Keawe

“ Not his alone, but those of many monarchs of Hawaii were treasured here; but whether as the founder of the shrine, or because he had been more renowned in life, Keawe was the reigning and the hallowing saint. And Keawe can produce at least one claim to figure on the canon, for since his death he has wrought miracles. As late as 1829, Kaahumanu sent messengers to bring the relics of the kings from their long repose at Honaunau. First to the keeper’s wife, and then to the keeper, the spirit of Keawe appeared in a dream, bidding them prevent the desecration. ”

“ It is probable that there was only one high chief of this name, that he was the son of Umi, and was called Keawe the Great—Keawe nui a Umi. David Malo was interested, as the natives know, in swelling the genealogy of the alii, and he wished to flatter both nobility and people by distinguishing Keawe nui, of the race of Umi, from another Keawe. There are two Keawe, as seven Maui, and nine Hina. It is not, indeed, so long a period from Umi to the present era, that we can not unveil the truth from the clouds which surround, it. ”

“ Captain Cook had this bottle, and by it he found his way to so many islands; but he, too, sold it, and was slain upon Hawaii. For, once it is sold, the power goes and the protection; and unless a man remain content with what he has, ill will befall him."
"And yet you talk of selling it yourself?" Keawe said.
"I have all I wish, and I am growing elderly," replied the man. "There is one thing the imp cannot do—he cannot prolong life; and, it would not be fair to conceal from you there is a drawback to the bottle; for if a man die before he sells it, he must burn in hell forever." ”

“ He went round to the back porch, and called to memory the day when the devil had looked forth; and at the thought ice ran in his veins.
"A dreadful thing is the bottle," thought Keawe, "and dreadful is the imp, and it is a dreadful thing to risk the flames of hell. But what other hope have I to cure my sickness or to wed Kokua? What!" he thought, "would I beard the devil once, only to get me a house, and not face him again to win Kokua?"
Thereupon he called to mind it was the next day the Hall went by on her return to Honolulu. "There must I go first," he thought, "and see Lopaka. ”

“ Why, then, you can only sell it for one. And he who buys it—” The words died upon Keawe’s tongue; he who bought it could never sell it again, the bottle and the bottle imp must abide with him until he died, and when he died must carry him to the red end of hell. ”

“ They received more than the usual care and attention given to Hawaiian children, and had grown to man and womanhood serious and reflective. The young man, Keawe, was filled with a desire to do something noble for his dying race. ”

“ The sun went down into the sea, and the night came; and Keawe walked the balconies by lamplight, high on the mountains, and the voice of his singing startled men on ships.
“Here am I now upon my high place,” he said to himself. “Life may be no better ”

“ Quickly and stealthily she carried there such articles as the simplest life might require, and a few days later, when the officers of the law came, Keawe was not to be found and no one knew where they had gone.
With untiring love the wife watched and aided her husband. Together they built a little bower out of view from the upper edges of the crater, under the spreading branches of a kukui tree. A little pool, fed by the constant drip from the over-hanging wall, supplied them with pure water. Near at hand, under a mass of ferns, maile and ieie, was the mouth of the cavern. ”

“ Pleasantly situated at a bend of the river between Mortlake and Kew, opposite to Chiswick and Isleworth, which present a very picturesque appearance from the towing-path on the Surrey side, and owning a green some twelve acres in extent, the ancient village of Kew still retains, in spite of the great number of modern houses in its parish, something of the rural charm that distinguished it before the beautiful gardens with which its name is now chiefly associated were laid out. ”

“ Though the Kea has become, during the last forty years, the most notorious of all our New Zealand fauna, yet so cunning was the bird, and so secluded was its retreat, that it is only during the last few years that we have pierced the uncertainty that hung around its home life, and have been allowed to gaze with curious eye upon its nest. ”

“ This long stretch of alpine country is the home of the Kea. Here he reigns supreme. At times he may be seen flying about the snow-clad peaks and the glaciers, or hopping from rock to rock in search of food. Again, he may be found in the dense bush, seeking berries or prying curiously into the ways of the homesteads. Here, in a region of mountain, forest and flood, the bird bas lived and flourished for centuries, until man came unbidden. ”

“ It is a well established fact that the Kea is found in the mountainous regions of the South Island of New Zealand; but whether it lives among the snow-capped peaks and glaciers, or lower down near the forest line, is a question that has not so far been satisfactorily answered.
So much romance has surrounded the bird since its discovery that it is difficult to get people to come down to the sober facts of the case. ”

“ Nothing can be more tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a considerable depth.
Another quarter of a mile, along a dead flat, brought me upon Kew-Green. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green. ”

“ Indeed, you can never suffer from ennui while they remain with you; for, while you are driving one away from your tent, another will be trying his beak on the coat that you have hung up on a tree for safety. With their merry eyes, and their shining coats, their perky ways, and their tameness and extreme inquisitiveness, they are welcome and unwelcome at the same time.
The Kea is one of the most inquisitive birds imaginable, and, indeed, it is this trait in his character that has partly brought about his downfall. ”

“ Before coming to the Gardens that are its present fame, we should understand how Kew, even in its days of obscurity, had all along to do with great folk. Almost every line of our kings has had a home in this Thames-side neighbourhood, a distinction dating from before the Conquest. Both Kew and Richmond began parochial life as dependencies of Kingston, the King’s town that once made a chief seat of Saxon princes, whose coronation stone bears record in its market-place. The manor, included with that of Sheen—the modern Richmond—was held by the Crown at Doomsday. ”

“ I named Keate. You were not at Eton, and I must tell you, therefore, what manner of man it was that I named, though I think you must have some idea of him already, for wherever from utmost Canada to Bundelcund—wherever there was the whitewashed wall of an officer’s room, or of any other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kick their heels, there likely enough (in the days of his reign) the head of Keate would be seen scratched or drawn with those various degrees of skill which one observes in the representations of saints. ”

“ Keowee—the name of two or more former Cherokee settlements. One sometimes distinguished as “Old Keowee,” the principal of the Lower Cherokee towns, was on the river of the same name, near the present Fort George, in Oconee county, of S. C. Another, distinguished as New Keowee, was on the head-waters of Twelve-mile creek, in Pickens county, S. C. According to Wafford the correct form is Kuwahiʻyi, abbreviated Kuwahiʻ, “Mulberry-grove place.” Says Wafford, “the whites murdered the name as they always do.” ”

“ That is why I like going down to Kew, where the Spring is tidy and concentrated, and there is a squared map, just like France, at the turnstile gate to direct you to the magnolia dump, and little notices pointing you to the Temperate Houses, though this is really unnecessary, because there are no licensed premises in the Gardens at Kew. All is quiet and calm. ”

“ It is no wonder that in the early days people came to look upon the Kea as a terrible menace to the sheep-farming industry of New Zealand, for some of the stories told and published about its depredations are enough to stop any sheep farmer from settling in the country. ”

“ Not only is the country in which the Kea lives dangerous as well as difficult to travel over, but it is in some of the least inaccessible places in that almost inaccessible country, high up in the mighty peaks, that the Kea makes its home. ”

“ Mrs. Papendiek mentions two bishops as living at Kew, besides subordinate tutors of the princes. While the royal family were in residence, they had at hand Sir John Pringle, “physician to the Person,” and one or other of the brothers Cæsar and Pennell Hawkins, the royal surgeons, “for the Queen would have two of them always on the spot to watch the constitutions of the royal children.” Later on, as we saw, the King’s illness brought a swarm of medical men about Kew, at least as lodgers or visitors. ”

“ It is difficult, indeed, to draw the line between these neighbour villages that have now grown into each other. The Old Deer Park of Richmond ran into the parish of Kew. They had a common excitement in 1795, making a more than local sensation, when one John Little, said to have been a favourite attendant of George III. in his walks through the Gardens, came to a bad end. He is described as keeper or porter of the Observatory, who passed for being a quiet, worthy, and even religious man till he committed a most brutal murder under circumstances that suggest insanity. ”

“ In order to try to bring this important question to a final conclusion, I set to work to collect written statements from actual eye-witnesses, who lived or had lived in Kea country, and by carefully sifting and arranging this evidence to obtain the actual facts about this interesting bird.
In response to several requests, kindly published for me by the newspapers, I have received a large amount of evidence from men who live, or have lived, in the Kea country, viz., musterers, shepherds, head-shepherds, managers of stations, runholders, and station owners. ”

“ Pee-wee demanded. "Islands don't go to pieces, do they? Australia is an island, isn't it? It's just where it always was, isn't it? You're crazy! All we need is one more scout and I know one by the name of Keekie Joe, and I'm going to try to get him and then we'll be a full patrol and I decided to name it the Alligators, because they belong on land and water both and we're sea scouts on the land kind of, so maybe I'll decide to name it the Turtles, maybe." ”

“ Other wonderful things were done for them by a supernatural boy hero, whose father was the son of the Sun and whose mother was an earthly woman. This boy afterward transformed himself into two, and finally gave himself to the Kiowa in eucharistic form as a tribal "medicine," which they still retain. Unlike the neighboring Cheyenne and Arapaho, who yet remember that they once lived east of the Missouri and cultivated corn, the Kiowa have no tradition of ever having been an agricultural people or anything but a tribe of hunters. ”

“ I think it is one of the most striking and interesting facts in New Zealand ornithology that the Kea, living in alpine country, where the severity of the winter is especially felt, builds its nest, lays its eggs, hatches and rears its young, all during the severest months of the winter. During this time, its domain is swept by a succession of severe storms of cold wind, accompanied by snow, which covers the ground many inches deep for months ; and, when the sky is clear, very severe frosts set in, which turn every- thing into a solid frozen mass. ”

“ Keate in 1871 was Lieut.-Governor of Natal, and undertook, at the instance of the British Government, to make an award between the Transvaal Republic and the Batlapin Kafirs, whose Chief is and was a man called Gassibone. I should hardly interest or instruct my readers by going deeply into the vexed question of the Keate award. To Europeans living in South Africa it is always abominable that anything should be given up or back to the natives, and whatever is surrendered to them in the way of territory is always resumed before long by hook or crook. ”

“ Through the kindness of Mr. G. R. Kidson, I am able to record two other instances in the Nelson province. In 1904 a Kea was caught by Mr. A. G. Hammond at Appleby, only thirteen miles south-west of Nelson city, and in the same year Mr. T. S. Rowling caught one at Riwaka, a few miles north of Motueka, about 50 miles north-west of Nelson and 95 miles north of Hanmer.
This is at present the northernmost limit of the Kea’s area of distribution, which may be defined on the north as reaching the shores of Cook Strait. ”

“ The people of Keowee Town were not altogether proof against curiosity. From the vantage ground of the second men’s cabin Captain Howard could see stealthy figures, chiefly of women and children, peering out from doors or skulking behind bushes, all eyes directed toward the shallop rocking in a steely gleam of light [220] aslant upon a steely ripple of water, the only vivid chromatic tone in the neutral tinted scene.
There is a certain temperament which is incapable of sustaining success. ”

“ It was ideal weather to see the Kea, but certainly not the weather one would have chosen for a long ride on horseback in order to take photographs on an open mountain side.
We were away in good time; and, with my camera protected with sacks, we slowly made our way over the saddle that separated us from the Mathias River. We crossed the summit in the face of a biting wind, and took the track leading down to the river flat. This was steep and
Natural entrance to a Kea run: The hole goes ten feet into the rock. ”