ABSTRACT
CONTINUING his course round the island, occasionally trading with the natives, Cook's two ships
anchored, January 17, 1779, in the bay on the western side of Hawaii, called variously Kaawaroa, Karakakoua, and Kealakeakua. The time of his arrival there was a week of tabu. An oppressive sacerdotalism united itself with an absolute monarchy in governing the nation. The priesthood and the kingship were obliged to respect each other; and their union, instead of counterbalancing the power which each possessed, and so ameliorating it to the common people, was an alliance which riveted the chain of feudalism more completely round that people's neck. One of the great instruments used by both king and priests for maintaining their power and their revenue, was the system of tabu or taboo. It was a consecration of any object, or person, or period of time, for some exclusive purpose; and it was enforced with sanguinary penalties. There were permanent tabus, as of the king's fish-ponds and bathingplaces: there were long-continued tabus, not taken off, in some cases, for many years; and there were sborter tabus, existing a week, or a single day. Sometimes a whole district,. or an entire island, was placed under tabu, during the continuance of which it was excommunicated, no canoe or person being allowed to approach
it. In the tabu season, ifit were strict,-for there was a lighter and a more stringent kind,-every light and fire was to be extinguished; all avocations were suspended; on that wave which all the people, young and old of both sexes, loved so much, no canoe might be launched; and in it none might bathe. Noone might be seen out of doors; and as the pnrpose of the tabu would be frustrated by any sound emitted by animal or bird, to prevent such a catastrophe, the mouths of dogs and pigs were tied up; and as for the poor garrulous fowls, after having had their eyes bandaged, they were, by way of further precaution, put under a calabash, and their quietus made in double darkness. Such a tabu was a living death. Nothing that the Church of Rome has effected by her severest ban approached its completeness; the silence of an Indian dhurnc(' was not so depressing. The sacred chiefs alone, those who claimed origin from the gods, the king and the priests, were allowed locomotion. Before these the common people prostrated themselves with their faces in the dust; but neither priest nor king might touch anything themselves, and food was put into their mouths by other hands than their own. It was at such a season that Cook arrived in Kealakeakua Bay.
