and built and armed for him a small vessel, which proved an important addition to his military establishment.
Kamehameha eventually became the ruler of the whole group, and thus laid the foundation of Hawaiian nationality. He ended his career in 1819, and his death was followed by strange and unexpected events. The natives had for generations been practicing a degrading and sanguinary idolatry and a superstitious and tyrannical system known as tabu. The advisers of the young king Liholiho induced him to put an end to both as false and as injurious to his people.
These events synchronized with the dispatch from Boston, by the American Board of Foreign Missions,—an organization of the Congregational churches of New England,—of a company of missionaries to propagate among the Hawaiians the doctrines of Christianity. A zeal for foreign missions had a few years before been awakened in the churches of that denomination especially, and the attention of their board of missions being attracted to the Hawaiian Islands by the intimate relations of the New England merchants and vessels with them, this movement was set on foot to convert the natives to Christianity.
The first missionaries were kindly received, and hopefully entered upon their labors under favorable conditions. Additional missionaries were sent out from the Boston board, and soon they were actively at work throughout the group. Such great success attended their labors that within a few years the larger part of the population were reported as adherents of Christianity, including the king and the court. In 1843,
