This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893. Excerpt: ... FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO. THE PARISH AND THE PEOPLE. A strip of island sea-coast from one to three miles wide, and a hundred long, dotted with groves, and seamed across by the deep chasms of mountain torrents; behind this, for twentyfive miles, a belt of impervious jungle, fencing in, since the days of Vancouver, numberless herds of wild cattle; beyond, in the interior, a rough, volcanic wilderness, culminating in a summit 14,000 feet in height--a chaos of craters, some on the peaks of mountains, and some yawning suddenly before you in the forest, some long idle, some ceaselessly active, making the night lurid with their flames and still building at the unfinished island; one, a vast, fiery hollow, three miles across, the grandest lava caldron on the globe; 5,000 natives scattered up and down the sea belt, grouped in villages of from 100 to 300 persons, a vicious, sensual, shameless and yet tractable people, slaves to the chiefs, and herding together almost like animals--to this parish, a strange mingling of crags and valleys, of torrents and volcanoes, of beauty and barrenness, and to this people, a race of thieves, drunkards and adulterers, sixty years ago, was called the young missionary, Rev. Titus Coan. And here, for four memorable years, went on a work of grace scarcely paralleled elsewhere since the days of Pentecost. This parish, long and narrow, occupies the eastern third of the shore belt of Hawaii. It comprises two districts--Puna, stretching off toward the south in black lava fields, with here and there a patch of verdure, and a cluster of cabins, and Hilo, on the north, a fertile tract, but exceedingly rough. The central point is Hiio Bay, which opens out to the Pacific toward the east and north. Some leaven of the gospel had already been...