Oahu is made up of two long mountain ridges, with a plateau between. It bears Honolulu, the capital, and this on account of possessing the only really good harbour in the group.

Molokai is a long mountain running east and west, with the northern half removed. Thus it presents to the sea on the north a stupendous precipice. From this about the middle projects a piece of low flat rich land, used as the famous leper settlement.

Maui is composed of two mountains, the higher of which (10,000 feet) is a vast extinct volcano, the crater 27 miles round broken by two great gaps. The crater is the most remarkable upon earth as resembling a smaller lunar volcano, having several craters rising from its 2,000-feet deep cavity. It is known as Haleakala, or the House of the Sun.

Hawaii is the great island, that from which the group takes its name. The great volcano Mauna Loa (13,600 feet) stands in the centre. To the north is a beautiful mountain still higher—Mauna Kea, and there are smaller ones. Mauna Loa is the most interesting of all volcanoes. It does not show its height, the base being 60 miles across, and there are no peaks. I exhibit a diagram showing its general shape. The effect when on the mountain is that of being on a plateau. There are two extinct main craters besides those that occasionally burst out. The summit crater, 13,600 feet above the sea, is always active; the better-known Kilaues, 4,000 feet above the sea, on the east side, is, too, always active. It is clear from the difference of level that the two can have no connection. These craters do not shoot up stones and ashes; they are lakes of molten lava, and constantly change their levels, occasionally overflowing.

There are on the islands about 60 sugar mills, several with more than one plantation attached.

The Hawaiians are often spoken of as Malayo-Polynesians, but this is almost certainly a mistake. The whole subject of the origin of the race is discussed with great ability by Judge Fornander in his work on the Polynesian races.

Political.—Formerly each place had its own chief. Warfare was the normal state. The chiefs were a splendid race, well marked off from the common people. Descent was wisely reckoned in the female line. The finest women became tabu to the chiefs, and thus the superiority was produced. The old Greek race probably produced no specimens of humanity physically finer, and in intellect they ranked very high.

Late in the last century a chief of Western Hawaii, Kamehameha, conquered first his own and then the other islands. He died in 1819. His successor insulted the national deities and broke the tabu. Very soon afterwards the first batch of missionaries reached the islands.

Their success was, from their own point of view, wonderful and unprecedented. In a few years churches and schools marked every village, the natives were nominally christians, the old superstitions hidden out of sight and supposed to be extinguished and the language was reduced to writing. Then a Catholic Mission appeared and was forced upon the king and people by a French man-of-war. A painful conflict between the two faiths took place. This gradually subsided; a large portion of the natives adopted the newer faith, its spectacular ritual appearing to suit them far better than the other, while the singularly self-devoted and humble lives of the priests have largely aided in the same direction. Now the two live peacefully side by side. There is no religious census of the islands; but, to hazard a rough guess, perhaps a third of the natives are Catholics, and the proportion increases.

The Protestant missionaries quickly acquired important political powers. They stood out as the protectors of the natives against the vice and selfishness of the white traders. One, Dr. Judd, a man of great ability, was for many years the head of the government. The native kings, able men themselves, gladly availed themselves of the superior knowledge of the foreigners. Had these white men been English, no doubt the islands would have become an English colony. As it was, they were seized and annexed by Lord George Paulet, commanding an English man-of-war, an act quickly disavowed by the English Government. Colonies are outside of the American political system, and the great aim of the white ministers was not to annex the islands to America, but to build them up into an independent sovereignty under the native king. It is a fair question whether it would not have been better for the natives had the islands become a British Crown Colony; the decay of the race, it has been thought, might have been less rapid. But looking to the history of the Maoris and Fijians, the soundness of such an opinion may be greatly doubted. The lecturer had not been able to discover that the two last races are better off than the first; as to the value of the work—religious, political and social—of the missionaries in the islands there are such wide diversities of opinion that the lecturer declined to enter upon a ground of such hot controversy. Being human the missionaries could not, with all their good intentions, avoid errors, and many of them would now confess that their errors were many and serious. They were misled by thinking that they had a force at their back strong enough to change human nature and turn a half-savage native into the highest class of New Englander.

The land tenure and political system was at first feudal, but in 1839 Kamehameha III. abolished the feudal tenures and gave the country a constitution. This was abrogated by Kamehameha V. and a new one

given, which is now in force. The king is a constitutional monarch, but not according to English ideas. The form is more that of the late French Empire. The government is personal, the ministers being appointed and removed by the king at his own pleasure and without any reference to the legislature, towards which they have no responsibility. The present king has appointed and removed ministers in a most arbitrary manner. For instance, in 1878, being displeased, he sent at 1 a.m. to demand their immediate resignation.

The Ministers are four,—the Foreign Minister, who is usually the Premier; the Minister of the Interior, who is the real working Minister, for whom nothing is too great or too small; the Finance Minister; and the Attorney-General. The Foreign and Finance Ministers have frequently been figure-head natives. Two years ago the Finance Minister for a short time was a native preacher, perfectly ignorant of his subject, and appointed only because no respectable man could be got to take the office.

The Legislature, which, happily for the country, meets only biennially, consists of two estates; but they sit and vote as one House. The Nobles, twenty in number, are appointed by the King for life. They have no special title except Honourable. Many of them are “foreigners.” The twentyeight representatives are nearly all natives, and thus in the House as a whole, the natives are in the great majority. They possess and represent very little property, but vote away most recklessly the money of the foreign population, who pay all but a trifle of the taxes. In the session of this year they voted three and a half millions of dollars, including a Civil List of $148,000, to be spent in the next biennial period, the estimated income for that time being $1,950,000.

The proceedings of the Legislature are conducted with great dignity and propriety; but everything being done in two languages makes it extremely tedious, the more so that the natives are born orators, and can discourse for the hour together, even though they have nothing to say.

With all the weakness of the legislature, mostly, be it remembered, composed of natives, the laws of the Sandwich Islands, and the judicial procedure generally, compare favourably with those of any other nation in the world. They are the cream of American and English jurisprudence, and have generally been administered by Judges of high character and ability. As an instance where the procedure is vastly in advance of that of England,—the accused is, at his option, put into the witness-box and examined under oath.

The sanitary affairs of the islands are supervised by the Board of Health, whose duties are more serious and responsible than usually fall to the lot of similar bureaux elsewhere, for they have in their hands a terrible charge

from which most other countries are free—the leprosy: also the isolation of all cases of infectious disease that may be brought to the islands, a business which necessarily incurs much odium. In all such cases the people in immediate contact with the patients are immediately and carefully separated from the rest of the community, a course which might elsewhere be followed with advantage. It is a disgrace to any country not continental that such a disease as scarlet fever should ever gain, or at least keep, a footing in it.

An account of the leprosy and of a late epidemic of smallpox was then given, and the subject was treated more at large in a subsequent lecture, delivered before a special meeting of medical men.

The causes of the decline of the native race.—No doubt Captain Cook's estimate (400,000) was far too high. He reckoned from the numbers that appeared at each place where the ship touched, not considering that they crowded thither from all parts of the island. In 1832 the number was 130,000, in 1878 47,000.

Syphilis was introduced by Captain Cook's sailors, and has inflicted terrible injury on the race.

The leprosy has aided in the same direction.

The removal of the tabu from the women.—With all the drawbacks of the tabu, it was certainly a great protection to the women. Its abolition gave full swing to license. The women are markedly unfertile, but are far more fruitful with white men and Chinese than with their own race.

The early age at which intercourse begins with both sexes is another cause of infertility.

The women manage their babies unwisely, and the infant mortality is very large.

The changed conditions of life.—The dark races appear to be always injuriously affected by close contact with the white. The wearing of clothes, and living in tight houses, has proved a great curse to the natives, who are far more delicate and prone to lung diseases than when they went naked and lived in grass houses.

A very large number of the women live with white men and Chinese. This cause alone must in the end prove fatal to the purity of the race.

Present state and prospects.—The islands are now part of the American system. The policy was laid down by the late United States Foreign Secretary, Mr. Blain. Extract from letter of his to the United States Minister at Honolulu, dated December 1, 1881:—“In thirty years the United States have acquired legitimate and dominant influence in the North Pacific, which it can never consent to see decreased by intrusion therein of any element or influence hostile to its own. * * * * Hence the