ROM the beginning of Hawaii's contact with the outside world, circumstances in the Islands have always been highly favorable to the process of racial fusion. Not long after the accidental discovery of these Islands by the English navigator, Captain James Cook, in 1778, King Kamehameha I gave two Caucasian seamen Hawaiian women of high social rank in marriage.' This stamp of royal approval paved the way for interracial marriages between Hawaiian women of all social ranks and foreign men of all racial extractions. As time went on, Hawaiian women came to look upon foreign men as desirable husbands primarily because they were industrious workers and good providers.2 In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the foreign community in Hawaii was composed of people drawn from many parts of the world and was numerically small. As pointed out by Romanzo Adams, there were 1,572 foreigners in the Islands in 1850. Of this number the great majority were of or European origin, with perhaps 50 to 100 Chinese and about a score of Negroes.3 With the possible exception of the American missionaries and their families, ethnic and cultural ties among the various groups of foreigners were not particularly strong. At the same time, the sex ratio among foreigners was exceedingly abnormal. In 1866 the number of foreigners increased to 4,194 but their sex ratio was 384.3 males per 100 females.4 And, as late as 1900, after the arrival of a rather significant number of women from Portugal, China, and Japan, the sex ratio among Hawaii's foreign community was still 299.0 males per 100 females.' CHANGING INTERRACIAL COMPOSITION