With all their faults, and their intolerable carelessness, all the
foreigners like them, partly from the absolute security which they
enjoy among them. They are so thoroughly good-natured, mirthful,
and friendly, and so ready to enter heart and soul into all haole
diversions, that the islands would be dreary indeed if the dwindling
race became extinct.
Among the many misfortunes of the islands, it has been a fortunate
thing that the missionaries' families have turned out so well, and
that there is no ground for the common reproach that good men's sons
turn out reprobates.
The Americans show their usual practical sagacity in missionary
matters. In 1853, when these islands were nominally Christianised,
and a native ministry consisting of fifty-six pastors had been
established, the American Board of Missions, which had expended
during thirty-five years nine hundred and three thousand dollars in
Christianising the group, and had sent out 149 male and female
missionaries, resolved that it should not receive any further aid
either in men or money.
In the early days, the King and chiefs had bestowed lands upon the
Mission, on which substantial mission premises had been erected, and
on withdrawing from the islands, the Board wisely made over these
lands to the Mission families as freehold property. The result has
been that, instead of a universal migration of the young people to
America, numbers of them have been attached to Hawaiian soil.
