JAMES KEAU IN LIFUKA HAAPAI.

Lifuka Haapai, April 23, ’92,

Dear younger brother

Capt. J. Kaai;

Aloha oe: I have time write a  letter to you, for it has been a long time being apart from you all, but I am now sending this letter to you with much aloha.

Your younger brother is here in good health, and I have no frailties, and everything is good. I am not needy in clothes and I have no difficulties in living here; I have much vegetable foods and fish killed by explosives [ia hoopahu]. How is your life, and what are you doing these days? How is the health of you all and how is Kimo liilii?

Here is something: I am leaving this place where I am living, and am going to Vavau to live. Today I am here in Vavau and am going to Lifuka next week to make ready to come back to this place. This is far from where I lived; it is eighty miles or more from Haapai to Vavau.

There is no news from these islands. This is a place where news does not come in from other lands, and so too from Hawaii.

It is my aloha that I send to you. Give my aloha to Nohea, Kimo liilii, Kalika and all of the ohana. I have not received a letter from sister.

Your younger brother,

James Keau.

[A year earlier, when Hawaiians were deported from Samoa by Malietoa, James Keau was already in Tonga.]

(Kuokoa, 1/1892, p. 2)

Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Buke XXXI, Helu 24, Aoao 2. Iune 11, 1892.