e progenitors
of the present race. It suggests the ark legend that this pair had in
their canoe two dogs, two swine, and two fowls, from which animals had
come all that were found running wild there a hundred years ago. The
people can never be thankful enough that these visitors differed from
Nuu in their lack of regard for the snakes, scorpions, centipedes,
tarantulas, and mosquitoes that are so common to tropic lands, for,
having neglected to import these afflictions, the islands got on
without them until recently. Mosquitoes were taken to Hawaii on an
American ship. The hogs and dogs are descendants of animals that
escaped from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Santo Iago in 1527.

Ancient Faiths of Hawaii

Hawaiians claim descent from the Cushites of Arabia, and in their
folk-lore they have the same agreement with the Jewish myths which
we find so strangely in other tribes that seem to have no relation
to one another. Like the Israelites, they believed in a first pair
that forfeited paradise by sinning, and were put out of it. Like
the Israelites, they built temples and places of worship. Like the
Israelites, they practised circumcision. Their priests and chiefs
were kin of the gods, and well may they have seemed so if it is true
that the kings of the islands were men whose height was nine feet,
and who flourished spears ten yards long. Even Kamehameha, who died
in 1819, and who was politically the greatest of these rulers, as he
established one government over all of the islands, is said to have
been a giant in strength.

Without compasses, guided only by sun and stars, the people made long
voyages in their canoes--vessels of a length of a hundred feet--and did
battle with other races, fighting with spears, slings, clubs, axes,
and knives, but not with bows or armor. Doubtless they exaggerate
their numbers and their heroism, and in the last great battle, by
which Kamehameha became ruler of the group, it may be that there
were not quite the sixteen thousand men he claimed to have when he
forced the troops of Oahu over the cliff of Nuuanu. The language of
Hawaii resembles the tongues spoken in the southern archipelagoes,
thereby bearing out the legend of early migrations. As, in the East,
we hear tales that seem to hark back to the lost Atlantis, so among
the Pacific tribes are faint beliefs in a continent in the greater
ocean that sank thousands of years ago, and of coral islands built on
its ruins that