{"id":"01KG8AM5Y85X8JV8YT7KQ980H2","cid":"bafkreie6a3wafhfrfulxphvbn4ivzjk2izs4hfshb6g3mhuzx2bcqpu5j4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8299,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:25.203Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JYRSHWXR7JM0HYS9D4","start_line":8240,"text":"CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\r\n\r\nKING MEHEVI--ALLUSION TO HIS HAWAIIAN MAJESTY--CONDUCT OF MARHEYO AND\r\nMEHEVI IN CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS--PECULIAR SYSTEM OF MARRIAGE--NUMBER\r\nOF POPULATION--UNIFORMITY--EMBALMING--PLACES OF SEPULTURE--FUNERAL\r\nOBSEQUIES AT NUKUHEVA-NUMBER OF INHABITANTS IN TYPEE--LOCATION OF THE\r\nDWELLINGS--HAPPINESS ENJOYED IN THE VALLEY--A WARNING--SOME IDEAS WITH\r\nREGARD TO THE PRESENT STATE OF THE HAWAIIANS--STORY OF A MISSIONARY’S\r\nWIFE--FASHIONABLE EQUIPAGES AT OAHU--REFLECTIONS\r\n\r\n\r\nKing Mehevi!--A goodly sounding title--and why should I not bestow\r\nit upon the foremost man in the valley of Typee? The republican\r\nmissionaries of Oahu cause to be gazetted in the Court Journal,\r\npublished at Honolulu, the most trivial movement of ‘his gracious\r\nmajesty’ King Kammehammaha III, and ‘their highnesses the princes of the\r\nblood royal’.* And who is his ‘gracious majesty’, and what the\r\nquality of this blood royal’?--His ‘gracious majesty’ is a fat, lazy,\r\nnegro-looking blockhead, with as little character as power. He has\r\nlost the noble traits of the barbarian, without acquiring the redeeming\r\ngraces of a civilized being; and, although a member of the Hawiian\r\nTemperance Society, is a most inveterate dram-drinker.\r\n\r\n*Accounts like these are sometimes copied into English and American\r\njournals. They lead the reader to infer that the arts and customs of\r\ncivilized life are rapidly refining the natives of the Sandwich Islands.\r\nBut let no one be deceived by these accounts. The chiefs swagger about\r\nin gold lace and broadcloth, while the great mass of the common people\r\nare nearly as primitive in their appearance as in the days of Cook. In\r\nthe progress of events at these islands, the two classes are receding\r\nfrom each other; the chiefs are daily becoming more luxurious and\r\nextravagant in their style of living, and the common people more and\r\nmore destitute of the necessaries and decencies of life. But the end\r\nto which both will arrive at last will be the same: the one are fast\r\ndestroying themselves by sensual indulgences, and the other are\r\nfast being destroyed by a complication of disorders, and the want of\r\nwholesome food. The resources of the domineering chiefs are wrung from\r\nthe starving serfs, and every additional bauble with which they bedeck\r\nthemselves is purchased by the sufferings of their bondsmen; so that the\r\nmeasure of gew-gaw refinement attained by the chiefs is only an index\r\nto the actual state in which the greater portion of the population lie\r\ngrovelling.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe ‘blood royal’ is an extremely thick, depraved fluid; formed\r\nprincipally of raw fish, bad brandy, and European sweetmeats, and is\r\ncharged with a variety of eruptive humours, which are developed in\r\nsundry blotches and pimples upon the august face of ‘majesty itself’,\r\nand the angelic countenances of the ‘princes and princesses of the blood\r\nroyal’!\r\n\r\nNow, if the farcical puppet of a chief magistrate in the Sandwich\r\nIslands be allowed the title of King, why should it be withheld from\r\nthe noble savage Mehevi, who is a thousand times more worthy of the\r\nappellation? All hail, therefore, Mehevi, King of the Cannibal Valley,\r\nand long life and prosperity to his Typeean majesty! May Heaven for many\r\na year preserve him, the uncompromising foe of Nukuheva and the French,\r\nif a hostile attitude will secure his lovely domain from the remorseless\r\ninflictions of South Sea civilization.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJR25VD49M8PDP0DQV6HE","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JYRSHWXR7JM0HYS9D4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM5Y8WX03HQVE8XZEQBYR","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:28.616Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:41.446Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}