“Earth, our bright home its mountains and its waters, And the ethereal shapes which are suspended
O’er its expanse, and those fair daughters,
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean who have blended
The colors of the air since first extended,
It cradled the young world....”
Shelley.
Olmedo had not been idle during the year in his labors to convert the islanders to his faith. Nor was he without a certain degree of success, though very far from having instilled into them any definite ideas of Christianity. Indeed, strange as it may appear at the first statement, there was in the rites he wished to supersede so much analogy with those he wished to introduce, that the substitution was not easily effected. Juan, in his martial zeal for the Roman Catholic faith, would gladly have used the same arguments here as in Mexico; that is, have destroyed the idols, purified the temples, and set up crucifixes and new images, which only they should worship, whether persuaded or not of their religious efficacy. For once, however, Spanish zeal was obliged to be tempered with a respect for the force which was not now on their side. It must be confessed, also, that the easy, seductive[84] life he had led, the absence of the worst features of heathenism, and the generous character and shrewdness of Kiana, had not a little weakened Juan’s fanaticism; so that, although conforming sufficiently to the ritual of his faith to keep himself within the pale of his church’s salvation, he had almost unconsciously imbibed the idea that some even of the virtues of Christianity might exist among pagans.
Within the walled enclosure in which Juan and his sister resided, overlooking the sea, Olmedo had built a small chapel. The rude images which native ingenuity under his direction had carved to represent the Virgin and her Son, were not so unlike their own wooden deities, as to require anything more than an enlargement of their mythology, for the simple natives to have accepted them as their own. This of course would have been only adding to the sin which Olmedo wished to eradicate. The good man, however, persevered in his rites and doctrines, and had the satisfaction to have numbers of the chiefs and their attendants come to witness his worship. Among them most frequently was Kiana, but as his eyes were oftener directed towards kneeling Beatriz, than the holy symbols of the altar, it is to be presumed that another motive beside religious conviction swayed his heart. He saw that the crucifix and the images of the gods of the white man, as he regarded them, were very dear to them. Out of respect, therefore, to his guests, in unconscious philosophical imitation of Alexander Severus, when he placed statues of Abraham[85] and Christ among his revered images, Kiana had set up the crucifix in his domestic pantheon. How far he understood the teachings of Olmedo may be gathered from one of their not unfrequent colloquies upon religion.
 
Mass had just been said. Olmedo had trained some of the more tractable youths to assist him in the service, which they did the more willingly, from perceiving that it gave them a personal importance to be considered of the household of Lono. The solemn chant of the priest in a strange and sonorous tongue, the regular responses of the Spaniards, and their thorough devotion, the simple exhortations to a good life, which all present could comprehend, followed by the earnest eloquence of Olmedo, as he sought to expound in the Hawaiian tongue the mysteries of a faith which it had no terms correctly to render, all made an impressive scene. Their[86] hearts were touched even when their minds were not enlightened.
It was the decline of day. The sun was pouring a flood of soft light over the sea, which sparkled as with the radiance of an opal. Kiana, Olmedo, and Beatriz, came out of the chapel, and reclined upon a pile of mats which their attendants had spread for them on a green knoll just beyond the reach of the waves. The trade wind fanned them with its cool breath, and sang an evening hymn amid the waving palms, high above their heads. A group of fishermen were hauling their nets, heavy with the meshed fishes, to the music of a wild chant. Numbers of both sexes were sporting in the surf. The line of breakers commenced far seaward, in long, lofty, curling swells, that came in regular succession thundering onward to the shore, which trembled under the mighty reverberation. It was not a sound of anger, nor of merriment, but the pealing forth of Nature’s mightiest organ, in deep-toned notes of praise. There was much in the commingled glories of sound and color, the beauty of the shore, and the expanse of the ocean, to suggest an Infinite Author to the most thoughtless mind.
Human life and happiness mingle largely with the scene. The bathers shout and gambol in the water as if in their native element. The maidens and boys,—with their parents, who in the frolic become children also,—dive under the huge combers as one after another they break and foam on their way to the shore. Heads with flowing tresses and laughing eyes are continually shooting[87] up through the yeast of waters with merry cries, then ducking again to escape the quick coming wave. Rising beyond it, each plunge car............