ing heroes leaped from their ambush, and endeavored to seize the prize; but the Alae were too quick-every bird caught up a coal, so that not a spark was left, and flew away to the marshes, where they spent the day croaking among the rushes, and bewailing the creation of mankind.

The same attempt was repeated for three days in succession till the fire-stealers saw that some other means must be tried. It was agreed that the younger of the two brothers should embark in a canoe, before it became light in the morning; and, placing on one of the seats, a long, jar-shaped fish-basket in such a position that it might appear, at a considerable distance, like a man, should paddle far out from the land, and pretend to be much engaged in fishing; the older brother was to conceal himself, as before, in the woods.

The fatal morning dawned, and the Alae awoke. They were very hungry, but fear prevented them from resorting at once to the banana grove. A little chick, at length, spied the canoe away off on the water, and cried out that their persecutors had given up in despair. The old birds, who were near-sighted and prudent, asked if the two men were both visible in the canoe; and, being assured that such was the case, the whole tribe, without farther ado, joyfully started for the woods.

They there kindled a perfect bonfire, and piled heaps of yellow fruit upon the blazing coals, with the determination of making full amends for three days' abstinence from their favorite food; but, just at the moment when every bird had its bill sunk to the eyes in the pulp of a steaming banana, out sprang their old enemy from his place of concealment. He was, this time, so fortunate as to capture the youngest of the family, and to hold him fast; though the rest all escaped, and carried the fire, as usual with them. The captor now made a signal to his brother who hastened eagerly ashore. They then bound the bird with a fishing line, and proceeded to interrogate him concerning the method of obtaining fire. The captive was, at first, sullen, and refused to reveal the secret ; but, on being threatened with death in case he remained longer silent, he directed the men to procure a piece of hard wood, about six inches in length, and pointed at one end. This must be rubbed violently on the succulent stem of the banana-tree, and the friction would produce fire. They eagerly made the experiment, but were, of course, unsuccessful, and demanded more truthful information. They were then told to rub the stick on the koa tree; failing in this trial, the bird recommended an attempt upon the trunk of the ohia; and so on till they had experimented on all the principal trees of the forest. There was no lack of success in

producing great quantities of smoke, and making long, deep furrows in the trees (by reason of which the bark of all large trees is rough and wrinkled to this day); but not a spark of fire could they obtain. It was now very evident that the bird was practising deception; they therefore pulled out his tail-feathers, by way of torture, hoping thus to compel him to speak the truth. The poor Alae finally yielded, and told his persecutors that if friction were applied to a soft, dry wood, called hau, it would ignite without fail. The men obeyed this direction, and were rewarded with complete success. Having refreshed themselves with roasted bananas, they applied a live coal to the crown of the Alae's head, which immediately swelled into a fiery crest, and then released the unfortunate bird. He flew slowly away to the lakes of Waiakea, where his descendants may now be easily distinguished by their red crests, and by their destitution of those caudal feathers which are so ornamental to the majority of birds. Thus did men obtain the prize of fire.

Here the old man paused, and his head drooped upon his breast. Having ordered a fresh supply of wood for the fire, the king passed the awacup to him, and requested the narration of another story; but the sage merely touched his lips to the rim of the shell, and remained obstinately silent. It chanced that there was present a young man, the son of the king of Hawaii. He had come with a message, and a gift from his father to the king of Oahu; and was now tarrying at the royal court, a favorite guest, and an interested spectator of the annual festivities. "Let our father alone," said this young man. "He is old; his voice is weak and faltering. Listen to me, and I will relate, for your amusement, a tale of my own country." The king was pleased with this proposal; so, after musing a little, the youthful ambassador commenced as follows:

Once upon a time a certain fair princess dwelt among the cocoa-nut groves of Puna. She was, above all other maidens, graceful and lovely; and the fame of her beauty had gone out through the islands, so that her father's court was thronged with suitors for his daughter's hand. Even the young Lord of Kauai ventured in his canoe across the stormy channel which separates that lonely island from the rest of the group, and sought to obtain the heart and the hand of the beautiful girl. But the lady cared not for the vows of these sighing swains; in fact, her hand had been, long before, promised by her father to the king of Maui,—that

king of Maui whose brother was the famous voyager Kamapiikai,-and the maiden had, as yet, felt no desire to dispute her father's will.

One day, the young prince of Kau came with a stately train to the royal court. He was the cousin of the princess; and, though separated for several years, they had been companions in their childhood. The lovely lady was with her maidens in the forest when the knightly train arrived; and, coming gaily home at evening, she encountered the prince as he was strolling beside the royal fish-ponds. The meeting was unexpected to both, though not unwelcome-to the young lord, at least; and he hastened forward, to greet his fair cousin who, with her head and arms wreathed with fragrant mailè, looked like some wood-nymph, or fairy from the forest: but she made no reply to his salutations; and, turning coyly aside from the path, tripped lightly away among the bushes toward her father's palace.

"How beautiful she is!" thought the young man, as he slowly retraced his steps. Rumor had certainly failed of doing justice to her charms, and he determined to risk his all in the attempt to win her love.

On the morrow the cousins met. Both were timid and silent; but lovers speak not so much with the tongue as by the glance of the eye; however, when the old king and his attendants had gone with their surfboards, to play in the surf on the beach, the prince found words with which to tell the story of his love. The lady listened with tearful attention, and then confessed how dearly she loved her cousin, and declared that she could love no other than him; but it was her father's will that she become the bride of the king of Maui, and no persuasion could avail to turn him from this purpose. The young lover was, nevertheless, sanguine in his hopes of success, so, when his uncle returned from the bath, he informed that worthy old gentleman of the progress he had made in his daughter's affections, and asked his consent to their speedy union. The old warrior quietly took down from its place a long, iron-wood spear, barbed and pointed with shining fish-bones; and politely requested the young man to return immediately home, unless he wished to experience the effects of an exhibition of skill in the spear-exercise. This was the "short and easy method" of dealing with unwelcome petitioners for his daughter's hand, practised by this model sovereign and parent, from which there was no appeal; and soon the beautiful princess saw her lover sadly departing with his companions, and going away, under the bluffs of the Kaha, in the direction of his home.

A few days after this little affair, as the princess was sitting alone on

the rocks of the sea-shore, listlessly watching her maidens who were sporting in the surf at her feet, there came a young girl with a message from her cousin. If she would come to the little cove at the beach, when the moon went down, that night, he would be ready with a canoe, and they would fly together to his home where she should be happy all the days of her life.

The gentle girl hesitated, and a refusal trembled on her lips, as she thought of leaving her pleasant home and the friends of childhood; but, when she recalled the image of that hateful stranger who was soon coming to claim her hand, and carry her away over the sea to the distant island of Maui, her resolution returned; and she promised to be at the appointed place when the moon disappeared behind the mountain.

The night was warm and still, and the morning star of love was just rising in the east, as the moon went down. The princess woke one of her maids; and, together, they stole softly away from the royal enclosure, hastening to the cove, where was a large, double-canoe, well manned, and ready to push from the beach. The young prince tenderly embraced his mistress, and placed her, with her waiting-maid, upon the platform of the canoe they then pushed hastily through the surf, and were soon out on the open sea. Merrily they coasted along the southern shores of the island till afternoon, when they landed at Punaluu, where the prince's mother dwelt beside that well known fountain whose cool waters have always been so peculiarly delightful to the sovereigns of Kau. This lady cordially welcomed the beautiful princess to her home; and, at evening, the nuptials of the happy pair were celebrated with all due solemnity and pomp.

Soon after this happy event, a herald came from the king of Puna demanding the restoration of the princess, intact as when she left her father's house, together with proper indemnification for the insult offered to his dignity and power. This demand was very promptly refused. The indignant monarch then declared war against the powers of Kau, and landed with a mighty army of spearmen upon the coasts of that region. The troops of the prince were repeatedly vanquished by the redoubtable warriors of his father-in-law; and he was, finally, compelled to flee with his family to the fastnesses of the mountain, leaving the enemy to roam at will over the fair fields of his dominion.

While thus shut up in the forest, the queen-mother, who was a lineal descendant of the goddess Pèlè, bethought herself of making application to her divine ancestor in behalf of her unfortunate son. Summoning a

few faithful followers, she bade adieu to her family, and set out for the sacred region of Kilauea, where the great goddess of fire, Pèlè, had her abode.

Two days they traveled along the borders of the forest till, on the South-east side of the mountain, they reached an extensive table-land which lies at an elevation of nearly four thousand feet above the sealevel. Portions of this plain are covered with a scanty growth of hardy trees and rough, mountain shrubs; but it is, for the most part, a desert waste of sand and lava rock. Near the center of the plateau yawns the great crater of Kilauea, an abyss nine miles in circumference, and a thousand feet deep; but, notwithstanding the magnitude of the vast pit, the spectator's first impression, as he stands upon its brink, is almost invariably a feeling of disappointment. He has pictured in his mind a cone-shaped peak, down whose heated sides the gory lava flows with thundering noise upon the country around. He sees nothing like the image of his fancy here; there is only an empty crater in which all is still and dead, and the smoke goes quietly up as if from the smouldering ruins of some great city. As he gazes, this feeling, however, gives way to others, and he can only be impressed by the sublimity of the scene. Volumes of smoke, lazily rolling up toward heaven, show where the pool of liquid lava sleeps; and little jets of vapor, every where springing from the crevices of the rock, reveal the existence of fire in the caverns below. The silence and desolation, the depth and extent of the crater, grow every minute more awful; and, as evening draws near, the immense dome of Mauna Loa throws gloomy shadows over the forests and across the plain, while its unbroken outline, with all its glaciers reflecting the lingering rays of the sun, rises in bold relief against the purple sky. When night closes in, and the goddess of fire awakes from her slumbers, the pillar of smoke is illumined with lurid light; and the spray and foam, the dash and surge of the fiery waves, can be distinctly seen as they beat against their rock-bound shore.

To this sacred region, then, came the queen, bearing offerings to the goddess who dwells among the fires of the crater. Standing on the brink of the chasm, the venerable woman prayed long and loud, invoking the wrath of her divine ancestor upon the barbarous king of Puna, and praying that his domains be desolated, and his groves and fish-ponds be destroyed, by a flood of burning lava. Her attendants cast into the crater an offering of hogs and fowls, together with fruitful clusters of the sacred ohelo, and then they retired to await the response of the deity.