LIFE IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS; OR, THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC, AS IT WAS AND IS. BY THE REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER, AUTHOR OF "THE ISLAND WORLD OF THE PACIFIC," "THE WHALE AND "Histories make men wise; poetry, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. PREFACE. THIS book is called "The Heart of the Pacific," for two reasons; first, because the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands, which form its subject-matter, hold about the same relation to other parts of the Pacific as the heart does to the rest of the human body. Secondly, because these Islands bid fair to become the religious Protestant Heart of the great Ocean, whose pulsations at different times we have herein marked and interpreted. Although independent and whole of itself, it has a connection which will be seen with "The Island-World of the Pacific." The writer believes it may fulfil a useful part, in directing the general interest now felt in the young Island-Kingdom of Hawaii. The perpetuity of the pure Hawaiian race there is daily becoming more and more doubtful; but, as it has been remarked of New Zealand, the natives, though melting away, are not lost. They are emerging into another and a better class. In this process there lacketh not sin on man's part; but Providence will overrule it for good, and bring forth an order of things which shall be far better for the world, for the Church of Christ, and for the new race. Perhaps it is in the providential plan of the world's great Ruler, that the Sandwich Islands should yet be adopted into the great American Confederacy. Won as they have been from the lowest barbarism by American missionaries-having had expended upon them in the process, nearly a million and a half of dollars (upwards of £300,000) from America, and the services of fifty families now possessing valuable homesteads thereharbouring a permanent American population, foremost in energy and influence, now little short of one thousand, besides a floating American population that touch and recruit annually to the number of fifteen thousand, in whale-ships and merchantmen,-and consuming yearly a million of dollars (upwards of £200,000) worth of American merchandise ;-on all these grounds there would seem to be a propriety in their enjoying an American Protectorate, if not an admission under the flag of the American Republic. "American enterprise," says a writer who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, "both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance, bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, civilization-and will soon add to these gifts lan * J. J. Jarves. |