Roughing It, Mark Twain [dark books to read .TXT] 📗

house, and the chiefs had a consultation. One of them spoke thus: “This is my thought⁠—we will eat him raw.”20 Kaahumanu (one of the dead King’s widows) replied, “Perhaps his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with his successor. Our part in him⁠—his breath⁠—has departed; his remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.”

After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the new King. The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog was baked the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a god, the King at the same time repeating the customary prayers.

Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said: “I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but after it leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until we carry the corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is deposited in the grave there must be fifteen. Tomorrow morning there will be a tabu, and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that time, forty men must die.”

Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, “Where shall be the residence of King Liholiho?” They replied, “Where, indeed? You, of all men, ought to know.” Then the priest observed, “There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala.” The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited. The priest added, “These are proper places for the King’s residence; but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted.” This was agreed to. It was now break of day. As he was being carried to the place of burial the people perceived that their King was dead, and they wailed. When the corpse was removed from the house to the tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain man who was ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped upon the chiefs who were carrying the King’s body; he desired to die with him on account of his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted in making numerous attempts, which were unavailing. Kalaimoka also had it in his heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio.

The morning following Kamehameha’s death, Liholiho and his train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of defilement terminated. If the deceased were not a chief, the house only was defiled which became pure again on the burial of the body. Such were the laws on this subject.

On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala, the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a chief’s death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts. Their conduct was such as to forbid description; The priests, also, put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had prayed the King to death might die; for it was not believed that Kamehameha’s departure was the effect either of sickness or old age. When the sorcerers set up by their fireplaces stick with a strip of kapa flying at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun’s brother, came in a state of intoxication and broke the flagstaff of the sorcerers, from which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends had been instrumental in the King’s death. On this account they were subjected to abuse.

You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen, Kaahumanu, who was “subjected to abuse” during the frightful orgies that followed the King’s death, in accordance with ancient custom, afterward became a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful friend of the missionaries.

Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives⁠—hence the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs.

Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for a certain number of days after the death of a royal personage; and then a saturnalia ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion, but not in the full horror of the reality. The people shaved their heads, knocked out a tooth or two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised, mutilated or burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other’s huts, maimed or murdered one another according to the caprice of the moment, and both sexes gave themselves up to brutal and unbridled licentiousness. And after it all, came a torpor from which the nation slowly emerged bewildered and dazed, as if from a hideous half-remembered nightmare. They were not the salt of the earth, those “gentle children of the sun.”

The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs which cannot be comforting to an invalid. When they think a sick friend is going to die, a couple of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafening wailing night and day till he either dies or gets well. No doubt this arrangement has helped many a subject to a shroud before his appointed time.

They surround a hut and wail in the same heartbroken way when its occupant returns from a journey. This is their dismal idea of a welcome. A very little of it would go a great way with most of us.

LXIX

Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,) to visit the great volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that island above the remainder