,
and that he still continued to entertain for me the warmest regard, as far at
least as I was enabled to judge from appearances. For the future I determined to
pay most assiduous court to him, hoping that eventually through his kindness I
might obtain my liberty.
 

                                  Chapter XXVI

    King Mehevi - Allusion to his Hawaiian Majesty - Conduct of Marheyo and
    Mehevi in certain delicate matters - Peculiar System of Marriage - Number of
    Population - Uniformity - Embalming - Places of Sepulture - Funeral
    Obsequies at Nukuheva - Number of Inhabitants in Typee - Location of the
    Dwellings-Happiness enjoyed in the Valley - A Warning - Some Ideas with
    regard to the Civilisation of the Islands - Reference to the present state
    of the Hawaiians - Story of a Missionary's Wife - Fashionable Equipages at
    Oahu - Reflections.
 
King Mehevi! - A goodly sounding title! - and why should I not bestow it upon
the foremost man in the valley of Typee? The republican missionaries of Oahu
cause to be gazetted in the Court Journal, published at Honolulu, the most
trivial movements of his gracious majesty King Tammahammaha III., and their
highnesses the princes of the blood royal.6 - And who is his gracious majesty
and what the quality of this blood royal? - His gracious majesty is a fat, lazy,
negro-looking blockhead, with as little character as power. He has lost the
noble traits of the barbarian, without acquiring the redeeming graces of a
civilised being; and although a member of the Hawaiian Temperance Society, is a
most inveterate dram-drinker.
    The blood royal is an extremely thick, depraved fluid; formed principally of
raw fish, bad brandy, and European sweetmeats, and is charged with a variety of
eruptive humours, which are developed in sundry blotches and pimples upon the
august face of majesty itself, and the angelic countenances of the princes and
princesses of the blood royal!
    Now, if the farcical puppet of a chief magistrate in the Sandwich Islands be
allowed the title of King, why should it be withheld from the noble savage
Mehevi, who is a thousand times more worthy of the appellation? All hail,
therefore, Mehevi, King of the Cannibal Valley, and long life and prosperity to
his Typeean majesty! May Heaven for many a year preserve him the uncompromising
foe of Nukuheva and the French, if a hostile attitude will secure his lovely
domain from the remorseless inflictions of South Sea civilisation.
    Previously to seeing the Dancing Widows I had little idea that there were
any matrimonial relations subsisting in Typee, and I should as soon have thought
of a Platonic affection being cultivated between the sexes, as of the
