eauty. Thus he deals out judgment upon
Laieikawai's enemies: Waka falls dead, and Aiwohikupua is dispossessed
of his landed rights. Next, he rewards her friends with positions of
influence, and leaving the ruling power to his wife's twin sister and
her husband, returns with Laieikawai to his old home in the heavens.

In the final chapters the Sun-god himself, who is called "The
eyeball-of-the-sun," proves unfaithful. He falls captive to the charms
of the twin sister, sends his clever youngest sister, whose foresight he
fears, to rule in the heavens, and himself goes down to earth on some
pretext in pursuit of the unwilling Laielohelohe. Meanwhile his wife
sees through the "gourd of knowledge" all that is passing on earth and
informs his parents of his infidelity. They judge and disgrace him; the
divine Sun-god becomes the first _lapu_, or ghost, doomed to be shunned
by all, to live in darkness and feed upon butterflies. The beauty of
Paliuli, on the other hand, returns to earth to live with her sister,
where she is worshiped and later deified in the heavens as the
"Woman-of-the-Twilight."

BACKGROUND OF THE STORY.

Whatever the original home of the _Laieikawai_ story, the action as here
pictured, with the exception of two chapters, is localized on the
Hawaiian group. This consists of eight volcanic islands lying in the
North Pacific, where torrid and tropical zones meet, about half again
nearer to America than Asia, and strung along like a cluster of beads
for almost 360 miles from Kauai on the northwest to the large island of
Hawaii on the southeast. Here volcanic activity, extinct from
prehistoric times on the other islands, still persists. Here the land
attains its greatest elevation--13,825 feet to the summit of the highest
peak--and of the 6,405 square miles of land area which constitute the
group 4,015 belong to Hawaii. Except in temperature, which varies only
about 11 degrees mean for a year, diversity marks the physical features
of these mid-sea islands. Lofty mountains where snow lies perpetually,
huge valleys washed by torrential freshets, smooth sand dunes, or fluted
ridges, arid plains and rain-soaked forests, fringes of white beach, or
abrupt bluffs that drop sheer into the deep sea, days of liquid sunshine
or fierce storms from the south that whip across the island for half a
week, a rainfall varying from 287 to 19 inches in a year in different
localities--these are some of the contrasts which co