Kahoolawe, which is only 11 miles long and 8 broad. Their entire
superficial area is about 6,100 miles. They are to some extent
bounded by barrier reefs of coral, and have few safe harbours.
Their formation is altogether volcanic, and they possess the largest
perpetually active volcano and the largest extinct crater in the
world. They are very mountainous, and two mountain summits on
Hawaii are nearly 14,000 feet in height. Their climate for
salubrity and general equability is reputed the finest on earth. It
is almost absolutely equable, and a man may take his choice between
broiling all the year round on the sea level on the leeward side of
the islands at a temperature of 80 degrees, and enjoying the charms
of a fireside at an altitude where there is frost every night of the
year. There is no sickly season, and there are no diseases of
locality. The trade winds blow for nine months of the year, and on
the windward coasts there is an abundance of rain, and a perennial
luxuriance of vegetation.

The Sandwich Islands are not the same as Otaheite nor as the Fijis,
from which they are distant about 4,000 miles, nor are their people
of the same race. The natives are not cannibals, and it is doubtful
if they ever were so. Their idols only exist in missionary museums.
They cast them away voluntarily in 1819, at the very time when
missionaries from America sent out to Christianize the group were on
their way round Cape Horn. The people are all clothed, and the
king, who is an educated gentleman, wears the European dress. The
official designation of the group is "Hawaiian Islands," and they
form an independent kingdom.

The natives are not savages, most decidedly not. They are on the
whole a quiet, courteous, orderly, harmless, Christian community.