eye-witness an insight into Hawaiian customs before the arrival of
Europeans.

A hut of pandanus had been prepared for me upon the lava by the care of
a missionary. I made the old man enter, and invited him to partake of my
repast of poi,[2] cocoa-nut, raw fish, and roast dog. While eating the poi
with full fingers, Kanuha assured me that he had lived under King Alapai,
and had been his runner, as well as the courier of Kalaniopuu, his
successor. So great had been Kanuha's strength in his youth that, at the
command of his chiefs, he had in a single day accomplished the distance
from Hoopuloa to Hilo, more than forty French leagues. When Cook died, in
1779, the little children of Kanuha's children had been born. When I spoke
of Alapai to my old savage, he told me that _it seemed to him a matter of
yesterday_; of Cook, _it was a thing of to-day_.

From these facts it may be believed that Kanuha was not less than one
hundred and sixteen years old when I met him on this occasion. This
remarkable example of longevity was by no means unique at the Hawaiian
Islands a few years since. Father Maréchal knew at Ka'u, in 1844, an
aged woman who remembered perfectly having seen Alapai. I had occasion to
converse at Kauai with an islander who was already a grandfather when he
saw Captain Cook die. I sketched, at this very Hoopuloa, the portrait of
an old woman, still vigorous, Meawahine, who told any who would hear her
that her breasts were completely developed when her chief gave her as wife
to the celebrated English navigator.

Old Kanuha was the senior of all these centenaries. I took advantage of
his willing disposition to draw from him the historical treasures with
which his memory was stored. Here, in my own order, is what he told me
during a night of conversation, interrupted only by the Hawaiian dances