supernatural eruptions.

To these inland valleys, and the adjoining hillsides, which are
clothed in the most luxuriant vegetation, Vancouver's bullocks soon
wandered; and unmolested for a long period, multiplied in vast herds.

Some twelve or fifteen years ago, the natives lost sight of their
superstitions, and learning the value of the hides in commerce, began
hunting the creatures that wore them; but being very fearful and
awkward in a business so novel, their success was small; and it was
not until the arrival of a party of Spanish hunters, men regularly
trained to their calling upon the plains of California, that the work
of slaughter was fairly begun.

The Spaniards were showy fellows, tricked out in gay blankets,
leggings worked with porcupine quills, and jingling spurs. Mounted
upon trained Indian mares, these heroes pursued their prey up to the
very base of the burning mountains; making the profoundest solitudes
ring with their shouts, and flinging the lasso under the very nose of
the vixen goddess Pelee. Hilo, a village upon the coast, was their
place of resort; and thither flocked roving whites from all the
islands of the group. As pupils of the dashing Spaniards, many of
these dissipated fellows, quaffing too freely of the stirrup-cup, and
riding headlong after the herds, when they reeled in the saddle, were
unhorsed and killed.

This was about the year 1835, when the present king, Tammahamaha III.,
was a lad. With royal impudence laying claim to the sole property of
the cattle, he was delighted with the idea of receiving one of every
two silver dollars paid down for their hides; so, with no thought for