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Updated: June 27, 2025
This Kamehameha II. was the king who with his queen, died of measles in London in 1824, after which the Blonde frigate was sent to restore their bodies with much ceremony to Hawaiian soil. Kamehameha III., a minor, another son of the Conqueror, succeeded, and reigned for thirty years, dividing the lands among the nobles and the people, and conferring upon his kingdom an equable constitution.
The great feather cloak of Kamehameha I., which is still kept as a sign of royalty, is made of these feathers, and contains probably several thousand of them, thus gathered, two from each bird.
One house with extensive grounds, a perfect wilderness of vegetation, was pointed out as the summer palace of Queen Emma, or Kaleleonalani, widow of Kamehameha IV., who visited England a few years ago, and the finest garden of all was that of a much respected Chinese merchant, named Afong.
War gods of wood were carried in battle, among them the fierce-looking image of Kalaipahoa, born in the van of the army of Kamehameha, and made at a cost of many lives from one of the trees poisoned by that goddess. Its fragments were divided among his people after the king's death.
If sons, as is often asserted, take their intellects from their mothers, he should be decidedly superior, for his mother, Kekauluohi, a chieftainess of the highest rank, and one of the queens of Kamehameha II., who died in London, was in 1839 chosen for her abilities by Kamehameha III. as his kuhina nui, or premier, an officer recognised under the old system of Hawaiian government as second only in authority to the king, and without whose signature even his act was not legal.
"The requisitions of their idolatry," says the historian Ellis, "were severe, and its rites cruel and bloody." Their idolatry has been abandoned since 1819. In the early days the several islands of the group had each a separate king, and wars were frequent between them, until King Kamehameha finally subjected them all to his sway, and formed the government which has lasted to the present time.
Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses were constructed to facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in them he became so very weak as not to receive food. After lying there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he was very low, returned him to his own house.
Ricord was a lawyer from about Buffalo, and by some means had got to the Sandwich Islands, where he became a great favorite of the king, Kamehameha; was his attorney-general, and got into a difficulty with the Rev. Mr. Judd, who was a kind of prime-minister to his majesty.
It is said that in the time of the first Kamehameha, the conqueror and hero of his race, upon an occasion when he visited Molokai, an old sorceress or priestess sent him word that she had made a garment for him a robe of honor which she desired him to come and get.
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.
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