have traveled and labored and prayed
with me.
I once crossed a full and powerful river in this way, not more than fifty
feet above a cataract of 426 feet in height, with a basin forty feet deep
below, where this little Niagara has thundered for ages. A missionary
brother of another station seeing me landed safely, and knowing that this
crossing would save about six miles of hard and muddy walking,
followed me on the shoulders of the same bold native that took me over.
But before he had reached the middle of the rushing flood, he trembled
and cried out with fear. The bearer said, “Hush! hush! be still, or we
perish together.” The brother still trembling, the native with great
difficulty managed to reach a rock in the center of the river, and on this
he seated his burden, commanding him to be quiet and sit there until he
was cool (he was already drenched with rain and river-spray), when he
would take him off, which he did in about ten minutes and landed him
safely by my side.
This mode of crossing the streams, however, was too dangerous, and I
soon abandoned it.
A fourth mode was for a sufficient number of strong men to form a chain
across the river. They made a line, locking hands on the bank; with heads
bending up-stream entering the water carefully, and moving slowly until
the head of the line reached good foothold near the opposite bank. With
my hands upon the shoulders of the men I passed along this chain of
bones, sinews, and muscles and arrived in safety on the other side.
The fifth and safest, and in fact the only possible way to cross some of
these rivers when swollen and raging, was to throw a rope across the
stream, and fasten it to trees or rocks on either side; grasping it firmly
with both hands, my feet thrown down-stream, I drew myself along the
line and gained the opposite bank. This I sometimes did without
removing shoes or garments, then walked on to my next station, and
preached in wet clothes, continuing my travels and labors until night;
when in dry wrappings I slept well, and was all ready for work the next
day.
I was once three hours in crossing one river. The day was cold and rainy,
and I was soaked before I entered the stream. This was so wide at the
only possible crossing point, that we were unable to throw a line across,
even with a weight attached to the end of it. The raging roaring, and
tossing of the waters were fearful, and the sight of it made me shudder.
Kind natives collected on both banks by scores, with ropes and courage to
help. The fearful rapids, running probably twenty miles an hour, were
before us. Fifty feet below us was a fall of some twenty feet, and about
100 yards further down was a thundering cataract, where the river was
compressed within a narrow gorge with a clear plunge of about eighty
feet.
Our natives tried all their skill and strength, but could not throw the line
across. At length a daring man went up-stream close to a waterfall, took
the end of the rope in his teeth, mounted a rock, calculated his chances of
escape from the cataracts below, and leaped into the flood; down, down
he went quivering and struggling till he reached the opposite shore only
a few feet above the fall, over which it must have been a fatal plunge had
he gone. But by his temerity, which I should have forbidden, had I known
it in season, a passage was provided for me.
After years had passed, and a little had been done toward making roads,
I purchased a horse, and tried to get him over these streams by
swimming or hauling him over with ropes. Twice when I attempted to go
over in the saddle, his foot caught between two rocks in the middle of the
stream, and horse and rider were saved only by the energy and fidelity of
the natives.
Once in going up a steep precipice in a narrow pass between a rocky
height on one hand and a stream close on the other, my horse fell over
backward and lay with his head down and his feet in the air, so wedged
and so wounded that he could never have escaped from his position, had
not a company of natives for whom I sent came to the rescue and
extricated the poor, faithful animal from his rocky bed. I escaped instant
death by sliding out of the saddle upon the narrow bank of the stream,
before the back of my horse struck between the rocks. He was so hurt that
I was obliged to leave him to recover.
In order to save time and escape the weariness of the road and the
dangers of the rivers, I sometimes took a canoe at the end of my tours to
return home by the water. This trip required six to eight hours, and was
usually made in the night.
On three occasions my peril was great. One description will suffice for all;
for although the difficulties and escapes were at different points along a
precipitous and lofty sea-wall, yet the causes of danger were the same,
viz.: stormy winds, raging billows, and want of landing-places.
About midway between our starting-place and Hilo harbor, we were met
by a strong head-wind, with pouring rain and tumultuous waves in a
dark midnight. We were half a mile from land, but could hear the roar
and see the flashing of the white surf as it dashed against the rocky walls.
We could not land, we could not sail, and we could not row forward or
backward. All we could do was to keep the prow of the canoe to the
wind, and bail. Foaming seas dashed against our frail cockleshell,
pouring in buckets of brine. Thus we lay about five hours, anxious as
they “who watch for the morning.” At length it dawned; we looked
through the misty twilight to the rock-bound shore where “the waves
dashed high.” A few doors of native huts opened and men crawled out.
We called, but no echo came. We made signals of distress. We were seen
and numbers came down to the cliffs and gazed at us. We waved our
garments for them to come off to our help. They feared, they hesitated.
We were opposite the mouth of a roaring river, where the foam of
breakers dashed in wild fury. At last four naked men came down from
the cliff, plunged into the sea, dived under one towering wave after
another, coming out to breathe between the great rolling billows, and
thus reached our canoe. Ordering the crew to swim to the land, they took
charge of the canoe themselves because they knew the shore. Meanwhile
men stood on the high bluffs with kapa cloth in hand to signal to the
boat-men when to strike for the mouth of the river. They waited long and
watched the tossing waves as they rolled in and thundered upon the
shore, and when at last a less furious wave came behind us, the shore
men waved the signals and tried out, “Hoi! hoi!” and as the waves lifted
the stern of our canoe, all the paddles struck the water, while the steerer
kept the canoe straight on her course, and thus mounted on this crested
wave as on an ocean chariot, with the feathery foam flying around us, we
rode triumphantly into the mouth of the river, where we were received
with shouts of gladness by the throng who had gathered to witness our
escape. Then two rows of strong men waded into the surf up to their
arm-pits to receive our canoe and bear it in triumph to the shore.
Praising the Lord for His goodness, and thanking the kind natives for
their agency in delivering me, I walked the rest of the way home.
The district of Puna lies east and south of Hilo, and its physical features
are remarkably different from those of the neighboring district.
Its shoreline, including its bends and flexures, is more than seventy miles
in extent. For three miles inland from the sea it is almost a dead level,
with a surface of pahoehoe or field lava, and a-a or scoriaceous lava,
interspersed with more or less rich volcanic soil and tropical verdure, and
sprinkled with sand-dunes and a few cone and pit-craters. Throughout its
length it is marked with ancient lava streams, coming down from Kilauea
and entering the sea at different points along the coast. These lava
streams vary in width from half a mile to two or three miles. From one to
three miles from the shore the land rises rapidly into the great volcanic
dome of Mauna Loa (Long Mountain). The highlands are mostly covered
with woods and jungle, and scarred with rents, pits, and volcanic cones.
Everywhere the marks of terrible volcanic action are visible. The whole
district is so cavernous, so rent with fissures, and so broken by fiery
agencies, that not a single stream of water keeps above-ground to reach
the sea. All the rain-fall is swallowed by the 10,000 crevices, and
disappears, except the little that is held in small pools and basins, waiting
for evaporation. The rains are abundant, and subterranean fountains and
streams are numerous, carrying the waters down to the sea level, and
filling caverns, and bursting up along the shore in springs and rills, even
far out under the sea. Some of these waters are very cold, some tepid, and
some stand at blood heat, furnishing excellent warm baths. There are
large caves near the sea where we enter by dark and crooked passages,
and bathe by torchlight, far underground, in deep and limpid water.
Puna has many beautiful groves of the cocoa-palm, also breadfruit,
pandanus, and ohia, and where there is soil it produces under cultivation,
besides common vegetables, arrowroot, sugar-cane, coffee, cotton,
oranges, citrons, limes, grapes, and other fruits. On the highlands, grow
wild strawberries, cape gooseberries, and the ohelo, a delicious berry
resembling our whortleberry.
On the shore line of the eastern part of Kau, adjoining Puna, were several
villages, containing from 500 to 700 inhabitants, separated from the
inhabited central and western portions of the district by a desert of
unwatered lava about 15 miles wide, without a single house or human
being. These villages were occasionally visited by the Rev. Mr. Forbes,
then stationed in South Kona; but to reach them required a long, weary
walk over the fields of burning lava, and at his request, I took them under
my charge, thus extending the shoreline of my parish ten miles
westward.
Chapter IV.
First Tours in Hilo and Puna - The Work of 1837-38 -
Spontaneous Church-building - The Great Awakening - The
Volcanic Wave - Pastoral Experiences and Methods - The
Ingathering.
I MADE my first tours of Hilo and Puna during the latter part of my first
half-year on Hawaii. In 1836 I had gained so much in the language as to
be able to converse, preach, and pray with comfort and with apparent
effect on my audiences.
On my arrival in Hilo, the number of church members was twenty-three,
all living in the town. A considerable portion of our time was then
devoted to the schools. Mr. and Mrs. Lyman were heartily engaged in the
boys' boarding-school. Mrs. Coan was already teaching a day-school of
140 children, and I a training-school of 90 teachers to supply the schools
of Hilo and Puna.
Giving a vacation to my pupils, I set off Nov. 29, 1836, on a tour around
the island. This was made on foot, with the exception of a little sailing in
a canoe down the coast of Kona. My companions were two or three
natives, to act as guides and porters. On reaching the western coast of
Kau, I visited all the villages along the shore, preaching and exhorting
everywhere. The people came out, men, women, and children, in crowds,
and listened with great attention. Here I preached three, four, and five
times a day, and had much personal conversation with the natives on
things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
On reaching the western boundaries of Puna, my labors became more
abundant. I had visited this people before, and had noticed a hopeful
interest in a number of them. Now they rallied in masse, and were eager
to hear the Word. Many listened with tears, and after the preaching,
when I supposed they would return to their homes and give me rest, they
remained and crowded around me so earnestly, that I had no time to eat,
and in places where I spent my nights they filled the house to its entire
capacity, leaving scores outside who could not enter. All wanted to hear
more of the “Word of Life.” At ten or eleven o'clock I would advise them
to go home and to sleep. Some would retire, but more remain until
midnight. At cock-crowing the house would be again crowded, with as
many more outside.
At one place before I reached the point where I was to spend a Sabbath,
there was a line of four villages not more than half a mile apart. Every
village begged for a sermon and for personal conversation. Commencing
at daylight I preached in three of them before breakfast, at 10 A.M. When
the meeting closed at one village most of the people ran on to the next,
and thus my congregation increased rapidly from hour to hour. Many
were “pricked in their hearts” and were inquiring what they should do to
be saved.
Sunday came and I was now in the most populous part of Puna.
Multitudes came out to hear the Gospel. The blind were led; the maimed,
the aged and decrepit, and many invalids were brought on the backs of
their friends. There was great joy and much weeping in the assembly.
Two days were spent in this place, and ten sermons preached, while
almost all the intervals between the public services were spent in
personal conversation with the crowds, which pressed around me.
Many of the people who then wept and prayed proved true converts to
Christ; most of them have died in the faith, and a few still live as steadfast
witnesses to the power of the Gospel.
Among these converts was the High Priest of the volcano. He was more
than six feet high and of lofty bearing. He had been an idolater, a
drunkard, an adulterer, a robber, and a murderer. For their kapas, for a
pig or a fowl he had killed men on the road, whenever they hesitated to
yield to his demands. But he became penitent, and appeared honest and
earnest in seeking the Lord.
His sister was more haughty and stubborn. She was High Priestess of the
volcano. She, too, was tall and majestic in her bearing. For a long time she
refused to bow to the claims of the Gospel; but at length she yielded,
confessed herself a sinner and under the authority of a higher Power, and
with her brother became a docile member of the church.
During this tour of thirty days I examined twenty schools with an
aggregate of 1,200 pupils.
After my return, congregations at the center increased in numbers and in
interest. Meetings for parents, for women, for church members, for
children, were frequent and full. Soon scores and hundreds who had
heard the Gospel in Kau, Puna, and Hilo, came into the town to hear
more. During all the years of 1837-8, Hilo was crowded with strangers;
whole families and whole villages in the country were left, with the
exception of a few of the old people, and in some instances even the aged
and the feeble were brought in on litters from a distance of thirty or fifty
miles. Little cabins studded the place like the camps of an army, and we
estimated that our population was increased to 10,000 souls. Those who
remained some time, fished, and planted potatoes and taro for food. Our
great native house of worship, nearly 200 feet long by about eighty-five
feet wide, with a lofty roof of thatch, was crowded almost to suffocation,
while hundreds remained outside unable to enter. This sea of faces, all
hushed except when sighs and sobs burst out here and there, was a scene
to melt the heart. The word fell with power, and sometimes as the feeling
deepened, the vast audience was moved and swayed like a forest in a
mighty wind. The word became like the “fire and the hammer” of the
Almighty, and it pierced like a two-edged sword. Hopeful converts were
multiplied and “there was great joy in the city.”
Finding the place of our worship “too strait” for the increasing
multitudes, our people, of their own accord and without the knowledge
of their teachers, went up into the forest three to five miles, with axes, and
with ropes made of vines and bark of the hibiscus, cut down trees of
suitable size and length for posts, rafters, etc., and hauled them down
through mud and jungle, and over streams and hillocks to the town.
Seeing a very large heap of this timber, I inquired what this meant. The
reply was, “We will build a second house of worship so that the people
may all be sheltered from sun and rain on the Sabbath. And this is our
thought; all of the people of Hilo shall meet in the larger house, where
you will preach to them in the morning, during which time the people of
Puna and Kau will meet for prayer in the smaller house, and in the
afternoon these congregations shall exchange places, and you will preach
to the Puna and Kau people; thus all will hear the minister.”
Several thousands, both men and women, took hold of the work, and in
about three weeks from the commencement of the hauling of the timber,
the house was finished and a joyful crowd of about 2,000 filled it on the
Sabbath.
Neither of the houses had floors or seats. The ground was beaten hard
and covered from week to week with fresh grass.
When we wished to economize room, or seat the greatest possible
number, skilled men were employed to arrange the people standing in
compact rows as tight as it was possible to crowd them, the men and
women being separated, and when the house was thus filled with these
compacted ranks, the word was given them to sit down, which they did, a
mass of living humanity, such perhaps as was never seen except on
Hawaii.
During these years my tours through the extended parish were not given
up. Nearly every person left in the villages came to the preaching
stations. There were places along the routes where there were no houses
near the trail, but where a few families were living half a mile or more
inland. In such places, the few dwellers would come down to the path
leading their blind, and carrying their sick and aged upon their backs,
and lay them down under a tree if there was one near, or upon the naked
rocks, that they might hear of a Savior. It was often affecting to see these
withered and trembling hands reached out to grasp the hand of the
teacher, and to hear the palsied, the blind, and the lame begging him to
stop awhile and tell them the story of Jesus. These pleas could not be
resisted, for the thought would instantly arise, “This may be the last time.”
And so it often was, for on my next tour some of them had gone never to
return. It was a comforting thought that they had been told of “the Lamb
of God who taketh away the sin of the world,” and to feel a sweet
assurance from their tears of joy and eager reception of the truth that they
had found “Him of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote.”
Time swept on; the work deepened and widened, Thousands on
thousands thronged the courts of the Lord. All eastern and southern
Hawaii was like a sea in motion. Waimea, Hamakua, Kohala, Kona, and
the other islands of the group, were moved. Reporting and inquiring
letters circulated from post to post, and from island to island. One asked
another, “What do these things mean?” and the reply was, “What
indeed?” Some said that the Hawaiians were a peculiar people, and very
hypocritical, so debased in mind and heart that they could not receive
any true conception of the true God, or of spiritual things; even their
language was wanting in terms to convey ideas of sacred truth; we must
not hope for evangelical conversions among them. But most of the
laborers redoubled their efforts were earnest in prayer, and worked on in
faith. Everywhere the trumpet of jubilee sounded long and loud, and “as
clouds and as doves to their windows,” so ransomed sinners flocked to
Christ.
I had seen great and powerful awakenings under the preaching of
Nettleton and Finney, and like doctrines, prayers, and efforts seemed to
produce like fruits among this people.
My precious wife, whose soul was melted with love and longings for the
weeping natives, felt that to doubt it was the work of the Spirit, was to
grieve the Holy Ghost and to provoke Him to depart from us.
On some occasions there were physical demonstrations, which
commanded attention. Among the serious and anxious inquirers who
came to our house by day and by night. there were individuals who,
while listening to a very plain and kind conversation, would begin to
tremble and soon fall helpless to the floor. At one time, when I was
holding a series of outdoor meetings in a populous part of Puna, a
remarkable manifestation of this kind occurred. A very large concourse
were seated on the grass, and I was standing in the center preaching
“Repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus.” Of a sudden, a
man who had been gazing with intense interest at the preacher, burst out
in a fervent prayer, with streaming tears, saying: “Lord, have mercy on
me; I am dead in sin.” His weeping was so loud, and his trembling so
great, that the whole congregation was moved as by a common
sympathy. Many wept aloud, and many commenced praying together.
The scene was such as I had never before witnessed. I stood dumb in the
midst of this weeping, wailing, praying multitude, not being able to make
myself heard for about twenty minutes. When the noise was hushed, I
continued my address with words of caution, lest they should feel that
this kind of demonstration atoned for their sins, and rendered them
acceptable before God. I assured them that all the Lord required was
godly sorrow for the past, present faith in Christ, and henceforth faithful,
filial, and cheerful obedience. A calm came over the multitude, and we
felt that “the Lord was there.”
A young man came once into our meeting to make sport slyly. Trying to
make the young men around him laugh during prayer, he fell as
senseless as a log upon the ground and was carried out of the house. It
was some time before his consciousness could be restored. He became
sober, confessed his sins, and in due time united with the church.
Similar manifestations were seen in other places, but everywhere the
people were warned against hypocrisy, and against trusting in such
demonstrations. They were told that the Lord looks at the heart, and that
“repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus” were the
unchangeable conditions of pardon and salvation, and that their future
lives of obedience or of disobedience would prove or disprove their
spiritual life, as “The tree is known by its fruit.”
But God visited the people in judgment as well as in mercy. On the 7th of
November, 1837, at the hour of evening prayers, we were startled by a
heavy thud, and a sudden jar of the earth. The sound was like the fall of
some vast body upon the beach, and in a few seconds a noise of mingled
voices rising for a mile along the shore thrilled us like the wail of doom.
Instantly this was followed by a like wail from all the native houses
around us. I immediately ran down to the sea, where a scene of wild ruin
was spread out before me. The sea, moved by an unseen hand, had all on
a sudden risen in a gigantic wave, and this wave, rushing in with the
speed of a race-horse, had fallen upon the shore, sweeping everything not
more than fifteen or twenty feet above high-water mark into
indiscriminate ruin. Houses, furniture, calabashes, fuel, timber, canoes,
food, clothing, everything floated wild upon the flood. About two
hundred people, from the old man and woman of threescore years and
ten, to the new-born infant, stripped of their earthly all, were struggling
in the tumultuous waves. So sudden and unexpected was the
catastrophe, that the people along the shore were literally “eating and
drinking,” and they “knew not, until the flood came and swept them all
away.” The harbor was full of strugglers calling for help, while frantic
parents and children, wives and husbands ran to and fro along the beach,
calling for their lost ones. As wave after wave came in and retired, the
strugglers were brought near the shore, where the more vigorous landed
with desperate efforts and the weaker and exhausted were carried back
upon the retreating wave, some to sink and rise no more till the noise of
judgment wakes them. Twelve individuals were picked up while drifting
out of the bay by the boats of the Admiral Cockburn, an English whaler
then in port. For a time the captain of the ship feared the loss of his vessel,
but as the oscillating waves grew weaker and weaker, he lowered all his
boats and went in search of those who were floating off upon the current.
Had this catastrophe occurred at midnight when all were asleep,
hundreds of lives would undoubtedly have been lost. Through the great
mercy of God, only thirteen were drowned.
This event, falling as it did like a bolt of thunder from a clear sky, greatly
impressed the people. It was as the voice of God speaking to them out of
heaven, “Be ye also ready.”
Day after day we buried the dead, as they were found washed up upon
the beach, or thrown upon the rocky shores far from the harbor. We fed,
comforted, and clothed the living, and God brought light out of darkness,
joy out of grief, and life out of death. Our meetings were more and more
crowded, and hopeful converts were multiplied.
Even the English captain, who spent his nights in our family, and his
intelligent and courteous clerk, professed to give themselves to the Lord
while with us, and both kneeling with us at the family altar, silently
united in our morning and evening devotions, or cheerfully led in prayer.
The captain was a large and powerful man, bronzed by wind and wave
and scorching sun. He had been long upon the deep, had suffered
shipwreck, had been unable to reach his London home for more than
three years, and had been given up as dead by all his friends. Under this
belief his wife had married another, when he surprised her by his return,
and she gave him joy by returning to him. He gave us an interesting
account of his eventful life, and confessed that he had enjoyed very few
religious privileges and had thought little of God or the salvation of his
soul.
He now accepted the offer of life through Christ, with the spirit of a little
child.
On returning to the ship he immediately told his officers and crew that he
should drink no more intoxicants, swear no more, and chase whales no
more on the Lord's day, but, on the contrary, observe the Sabbath and
have religious services on that holy day.
Though thousands professed to have passed from death unto life during
the years 1836-7, only a small proportion of these had been received into
the church. The largest numbers were gathered in during 1838-9. I had
kept a faithful note-book in my pocket, and in all my personal
conversations with the people, by night and by day, at home and in my
oft-repeated tours, I had noted down, unobserved, the names of
individuals apparently sincere and true converts. Over these persons I
kept watch, though unconsciously to themselves; and thus their life and
conversation were made the subjects of vigilant observation. After the
lapse of three, six, nine, or twelve months, as the case might be, selections
were made from the list of names for examination. Some were found to
have gone back to their old sins; others were stupid, or gave but doubtful
evidence of conversion, while many had stood fast and run well. Most of
those who seemed hopefully converted spent several months at the
central station before their union with the church. Here they were
watched over and instructed from week to week and from day to day,
with anxious and unceasing care. They were sifted and re-sifted with
scrutiny, and with every effort to take the precious from the vile. The
church and the world, friends and enemies, were called upon and
solemnly charged to testify, without concealment or palliation, if they
knew aught against any of the candidates.
From my pocket list of about three thousand, 1,705 were selected to be
baptized and received to the communion of the church on the first
Sabbath of July, 1838. The selection was made, not because a thousand
and more of others were to be rejected, or that a large proportion of them
did not appear as well as those received, but because the numbers were
too large for our faith, and might stagger the faith of others. The
admission of many was deferred for the more full development of their
character, while they were to be watched over, guided, and fed as sheep
of the Great Shepherd.
The 1,705 persons selected had all been gathered at the station some time
before the day appointed for their reception. They had been divided into
classes, according to the villages whence they came, and put in charge of
class leaders, who were instructed to watch over and teach them.
The memorable morning came arrayed in glory. A purer sky, a brighter
sun, a serener atmosphere, a more silvery sea, and a more brilliant and
charming landscape could not be desired. The very heavens over us and
the earth around us seemed to smile. The hour came; during the time of
preparation the house was kept clear of all but the actors. With the roll in
hand, the leaders of the classes were called in with their companies of
candidates in the order of all the villages; first of Hilo district, then of
Puna, and last of Kau. From my roll the names in the first class were
called one by one, and I saw each individual seated against the wall, and
so of the second, and thus on until the first row was formed. Thus, row
after row was extended the whole length of the house, leaving spaces for
one to pass between these lines. After every name had been called, and
every individual recognized and seated, all the former members of the
church were called in and seated on the opposite side of the building, and
the remaining space given to as many as could be seated.
All being thus prepared, we had singing and prayer, then a word of
explanation on the rite of baptism, with exhortation. After this with a
basin of water, I passed back and forth between the lines, sprinkling each
individual until all were baptized. Standing in the center of the
congregation of the baptized, I pronounced the words, “I baptize you all
into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
The scene was one of solemn and tender interest, surpassing anything of
the kind I had ever witnessed. All heads were bowed, and tears fell. All
was hushed except sobs and breathing.
The nature of the Lord's Supper and the reasons for its observance were
then explained, and the bread and cup distributed among the
communicants.
This was a day long to be remembered. Its impressions were deep,
tender, and abiding; and up to the present time, the surviving veterans of
that period look back to it as the day of days in the history of the Hilo
church.
At this period the ecclesiastical year of the mission began on the 1st of
May. The reports of the churches were made up to the 30th of April, 1838.
I find in the records of Hilo church the
Numbers received during year (ending April 30):
1838: 639,
1839: 5,244,
1840: 1,499.
During the following decade ending in 1850, the number received was
2,348.
And for the decade ending in 1860, 1,445.
The whole number received on profession to 1880: 12,113; by letter, 812;
dismissed, 3,546; deceased, 8,190; of marriages, 3,048; of children
baptized, 4,370.
Those received from the district of Kau, when there was no settled pastor
there, were afterward dismissed to the church, which was organized and
placed under the care of the Rev. J. D. Paris.
In order to keep every member under my eye, and to find ready access to
each, I prepared a book ruled thus:
[table]
By simple signs males and females were distinguished. This is important
here, because the same name is often used interchangeably for the sexes
For many years I always took this book with me in my tours, and called
the roll of the church members in every village along the line. When any
one did not answer the roll-call, I made inquiry why. If dead, I marked
the date; if sick, visited him or her, if time would allow; if absent on duty,
accepted the fact; if supposed to be doubting or backsliding, sent for or
visited him; if gone to another part of the island, or to another island, I
inquired if the absence would be short or perpetual, and noted the facts
of whatever kind.
Our young men often shipped for whaling voyages. Noting these cases, I
would watch for their return, and then visit them, inquiring whether they
chased whales on the Lord's day, used intoxicants, or violated other
Christian rules of morality; and I dealt with them as each case demanded.
Some church members removed to other districts or islands without
letters of dismissal. The names of these I used to send to the pastors
whither they had gone, requesting them to look after these absent ones,
and receive them to their communion, reporting to me.
As hundreds of our people went from place to place to visit friends or on
business, to learn whither they had gone, to follow them with letters, and
to see them properly cared for, became an important but arduous labor.
The Hawaiians are not nomads, but they are fond of moving, and
curiosity or the call of friends leads very many of them to wander over
many parts of the group. During my annual visits to Honolulu, on
occasion of the General Meeting of the Mission held there in May or June,
I often gave public notices in the churches that I would meet any of my
people who were there, at a given hour on Sunday, and a company of
fifty to a hundred would assemble at the hour appointed.
Our Confession of Faith is the Bible, and each individual in the Hilo
church promises, with his hand on the Sacred Book, to abstain from all
that is forbidden, and to obey all that is commanded therein. We advise
them to abstain from the use of tobacco, ava (a narcotic root), and from all
intoxicants. Like all savages, they were almost to a man addicted to the
use of these articles, especially of tobacco, and we supposed that it would
be next to impossible to persuade them to abandon these habits. But the
Lord came to our help. All over Hilo and Puna, during that mighty work
of the Spirit, multitudes pulled up all their tobacco plants and cast them
into the sea or into pits, and thousands of pipes were broken upon the
rocks or burned, and thousands of habitual smokers abandoned the habit
at once and forever. I have been surprised at the resolution and
self-denial of old men and women who had long indulged in smoking, in
thus breaking short off. Some, however, went back to the old habit, and
some used the article secretly. I have never excommunicated or
suspended members for this indulgence, but have taught them, by
precept and example, a better way. Mr. and Mrs. Lyman, and nearly
every missionary brother and sister on the islands, were united with me
in this matter.
In all cases we found that those who would not relinquish smoking were
the more troublesome members of the church, giving more doubtful
evidence of love to Christ, and oftener running into other excesses, which
called for church discipline.
Chapter V.
Mrs. Coan's School for Girls - Common Schools--Medical
Work - The Sailors' Church - Sunday Work - Visits of Foreign
Vessels - The U. S. Exploring Expedition.
IN the year 1838, Mrs. Coan opened a boarding school for native girls.
This was to be self-supporting in part, but to receive such aid in labor,
food, kapas, mats, etc., as parents and friends chose to render.
As soon as the plan was made known to the church and people they
rallied cheerfully, went into the woods, hauled down timber by hand,
and with great promptness erected and thatched a comfortable building
on our premises. A floor was laid over about one fourth of the building,
on which was placed a table, and a few chairs for the teacher and visitors.
On each side of the remaining three-fourths of the house was a row of
little open cells, partitioned from each other by mats, and furnished with
beds of straw or dried grass, and with mats and kapas for coverings. In
the space between these rows of compartments was a plain table, with
seats, bowls, spoons, etc., for the pupils. The number of little girls in the
school was twenty, their ages from seven to ten years. Arrangements
were made with the people living in and near the town, that they should
bring in weekly supplies of food and fish for the girls. Taro, potatoes,
bananas, and fish were then abundant and cheap, and the people
provided willingly. At length they set apart a parcel of ground and
appointed each monthly concert day as a time when they would cultivate
that ground and thus supply the food necessary for the school.
Little gifts of money were sometimes made by strangers who came to
Hilo, by officers of whale ships and men-of-war; or a piece of print or
brown cotton was given, and thus the real wants of the school were
supplied. No application to the A. B. C. F. M., or to any Board, or to an
individual was ever made for help. Mrs. Coan toiled faithfully from day
to day, in spite of pressing family cares, teaching her charges the
rudiments of necessary book knowledge, and of singing, sewing, washing
and ironing, gardening, and other things. Most of the girls became
members of the Hilo church, and we had hope that all were the children
of God. The school was sustained about eight years, and sent out a
company of girls, who, for the most part, did honor to their instructions,
and who were distinguished among their companions for neatness, skill,
industry, and piety. As domestic cares increased and her strength was
weakened, the faithful teacher at length felt compelled to give up her
charge.
For a time I had the supervision of the common schools, numbering not
less than fifty, and containing about 2,000 pupils. My duties were to
furnish them with books, slates, and pencils; to visit them on my tours, to
attend their examinations, and make a tabular record of numbers,
readers, writers, etc. For want of writing-paper or a full supply of slates,
the children would prepare square pieces of the green banana-leaf, and
with a wooden style or slate-pencil form letters and thus learn to write.
At the central station and on all my tours I was thronged with the sick
and afflicted multitudes, or their friends, begging for remedies for almost
all kinds of diseases. So numerous were the applications for medicines,
and so varied and sad were the spectacles of disease, that it became a task
for the skill and the whole time of a well-read and experienced physician.
I had a fair collection of medical books, and these were consulted as much
as was possible in connection with my other labors, but my regret was
that I could not visit the sick as I wished, or pay them the attention they
needed.
When at last, in 1849, a good physician, Charles H. Wetmore, was sent to
our relief, my heart rejoiced. I immediately resigned my medical
functions, turned over my medicine-chest and drugs to him, and blessed
the Lord that I was not doomed to wander “forty years in the wilderness
of powders and pills.” This kind and faithful doctor with his excellent
wife have been our nearest neighbors ever since their arrival.
I was also greatly relieved of the care of the common schools by Mr. and
Mrs. Abner Wilcox, lay missionaries, who came to us as teachers and
remained in Hilo several years.
Previous to our arrival, when whale-ships and other vessels were in the
harbor of Hilo, the officers and crews received kind attentions from the
missionaries at this station. The Reverends Joseph Goodrich, Jonathan
Green, Sheldon Dibble, and D. B. Lyman, and their wives, had
entertained many of these sons of the deep, given them reading-matter,
and sought to promote their spiritual interests.
We were at once ready to help in this important work. Masters, officers,
and sailors were made welcome to our house; books and tracts were
provided for them to take to sea, and a religious service was held for
them every Sunday afternoon.
For many years this service was held in one of the houses of the
missionaries. Finally, we fitted up the old stone-building, our first home,
for a bethel, and added a library of about 200 volumes, with periodicals.
My regular services on the Sabbath were: a Sunday-school at 9 A.M.;
preaching at 10:30; at 12 M. a meeting for inquirers; at 1 P.M. preaching;
and at 3 P.M. preaching in English to seamen, and English-speaking
residents and visitors. When ships were in port we often had a full house,
and not a few hearers professed a determination to forsake all sin and to
live godly lives. Of some we afterward learned, either by their own letters
or otherwise, that they had kept their vows and united with Christian
churches, and that some had become ministers of the Gospel.
Several masters and officers gave up Sabbath whaling, and instead held
religious meetings with their men on the Lord's Day.
Very precious friendships were formed with many of these seamen,
which friendships continue to this day. We have found noble specimens,
not only of generosity and fine natural talent among this class of men, but
also many choice Christians.
Not a few national ships have visited Hilo, from the tender or schooner
up to the sloop-of-war, the frigate and the great seventy-four-gun
line-of-battle ship, as the Collingwood and Ohio.
The largest of these ships represented the United States of America, the
next Great Britain, then France, Russia, Germany, and Denmark. We have
had more than seventy-five of these war-ships of different nationalities in
our harbor, and of all classes of vessels about 4,000. The approximate
number of seamen who have visited Hilo during our residence here we
put at 40,000.
In this labor for seamen I have been led to correspond with the American
Bible, Tract, Peace, Temperance, and Seamen's Friend Societies, and have
obtained Bibles and tracts in the English, French, German, Spanish,
Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, and Chinese languages; which with many
thousands of tracts have been distributed among these vessels. Some of
this “bread cast upon the waters” has been found again according to the
promise.
In 1840, Charles Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring
Expedition, arrived in Hilo bay in the flag-ship Vincennes. Here with an
admirable corps of scientists he spent three months in explorations,
measurements, observations, etc. Parties of officers and scientific
gentlemen were detailed to visit different parts of the island, some to
ascend the mountains, and some to survey the shore, making collections,
drawings, and observations in all the branches of the natural history of
the Islands. The commander called for 300 young and vigorous men to
take him, with the materials of a wooden house and all the apparatus of a
large observatory, with food, fuel, water, beds, etc., to the summit of
Mauna Loa, where he and his attendants were to spend twenty or thirty
days in taking observations.
Other parties required large numbers of men to carry baggage,
instruments, etc., and to act as guides and assistants in making surveys
and collecting a large amount of specimens.
Parties of natives thus employed needed to be recruited often on account
of fatigue and exhaustion, and for the lack of shoes and warm clothing to
endure the hard travel and the rains, cold, and snows of the mountains.
Some died of cold. It is supposed that about one thousand of our
strongest men were brought into this service, and with small pay, during
these three months. Some parties of men were required to travel and
work on Sunday as on other days. All this had a demoralizing effect upon
the poor natives. They had been accustomed to rest from all physical toil,
and to worship on the Lord's Day. Our congregations were much
reduced in numbers. There was no little murmuring among the people at
this new state of things, and for years the moral tone of the church and
community could not be fully restored to its cheerful and normal state.
This was a trial of faith, and a fan to winnow the church, but most of our
Christians stood fast, and although it checked the progress of the revival,
the loss to the church was less than might have been feared.
The visit of the expedition to Hilo afforded us an opportunity to form an
acquaintance with many worthy gentlemen , several of whom we met
again in the United States in 1870-1. Among these we met and received as
a very welcome guest the then youthful James D. Dana, one of the
scientific corps, now so distinguished in various departments of natural
science, and honored as a Christian philosopher. The friendship then
formed has been increased by years and can never wane.
Chapter VI.
Mauna Loa - Kilauea - The Eruption of 1840 - The River of
Fire - It reaches the Sea at Nanawale - Lava Chimneys -
Destruction of a Village.
IT is widely known that the Hawaiian Islands are all of volcanic origin.
They are the summits of mountains whose bases are far down in the sea.
Their structure is plutonic, and the marks of fire are everywhere visible.
They are scarred with hundreds and hundreds of pit and cone craters,
most of which are extinct.
Mauna Loa is a vast volcanic dome, subject to igneous eruptions at any
time, either from its extended summit or sides. Prof. Dana estimates that
“there is enough rock material in Mauna Loa to make one hundred and
twenty-five Vesuviuses.” (Am. Journal of Science, May, 1859, p. 415.) About
midway from its summit to the sea on the eastern flank of the mountain
and on a nearly level plain is Kilauea, the largest known active crater in
the world. The brink of this crater is 4,440 feet above the sea level; its
depth varies from 700 to 1,200 feet, and its longer diameter is about three
miles. Grand eruptions have issued from it in past ages, covering
hundreds of square miles in different parts of Puna and Kau.
The first eruption from Kilauea, which occurred after my arrival in Hilo,
began on the 30th of May, 1840. To my regret, I was then absent at the
annual General Meeting of this mission in Honolulu, a meeting which I
have always attended. I therefore record a portion of the facts as given by
the natives and foreigners who saw the eruption, adding my own
observations on a visit to the scene after my return from Honolulu.
There had been no grand eruption from this crater for the previous
seventeen years, so that the lavas in the crater had risen several hundred
feet, and the action had, at times, been terrific.
The volcano is thirty miles by road from Hilo, and under favorable
conditions of the atmosphere we could see the splendid light by night,
and the white cloudy pillar of steam by day. It was reported that, for
several days before the outburst, the whole vast floor of the crater was in
a state of intense ebullition; the seething waves rolling, surging, and
dashing against the adamantine walls, and shaking down large rocks into
the fiery abyss below. It was even stated that the heat was so intense, and
the surges so infernal, that travelers near the upper rim of the crater left
the path on account of the heat, and for fear of the falling of the precipice
over which the trail lay, and passed at a considerable distance from the
crater. Kilauea is about half in Puna and half in Kau, and all travelers
going from Kau to Hilo by the inland road pass the very brink of this
crater.
The eruption was first noticed by the people of Puna, who were living
only twenty miles from it. The light appeared at first like a highland
jungle on fire; and so it was, for the fiery river found vent some 1,200 to
1,500 feet below the rim of Kilauea, and flowing subterraneously in a N.E.
direction, for about four miles, marking its course by rending the
superincumbent strata and throwing up light puffs of sulphurous steam,
it broke ground in the bottom of a wooded crater about 500 feet deep,
consuming the shrubs, vines, and grasses, and leaving a smoldering mass
instead.
The great stream forced its way underground in a wild and wooded
region for two miles more, when it again threw up a jet of fire and
sulphur, covering about an acre. At this point, a large amount of brilliant
sulphur crystals continued to be formed for several years.
Only a little further on, and an old wooded cone was rent with fissures
several feet wide, and about half an acre of burning lava spouted up,
consuming the trees and jungle. This crevasse emitted scalding vapor for
twenty-five years.
Onward went the burning river, deep underground, some six miles more,
when the earth was rent again with an enormous fissure, and floods of
devouring fire were poured out, consuming the forest and spreading over
perhaps fifty acres. And still the passage seaward was underground for
about another six miles, when it broke out in a terrific flood and rolled
and surged along henceforth upon the surface, contracting to half a mile,
or expanding to two miles in width, and moving from half a mile to five
miles an hour, according to the angle of descent and the inequalities and
obstructions of the surface, until it poured over the perpendicular
sea-wall, about thirty feet high, in a sheet of burning fusion only a little
less than one mile wide.
This was on June 3, 1840. It reached the sea on the fifth day after the light
was first seen on the highlands, and at the distance of only seventeen and
a half miles from Hilo. As this grand cataract of fire poured over the
basaltic sea-wall, the sights and sounds were said to be indescribable.
Two mighty antagonistic forces were in conflict. The sea boiled and raged
as with infernal fury, while the burning flood continued to pour into the
troubled waves by night and by day for three weeks. Dense clouds of
steam rolled up heavenward, veiling sun and stars, and so covering the
lava flow that objects could not be seen from one margin to the other. All
communication between the northern and southern portions of Puna was
cut off for more than a month.
The waters of the sea were heated for twenty miles along the coast, and
multitudes of fishes were killed by the heat and the sulphurous gases,
and were seen floating upon the waves.
During this flow, the sea-line along the whole breadth of the fire-stream
was pushed out many yards by the solidified lavas, and three tufaceous
cones were raised in the water where ships could once sail! They were
formed of lava-sand made by the shivering of the mineral flood coming
in contact with the sea, and standing in a line 200, 300, and 400 feet above
the water, with their bases deep down in the sea. These dunes have been
greatly reduced by the waves thundering at their bases and the winds
and storms beating upon their summits. One of them, indeed, is now
entirely obliterated.
During this eruption most of the foreign residents in Hilo, and hundreds
of Hawaiians of Puna and Hilo, visited the scene where the igneous river
plunged into the sea, and they described it as fearfully grand and
awe-inspiring.
Imagine the Mississippi converted into liquid fire of the consistency of
fused iron, and moving onward sometimes rapidly, sometimes
sluggishly; now widening into a lake, and now rushing through a narrow
gorge, breaking its way through mighty forests and ancient solitudes, and
you will get some idea of the spectacle here exhibited.
When the eruption was at its height night was turned into day in all this
region. The light rose and spread like morning upon the mountains, and
its glare was seen on the opposite side of the island. It was also visible for
more than a hundred miles at sea; and at the distance of forty miles fine
print could be read at midnight.
The brilliancy of the light was said to be like a blazing firmament, and the
scene one of unrivaled sublimity.
No lives were lost during this eruption. The stream passed under and
over an almost uninhabited desert. A few small hamlets were consumed,
and a few patches of taro, potatoes, and bananas were destroyed, but the
people walked off with their calabashes, kapas, and other chattels to seek
shelter and food elsewhere. During the eruption some of the people of
Puna spent much of their time in prayer and religious meetings, some
fled in consternation, and others wandered along the margin of the lava
stream, at a safe distance, marking with idle curiosity its progress, while
others still pursued their daily avocations within a mile of the fiery river,
as quietly as if nothing strange had occurred. They ate, drank, bought,
sold, planted, built, slept, and waked apparently indifferent to the roar of
consuming forests, the sight of devouring fire, the startling detonations,
the hissing of escaping steam, the rending of gigantic rocks, the raging
and crashing of lava waves, and the bellowings, the murmurings, the
unearthly mutterings coming up from the burning abyss. They went
quietly on in sight of the rain of ashes, sand, and fiery scintillations,
gazing vacantly on the fearful and ever-varying appearance of the
atmosphere illuminated by the eruption, the sudden rising of lofty pillars
of flame, the upward curling of ten thousand columns of smoke, and their
majestic gyrations in dingy, lurid, or parti-colored clouds.
While the stream was flowing it might be approached within a few yards
on the windward side, while at the leeward no one could live within a
great distance on account of the smoke, the impregnation of the
atmosphere with pungent and deadly gases, and the fiery showers that
fell on all around, destroying all vegetable life.
Sometimes the intense heat of the stream would cause large boulders and
rocks to explode with great detonations, and sometimes lateral branches
of the stream would push out into some fissure, or work into a
subterranean gallery, until they met with some obstacle, when the
accumulating fusion with its heat, its gases, and its pressure would lift up
the superincumbent mass of rock into a dome, or, sundering it from its
surroundings, bear it off on its burning bosom like a raft upon the water.
A foreigner told me that while he was standing on a rocky hillock, some
distance from the stream, gazing with rapt interest upon its movements,
he felt himself rising with the ground on which he stood. Startled by the
motion, he leaped from the rock, when in a few minutes fire burst out
from the place where he had been.
On returning from Honolulu I soon started for Puna, with arrangements
to make as thorough explorations and observations on this remarkable
eruption as my time would allow. I spent nearly two days on the stream.
It was solidified and mostly cooled, yet hot and steaming in many places.
I went up the flow to where it burst out in volume and breadth from its
subterranean chambers and continued on the surface to the sea, a
distance of about twelve miles, making the entire length of the stream
about thirty miles. In a letter published in the Missionary Herald of July,
1841, I called it forty miles, but later measurements have led me to correct
this and some other statements made on first sight.
I found the place of final outburst a scene where terrific energy had been
exerted. Yawning crevasses were opened, the rocks were rent, and the
forests consumed; the molten flood had raged and swirled and been
thrown high into the air, and there had been a display of titanic fury
which must have been appalling at the time of the outbreak.
In pursuing its course the stream sometimes plunged into caverns and
deep depressions, and sometimes it struck hills which separated it into
two channels, which uniting again after having passed the obstruction,
left islands of varied sizes with trees scorched and blasted with the heat
and gases.
Along the central line of the stream its depth could not be measured
accurately, for there was no trace of tree or ancient rock or floor. All was a
vast bed of fresh, smoldering lava. On the margins, however, where the
strata were thinner, I was able to measure with great accuracy. In passing
through forests, while the depth and heat of the middle of the stream
consumed everything, on the margins thousands of green trees were cut
down gradually by the fusion around their trunks; but this was done so
slowly that the surface of the stream solidified before the trees fell, and on
falling upon the hot and hardened crust, the tops and limbs were only
partly consumed, but all were charred, and the rows and heaps were so
thick and entangled as to form chevaux-de-frise quite impassable in some
places. But the numerous holes left in the hot lava bed by the gradual
reduction of the trunks to ashes afforded the means of measuring the
depth of the flow. With a long pole I was enabled to measure from a
depth of five to twenty-five feet. Some of these trunk-moulds were as
smooth as the caliber of a cannon. Some of the holes were still so hot at
the bottom as to set my pole on fire in one minute.
I had seen fearful ragings and heard what seemed the wails of infernal
beings in the great crater of Kilauea, but I had never before seen the
amazing effects of a great exterior eruption of lava, and I returned from
this weary exploration, after a missionary tour through Puna, with a
deepened sense of the terrible dynamics of the fiery abyss over which we
tread.
Since then, in crossing and re-crossing the wild highlands of my parish I
have found in the consumed openings of forests a new class of volcanic
monuments, consisting in numerous stacks of lava chimneys standing
apart on the floor of an ancient flow. These chimneys measure from five
to twenty-five feet in height, and five to ten feet in diameter. I gazed at
them at first sight as the work of human art, not knowing that they were
cylindrical. On climbing them I found that they were hollow, and that
they were as clearly tree moulds as the holes I had measured in the flow
of 1840.
Then came the question, how were they formed. The solution soon
came - that an ancient eruption had passed through this forest at the
height of many feet above the present surface, the fiery river surrounding
large trees, but while it consumed all smaller growths, the waves
subsided to their present level before these trunks were fully consumed,
thus leaving partially cooled envelopes of lava adhering to them. These
moulds or chimneys now stand as monuments of the volcanic action of
an unknown age.
Here I leave this subject for a while, purposing to return to it.
In early years Hawaiian hospitality was generous, and on my tours
among the natives I found them ready to provide liberally, according to
their ability, for me and the helpers who accompanied me. To this good
feeling there was one notable exception. There was a small village about
eighteen miles from Hilo, where I had taken special pains to tame and
Christianize the people. They rarely provided even a cup of cold water
until I arrived and begged them to go to a somewhat distant spring to
fetch it; and for this I would have to wait two hours, perhaps, while
parched with thirst, burning with the heat of a midday sun, and weary
with walking over long miles of scorching lava fields. On one occasion,
returning from a circuit tour of more than a hundred miles, I stopped at
this place and preached and conversed with the villagers. I had been
absent from home over two weeks and had consumed all the food I had
taken with me, except a little stale biscuit. I had nothing for the two good
men, members of the Hilo church, who had traveled all the distance with
me. Evening closed in, and I asked the occupants of the house and some
of the neighbors who had come in if they could not furnish my two
companions with a little food before they slept. The answer was, “We
have no food.” “Perhaps you can give them a potato, a kalo, a breadfruit,
or a cocoanut.” They answered as before, “We have nothing to eat, not
even for ourselves.” So, weary and hungry, we lay down upon the mats
for the night, and when we were supposed to be asleep, we heard the
family under the cocoanut trees eating heartily, and conversing in an
undertone that we might not hear them.
After years of kind instructions with the hope of leading them to
appreciate the love of God and the value of a true Christianity, they
remained the same hardened beings. My patience and desire to lead them
to “the Lamb of God” continued; but thinking of what the Savior said to
His disciples about “shaking off the dust of their feet,” I resolved on a
trial, hoping to win them into a better way.
In a meeting when “the hearers but not the doers of the word” were
assembled, I said to them, “These three years have I come seeking fruit on
this fig-tree, and find none. I will, therefore, leave you to reflect on what
you have heard from the Lord; and, whenever you repent and desire to
hear the Gospel again, send for me and I will hasten to you with joy.” But
they never sent. Time passed on and down came the fiery torrent of
which I have written, and covered the village, consuming the cocoa-palm
grove, the potato and banana patches with the thatched meeting-house
and school-house, leaving nothing but a blackened field of lava. The
people took their little all and fled.
They settled near the borders of the lava stream, and in the year 1853 the
small-pox fell among them (the only place in Puna where the disease
went), and a large part of them died. There was no physician within
eighteen miles, and the poor creatures knew not what to do. Some bathed
in the sea to cool the burning heat, and perished, and some crawled out
into the jungle and there died, and were torn and partly eaten by swine.
They had fled from the devouring fire only to meet, if possible, a more
painful doom, and it reminds one of the words of Jeremiah uttered
against the stubborn Moabites: “He that fleeth from the fear shall fall into
the pit, and he that getteth up out of the pit shall be taken in the snare.”
That the small-pox should find them and no one else in Puna seems
remarkable; but these are the facts. A number of these villagers were
visiting in Honolulu when the fearful disease raged there. They thought
to escape it by returning home, but unknown to them the destroyer had
already seized them and they perished in their wild, secluded jungle. I
visited this scene of sorrow and desolation, gathered the stricken remnant
of the sufferers, spoke words of condolence, and encouraged them to
come with their sins and sorrows to the Savior. They seemed subdued,
welcomed their pastor, and were, I trust, “saved yet so as by fire.”
Chapter VII.
More Church-Building - Commodore Jones's Visit--Progress of
Conversions - The Sacraments under New Conditions.
OF church buildings we had at one time not less than fifty, and of schoolhouses
sixty or more. These were all built by the free will of the people,
acting under no outward constraint. Some of these houses would
accommodate 1,000 persons, others 500, 300, and 150, according to the
population for which they were erected. They were, of course, built in
native style, on posts set in the ground, with rafters fastened with cords,
and the whole thatched with the leaf of the pandanus, the sugar-cane, or
dried grass. They were frail, needing rethatching once in three to five
years, and rebuilding after about ten years. They were usually well-kept,
and with open doors and holes for windows, they were light and airy.
In this list I do not include the great buildings at Hilo.
A mighty wind having prostrated our large meeting-house, we
commenced, during the winter of 1840-1, to collect materials for our first
framed building. All the men who had axes went into the highland forest
to fell trees and hew timber. When a large number of pieces were ready,
hundreds of willing men and women, provided with ropes made of the
bark of the hibiscus, with light upper garments, and with leggins of the
Adam and Eve style, such as never feared mud and water, went to bring
down these timbers. Arranged by a captain in two lines, with drag-ropes
in hand, ready to obey the command of their chosen leader, they stood
waiting his order. At length comes the command, "Grasp the ropes; bow
the head; blister the hand; go; sweat!" And away they rush, through mud
and jungle, over rocks and streams, shouting merrily, and singing to
measure. Then comes the order, "Halt, drop drag-ropes, rest!" This is
repeated at longer or shorter intervals according to the state of the
ground.
I often went up to the woods, on foot of course, and grasped the rope,
and hauled with the rest to encourage and keep them in heart. We had no
oxen or horses in those days, for the days were primitive, and the work
was pioneer work. The trees, the jungle, the mud, the streams, and the
lava-fields were all primordial.
When the materials were brought together, we employed a Chinese
carpenter at a reasonable price, to frame and raise the building, all his pay
to be in trade, for "the golden age" had not yet dawned on Hawaii. The
natives, men and women, soon covered the rough frame with thatching.
There was no floor but the earth, and the only windows were holes about
three feet square left in the thatching on the sides and ends. This was the
first framed church edifice built in Hilo, and in this building, capable of
seating about 2,000 people, we first welcomed Commodore Ap Catesby
Jones, of the frigate United States, with his officers and brass band. The
courteous commodore and his chaplain consented to deliver each an
address of congratulation and encouragement to the people for their
ready acceptance of the Gospel, and for their progress in Christian
civilization. He alluded to a former visit of his to Honolulu by order of
the United States Government, to investigate certain complaints made by
a class of foreign residents against the American missionaries, stating that
on a patient and careful hearing of the parties, the missionaries came out
triumphantly, and their abusers were put to shame.
Our people at this time had never heard the music of a brass band, and
the commodore kindly gave them a treat. After playing several sacred
songs which delighted the natives beyond all music they had before
heard, the band, at a signal from the commodore, struck up "Hail
Columbia." An electric thrill rushed through the great congregation, and
all sprang to their feet in amazement and delight. Since then they have
become familiar with the music of the United States', the English and
French navies.
Perhaps the most perfect band we have heard in Hilo was that of the
Duke of Edinburgh, who visited us in the steam frigate Galatea in 1869.
When our first framed church building became old and dilapidated, we
decided on replacing it with an edifice of stone and mortar. But after a
year's hard toil in bringing stones on men's shoulders, and after having
dug a trench some six feet deep for the foundations without coming to
the bed-rock, we, by amicable agreement, dismissed our mason and
engaged two carpenters.
The corner-stone was laid November 14, 1857, and the building was
dedicated on the 8th of April, 1859. The material was good, and the
workmanship faithful and satisfactory. The whole cost was $13,000.
It was then the finest church edifice on the islands. On the day of the
dedication, there was a debt on the house of some $600, and it was our
hope and purpose to cancel the debt on that day. But the day was stormy,
the paths muddy, and the rivers were without bridges. Things looked
dark, but we were happily surprised to see the people flocking in from all
points until the house was crowded to its utmost capacity.
Prayers and a song of praise were offered, but we had resolved, by the
help of God, not to dedicate the house until the debt was paid to the last
farthing. So the people were called on by divisions, according to their
villages, to come forward with their offerings; and this was done with
such promptness, such order, and such quietness that we soon counted
and declared a contribution of over $800. When the result was
announced, a shout of joy went up to heaven.
The debt was paid, the house was dedicated, $200 were left in the
treasury, and the people went home rejoicing and praising the Lord. On
the 27th a contribution of more than $400 was taken, making our
dedication offerings $1,239. Our treasury for the meeting-house has never
been empty, though we have expended several thousand dollars more in
purchasing a large bell, in painting and repairing the house, and in
keeping it and the grounds neat and in good condition.
It was an affecting scene to see the old and decrepit, the poor widow, and
the droves of little children come forward with their gifts which they had
been collecting and saving for months, and offering them with such
cheerful gladness to the Lord.
In 1868 an awful earthquake tore in pieces stone walls and stone houses,
and rent the earth in various parts of Hilo, Puna, and Kau. Had we built
according to our original plan and agreement with the mason, "our holy
and beautiful house" would have become a heap of rubbish, and our
hearts would have sunk within us with sorrow. How true that "a man's
heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps."
It was my habit to get all the help that could be obtained from converts,
and this was much. As the company of disciples increased, "they went
everywhere preaching the word." The Lord ordained them, not man. In
every hamlet and village there were found some who were moved by the
Holy Ghost, and to whom the Spirit gave utterance; and it was joyfully
true that "where the Spirit of the Lord was, there was liberty," not to
dispute and wrangle, not to speak vain and foolish things, not to lie and
deceive, but to utter the truth in love, without the shackles of form and
superstition, but with the freedom granted by Christ.
How true the promise, "My people shall be willing in the day of my
power." Willing to give up their sins, their enmity, their vile practices,
their pipes, their ava, and all their intoxicants; to forgive and be forgiven;
to return every man to the wife he had abused, and every wife to the
husband she had forsaken; to pay their old debts; to labor with their
hands for the supply of their physical wants; to see that t