ABSTRACT
It is now generally agreed that Captain Cook overestimated the population of the islands at the time of his vis~t. He supposed, from what he saw on the coasts, that the entire number of people on the group was about 400,000. He would, perhaps, make allowance for the concourse at any particular bay which such a great event as the arrival of his shipl:! would draw together, but he probably overlooked the identity of the crowd, as to part of its numbers, when he moved from one anchorage to another. A theatrical manager would have put him right at once, because accustomed to make numerical display of a limited company, by many exits and entrances: or if he had watched a city pageant, he would have ascertained that part of the unsatiated spectators in one street filter t.hrough side-lanes and alleys and form a portion of the crowd in another thoroughfare before the procession arrives there. Two hundred thousand would be probably the more correct computation of the Hawaiian population in 1778-9. Even then it seems likely to have been on the decrease, and that good old times had preceded that age-times in which a more numerous people covered the islands, and left traces of their strength and abundance in roads, walls, temples, and other works. From Cook's time to the present, the decay of the population has been continuous and rapid. At the time of Mr. Ellis's visit, (1823) the number on the whole of the islands was estimated at from 130,000 to 150,000 sonls, of which 85,000 lived on the great island Hawaii. A rapid depopulation had certainly taken place in the previous
fifty years; and among the causes of t.his decrement he places the frequent and destructive wars of the early pal't of the first Kamehameha's reign; the ravages of a pestilence first brought by foreign vessels, and which twice swept through the islands; the awful prevalence of infanticide; and the increase of depravity and vice, with their destructive consequences. By the natives' own account., the population of the islands had diminished to one-fourth its number within forty years. This statement was probably an exaggeration; but if it at all approached the truth, it would give snpport to Captain Cook's estimate of the people. In Ellis's time there was no census or systematic means of ascertaining the true numbers.
