Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's MissionEddy, Daniel C. (Daniel Clarke)
History
Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission
Eddy, Daniel C. (Daniel Clarke)
Women -- Biography; Women missionaries
Nor have the natives been unwilling to render their assistance. They have
cooperated with the missionaries, and nobly exerted themselves to bring the
islands under Christian influences. Their efforts to erect temples in which
they and their children may worship the only living and true God illustrate
the zeal with which they toiled to accomplish good. Speaking of the large
stone church at Honolulu,--a church which cost twenty thousand dollars,
and required the labor of many men for six long years to finish it,--Mr.
Bingham says, "In the erection of this stately edifice, the active men,
among about one thousand communicants of that church, having divided into
five companies, labored by rotation many days and weeks with patience and
zeal."
Of the labor given to the erection of a house of worship at Kealakekua, the
same work furnishes us with the following particulars:--
"The stones were carried upon the shoulders of men forty or fifty rods. The
coral for making the lime they procured by diving in two or three fathom
water and detaching blocks, or fragments. If these were too heavy for the
diver to bring up to his canoe with his hands, he ascended to the surface
to take breath, then descended with a rope, attached it to his prize, and,
mounting to his canoe, heaved up the mass from the bottom, and, when the
canoe was thus laden, rowed it ashore and discharged his freight. By this
process they procured about thirty cubic fathoms, or seven thousand seven
hundred and seventy-six cubic feet. To burn this mass, the church members
brought from the mountain side, upon their shoulders, forty cords of wood.
The lime being burned, the women took it in calabashes, or large gourd
shells, and bore it on their shoulders to the place of building; also sand
and water for making the mortar. Thus about seven hundred barrels each of
lime, sand, and water, making about two thousand barrels, equal to three
hundred and fifty wagon loads, were carried by women a quarter of a mile,
to assist the men in building the temple of the Lord, which they desired to
see erected for themselves and for their children--a heavy service, which
they, their husbands, fathers, sons, had not the means of hiring nor teams
to accomplish. The latter had other work far more laborious to perform for
the house. The sills, posts, beams, rafters, &c., which they cut in the
mountains, six to ten miles distant, they drew down by hand. The posts and
beams required the strength of forty to sixty men each. Such a company,
starting at break of day, with ropes in hand, and walking two or three
hours through the fern and underbrush loaded with the cold dew, made fast
to their timber, and, addressing themselves to their sober toil for the
rest of the day, dragged it over beds of lava, rocks, ravines, and rubbish,
reaching the place of building about sunset."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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