In this connection, we are told that twice Kamehameha I made an effort to learn something about Christianity. When he heard that the people of Tahiti had embraced the new faith, he inquired of a foreigner about it, but the man could tell him nothing. Again, just before his death, he asked an American trader to tell him about the white man's God, but, as a native afterward reported to the missionaries, "He no tell him." This greatest of the Hawaiians prepared the way, but he himself died without hearing of Christ. The Hawaiians had now swept their house clean, and they were ready for an entirely new set of furnishings. In a land far away beyond the Pacific these were preparing for them, and the short reign of this second Kamehameha was made memorable not only by the changes already mentioned but also by the coming of the missionaries, in 1820. Obookiah, whose real name was Opukahaia, was a young Hawaiian who shipped as seaman on a whaler about 1817, and was taken to New Haven, where he found people who befriended him and undertook to give him an education. They sent him to the Foreign Mission School which had been established at Cornwall, Connecticut, for young men from heathen lands. Among his mates were four others from his native islands. It had been his purpose to carry the Christian religion to his home, but he was taken seriously ill at the school and on his death-bed he pleaded with his new friends not to forget his country. His appeal led the first missionaries to embark for those far-away shores. Three young Hawaiians from the school went with them as assistants. When the Christian teachers arrived, it is said that the captain of the ship sent an officer ashore with the Hawaiian boys. After awhile they returned, shouting out their wonderful news: "Liholiho is king. The tabus are abolished. The idols are burnt. There has been war. Now there is peace." The missionaries received a cordial welcome from some of the natives of high station. The former high priest met them with the words, "I knew that the wooden images of gods carved by our own hands could not supply our wants, but I worshiped them because it was a custom of our fathers.... My thought has always been, there is only one great God, dwelling in the heavens." The chief Kalaimoku, neatly dressed in foreign clothes, boarded the ship, accompanied by the two queen dowagers, and welcomed each of the newcomers in turn with a warm hand clasp. One of the queens asked the American women to make her a white dress while they were sailing along the coast, to wear on meeting the King. When she went ashore in her new white mother hubbard, a shout greeted her from hundreds of throats! Because the gown was so loose that she could both run and stand in it, the natives called it a holoku, meaning "run-stand." It became the national dress. The queens afterward sent the missionaries sugar-cane, bananas, cocoanuts and other foods, as a token of their pleasure.