mss142-vasilevShishmarev-i5-022
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- 182 -
they stand in three rows, and all suddenly make the same
body movements according to the rhythm. The musicians, or
singers, stood behind them.
This was the political, moral, and social condition of
the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands in 1821, having undergone
big changes in every respect since that time.
The Sandwich language is soft, pleasant to the ear, and
every easily pronounced by foreigners. It has very many vowels
in its words, but "r" is almost not heard at all. On all the
islands, they speak a common language, and some differ only
in pronunciation or lack of letters, as for instance, on Vahu
Island where there is no letter "k" at all, they instead,
use a "t"; for instance on Ovahi, a priest is called kahuna
and on Vahu, tahuna; on it, too, the queens, Kahumanna and
Kalihameha are called Tahumanna and Talihameha.
On April 3rd, we were ready to sail, but then the king
sent someone to summon our doctors. His favorite wife, Queen
]]Kalihameha]] [Kamamalu] suddenly fell sick. Immediately we dispatched
both doctors on shore. They found that the attacks were
really dangerous, whereupon our sailing was postponed. She
was in danger until the seventh, then she recovered, and we
hastened to leave this beautiful island, having the best cli-
mate on the globe and freed from all the tormentors of the
human race living in the tropics such as mosquitos, poison-
ous gnats, snakes, and others, to go back to the North for
misery and deprivations.
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