ollow. The aggregate population of the group is now
about sixty thousand, of whom some thirty-eight thousand are natives.
History tells us that Captain Cook estimated these islands to contain
over three hundred thousand inhabitants when he discovered them. Perhaps
this was an exaggeration, though it is a fact that they are capable of
sustaining a population of even much greater density than this estimate
would indicate. Until within fifty or sixty years the natives of the
several islands made war upon one another, principally for the purpose
of securing prisoners, whom they roasted and devoured. Indeed,
cannibalism has existed in some of the islands even to a more modern
date than that referred to. Of latter years the natives have shown a
hearty desire to affiliate and intermarry with Europeans and Americans,
discarding their idolatrous worship and professing Christianity; but
those who read well-meant missionary reports can hardly realize how
little this profession of Christianity generally signifies among
semi-barbarous races. The manners, customs, and dress of the whites have
been very generally adopted, so far as external appearances go; but as
in the case of all other aboriginals who inhabit the Pacific isles,
large or small, wherever the white man appears in numbers, the black
disappears.

The crater of Kilauea on the island of Hawaii is still in a semi-active
condition. Twice within our memory it has burst forth briefly but with
enormous power, and at this writing it sends forth ceaseless vapor,
smoke, and sulphurous gases, with occasional bursts of stones, lava, and
crude metallic substances. The fiery opening is four thousand feet above
the base of the mountain, the orifice having an estimated diameter of
eight miles; that is to say, it is that distance across the opening. The
height above sea-level is placed at six thousand feet.

One would surely think that such an enormous orifice on the earth's
surface ought to be sufficient to relieve all the smouldering
subterraneous fires and explosive gases confined beneath the crust of
the habitable globe, saying nothing of Vesuvius, Etna, and a dozen
other active volcanoes. In the year 1840 an eruption took place from the
crater of Mauna Loa on the same island, which lasted nearly thirty days,
and was of such body that the flood of lava ejected, running a
destructive course of fifty miles, reached the sea, and added one
quarter of a mile of territory to the area of H