Chapter Twenty-six

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

KING MEHEVI--ALLUSION TO HIS HAWIIAN MAJESTY--CONDUCT OF MARHEYO
AND MEHEVI IN CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS--PECULIAR SYSTEM OF
MARRIAGE--NUMBER OF POPULATION--UNIFORMITY--EMBALMING--PLACES OF
SEPULTURE--FUNERAL OBSEQUIES AT NUKUHEVA-NUMBER OF INHABITANTS IN
TYPEE--LOCATION OF THE DWELLINGS--HAPPINESS ENJOYED IN THE
VALLEY--A WARNING--SOME IDEAS WITH REGARD TO THE PRESENT STATE OF
THE HAWIIANS--STORY OF A MISSIONARY'S WIFE--FASHIONABLE EQUIPAGES
AT OAHU--REFLECTIONS

KING MEHEVI!--A goodly sounding title--and why should I not
bestow it upon the foremost man in the valley of Typee? The
republican missionaries of Oahu cause to be gazetted in the Court
Journal, published at Honolulu, the most trivial movement of 'his
gracious majesty' King Kammehammaha III, and 'their highnesses
the princes of the blood royal'.* And who is his 'gracious
majesty', and what the quality of this blood royal'?--His
'gracious majesty' is a fat, lazy, negro-looking blockhead, with
as little character as power. He has lost the noble traits of
the barbarian, without acquiring the redeeming graces of a
civilized being; and, although a member of the Hawiian Temperance
Society, is a most inveterate dram-drinker.

*Accounts like these are sometimes copied into English and
American journals. They lead the reader to infer that the arts
and customs of civilized life are rapidly refining the natives of
the Sandwich Islands. But let no one be deceived by these
accounts. The chiefs swagger about in gold lace and broadcloth,
while the great mass of the common people are nearly as primitive
in their appearance as in the days of Cook. In the progress of
events at these islands, the two classes are receding from each
other; the chiefs are daily becoming more luxurious and
extravagant in their style of living, and the common people more
and more destitute of the necessaries and decencies of life. But
the end to which both will arrive at last will be the same: the
one are fast destroying themselves by sensual indulgences, and
the other are fast being destroyed by a complication of
disorders, and the want of wholesome food. The resources of the
domineering chiefs are wrung from the starving serfs, and every
additional bauble with which they bedeck themselves is purchased
by the sufferings of their bondsmen; so that the measure of
gew-gaw refinement attained by the chiefs is only an index to the
actual state in which the greater portion of the population lie
grovelling.

The 'blood royal' is an extremely thick, depraved fluid; formed
principally of raw fish, bad brandy, and European sweetmeats, and
is charged with a variety of eruptive humours, which are
developed in sundry blotches and pimples