The
effects of their labors were so apparent that the American Board were
encouraged to send out repeated reinforcements; and in the progress of
time Mr. Stewart and his accomplished companion arrived at Hawaii on their
sacred mission. Perhaps there is no mission station on the globe, no scene
of missionary toil, where such glorious results have been accomplished, and
such wonderful changes wrought, as at the Sandwich Islands. Mr. Bingham,
speaking of the condition of the people at the time of his arrival among
them, says, "The nation had, on our arrival, neither books, pen, nor
pencil, for amusement or business, or for acquiring information or
communicating thought. They sat, like Turks or tailors, on mats spread on
the ground; dipped their fingers in the dish to eat their fish, poi, and
dog flesh, without knife, fork, or spoon. They stretched themselves at full
length on the mats to play cards or otherwise kill time. Their water they
drank from a gourd shell; and _awa_, the juice of a narcotic root, chewed
by others and mixed with water in the chewers' mouths, they drank, as their
fathers had done, from a cocoa-nut shell, for the same purpose that other
intoxicating drinks and liquors are taken.
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