Whittlesey. On our way to Honolulu our vessel has stopped at this place
to take the missionaries there to the General Meeting, giving us an
opportunity to spend a Sunday and to meet the natives.
Once we found these isolated laborers destitute of almost all edibles
except arrow-root and milk. In spite of their regrets, we spent a very
happy day notwithstanding this lack of provisions. We ate and were
satisfied, and we rejoiced in the privilege of Christian fellowship
with these self-denying teachers. It is now a long time since these
families returned to the United States.
The Rev. Sereno Bishop, only son of the missionary Artemas Bishop,
labored there for a while with his devoted Christian wife, but
subsequently assumed the charge of the institution at Lahainaluna.
Hana is now occupied by a native pastor, and is greatly reduced in
population.
Wailuku on Maui is an important missionary station. This field, like
many others, was once teeming with thousands of natives. Its romantic
valleys, its lofty precipices, its sparkling rills, and its perennial
verdure on the one side, and, on the other, its broad plains, its sand
dunes, its emerald foot-hills, and the towering mountain, Haleakala,
with the blue ocean on the left, make it a spectacle of beauty, of
variety, and of grandeur not often surpassed.
This station was once occupied by the devoted Miss Ogden and the Rev.
J. S. Green, who conducted a large and flourishing boarding-school for
Hawaiian girls. This was afterward sorrowfully abandoned for lack of
funds.
We have visited Wailuku when the beloved brother and sister Clark,
and the energetic Armstrong and his wife, were toiling here with
success; and we have been the guests of our honored brother and sister
Alexander, still living and laboring for the Master in this important
field. The Greens, the Clarks, Miss Ogden, and Dr. Armstrong have all
gone, and those who remain will only “a little longer wait.” Two native
pastors are settled here over small congregations, and there is also an
English-speaking church for the foreign residents.
[Sidenote: _East Maui._]
This district is now full of agricultural energy. Vast fields of
sugar-cane wave where weeds grew before; crushing-mills groan,
boiling-trains steam, smoke-stacks puff, centrifugals buzz, and
ship-loads of sugar are produced in and around Wailuku. Extended
and expensive ditches bring water from the mountains of East Maui,
converting vast fields of dry and hot sand into rich and productive
soil; the telephone, the telegraph, and the railroad are there, and
the material improvements multiply. All would be matters of rejoicing
and congratulation could we but report equal progress in moral and
spiritual power.
On the highlands of East Maui stands the Makawao Female Seminary, an
important institution, conducted by Miss Helen Carpenter, a lady of
great skill and devotion in this necessary work. A few years ago I
attended the annual examination of this seminary, and spent a week as a
guest of the principal. I was exceedingly interested in the appearance
of the pupils, and in the remarkable skill and tact of the teacher. All
the instruction is in the English language, and it was delightful to
see the acquisitions of the scholars in the various studies they had
pursued.
During this visit at Makawao we made up a party to ascend to the
summit crater of Haleakala--“House of the Sun,” the distance from this
point being about thirteen miles, with a bridle-path for horses all
the way. Notwithstanding many previous visits to Maui, I had never
before indulged myself with a trip to this monster of craters. We
had a delightful ride over hills and swales, and through fields of
strawberries and ohelos. About midway of the distance we rested for a
short time under shade trees near a lovely rill of cool limpid water, a
beautiful spot which has since been selected by the Alexanders, as an
invigorating retreat from the heat and dust of Wailuku and Haiku, and
which they have named Olinda.
We arrived at the summit about 3 +P.M.+ We were now 10,217 feet above
sea-level, and yet the sun was hot and the mercury high. In eight hours
the thermometer had fallen forty degrees, and the cold was intense. Our
guide and some of the party had collected such scanty fuel as could
be found, and we made ourselves as comfortable as was possible for
the night, around the fire that was kindled, and under shelter of an
overhanging rock. In the morning the ground was whitened with frost,
and water was frozen.
The view of this vast cauldron needs to be repeated and continued
for a long time, in order to get a full and clear impression of its
magnitude. It has been estimated that the circumference on the outer
rim is thirty miles, and the depth 1,800 feet. The floor of this
amphitheater is studded with sixteen cones, four to six hundred feet
high, composed of scoria and cinders, appearing from the upper rim like
small sand dunes dropped from a dumping-car.
[Sidenote: _Haleakala Crater._]
The eastern rim of the crater is broken down as low as its floor,
furnishing a broad passage for the molten flood to the sea. This river
of fire, some three miles wide, must have been a terrific spectacle,
as it rushed in raging billows from the mouth of the crater and hurried
down the mountain-side and into the ocean.
It is supposed that this crater is the largest and deepest on our
planet, and more nearly resembles some of the yawning craters of
the moon. Time was when the raging fires on this mountain must have
surpassed in grandeur and brilliancy any that have been anywhere seen
by later generations. For ages these lurid fires have been extinct, and
from time immemorial silence has reigned over the sleeping hill. Can
geology, can all human science tell us when these fires were kindled?
how long they raged and roared? and when they were extinguished? Was
it before or after the Prophet Isaiah uttered, in sublime language,
a description of the Tophet near Jerusalem? “For Tophet is ordained
of old.... He hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire
and much wood; the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth
kindle it.”
But another scene, if less grand, yet more beautiful, awaited us.
As the sun descended lower and lower in the west, the fleecy clouds
came drifting in from the sea, and, massing around the bases of East
and West Maui, covered all the seas, and bays, and channels in every
direction, leaving only the tops of Hawaii, Maui, and Lanai visible.
The upper surface of these clouds was fleecy white, and appeared
like a vast sea of eider-down. We stood above the clouds in bright
sunshine, but we saw no water and no land in any direction, except the
summits of the mountains gilded in the setting sun. We gazed upon the
scene below us with intense interest. As the sun went lower and lower,
his rays began to dance, and play, and sparkle upon this vast sea of
snowy whiteness, in lambent beauty, and as he dipped into the fleecy
bed a flood of glowing scintillations flashed over the whole surface,
the prismatic tints twinkling, dancing, gleaming, and quivering in
inimitable beauty. A scene unique indeed, and unexcelled by anything of
the kind I had seen from the heights of Chili or of Hawaii.
Then the night came on, and the clouds rested like a pall over land
and sea, while in the clear heavens above us the bright constellations
sparkled as on a winter’s night in the far-away home-land.
In 1836 I visited the island of Molokai, which at that time was
occupied by the earnest and laborious missionaries, the Rev. H. R.
Hitchcock and his wife. Congregations and schools were large, and the
people seemed to come readily under the influence and leading of their
teachers. The Revs. Lowell Smith, Samuel G. Dwight, A. O. Forbes, and
Mr. Bethuel Munn have all labored on this island, but now for years
past no American missionary has resided there.
[Sidenote: _The Leper Settlement._]
Molokai is strongly marked with _palis_, or precipices, and at the base
of one 3,000 feet high, lie the Kalaupapa plains, stretching seaward,
and having no other communication than by sea with the outside world.
Thither more than a thousand of our poor suffering people have been
carried during the last decade and a half, to linger through a living
death until the fearful leprosy brings them to the grave. Our sanitary
laws are relentless, and in the case of this disease they doom husbands
and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters to lifelong
separation.
The scenes upon our wharves when a company of lepers is being embarked
for transportation to their settlement are often agonizing.
The present number in the settlement is about 700, among whom are
many of our well-educated Christians and some of the native pastors.
A physician and medicines, a church edifice and chaplain are provided
by a kindly Government; friends are allowed to communicate with their
banished kindred, and all that thoughtful kindness can do to ameliorate
the miseries of those forlorn beings is done.
Oahu is better known to the reading world than any of the other
Hawaiian Islands. Thousands of strangers have visited Honolulu; it
is the capital of the kingdom, and has a population of about 15,000.
When I first saw it, on the 6th of June, 1835, it was anything but
an inviting place. The streets were narrow, irregular, and dirty,
the houses mostly small and thatched with grass, some being built of
adobes, or sun-dried mud-bricks, and others on posts set in the ground.
Only a few stone or framed houses were then seen, and these were mostly
owned by foreign residents and native chiefs. Hardly a green tree or
shrub was seen within the limits of the town. On its western flank, a
small creek came down the valley called Nuuanu, furnishing muddy water
for the taro ponds, and bathing and washing places for a multitude of
natives with their pigs, ducks, and dogs. At several points removed
from the stream, shallow wells had been dug six to ten feet deep, where
hard and brackish water was found, but this water satisfied none but
Hawaiians.
Along the shore in sandy and marshy places the cocoa-palm flourished
with rushes, hibiscus, and pandanus growths; but over the extended
plain, some three miles in length and about one mile in breadth, there
was little but an arid desert of burning coral sand and detritus from
the rocky hills, the reflection from which was scorching.
[Sidenote: _Honolulu._]
But times, and scenes, and scenery are changed. Industry, civilization,
and science have made this scorched desert blossom as the rose. The
organization of a good government, the increase of revenues, the
introduction of capital, with brain power and muscular energy, have
made Honolulu a place of remarkable beauty. Large reservoirs have been
constructed high up the valleys, pipes have been laid all over the
city, and spouting hydrants cool the air and refresh the trees, plants,
and flowers of a thousand yards and gardens. Viewed from the sea as
one enters the harbor, or from one of the hills that guard it in the
rear, the town is a picture of enchanting loveliness. It is a tropical
paradise, glowing in perennial beauty.
And, to add to the richness of the soil, the value of products and the
charm of the scenery, artesian wells are beginning to throw up their
pure jets and to pour out their limpid streams to cheer the plains
around.
Honolulu also has an improved and excellent harbor, in which are often
seen the waving flags of nearly all civilized nations, with five or
six home steamers, and an inter-island fleet of which so young and so
small a nation need not be ashamed. Its wharves, its esplanade, its
custom-house, its palace, its fine Government house and other public
buildings, offer a surprising contrast to what we saw forty years
ago. It has two large Hawaiian churches, a seamen’s bethel where many
thousands of the sons of the deep have heard the sound of the Gospel,
first from the lips of the Rev. Mr. Diell, and now for some forty years
from Dr. Damon. There is also the flourishing Fort Street church,
under the care of the Rev. Walter Frear, where the Gospel is preached
faithfully to an intelligent audience. Just across the street is the
Catholic cathedral with its bishop, and not far from this an English
Reformed Catholic church with its bishop and priests.
The city is provided with schools of various grades, and its literary,
social, and benevolent associations are numerous and active.
The Hawaiian Board of Home and Foreign Missions has its seat in
Honolulu, with a yearly income of more than $30,000, to be appropriated
to the several branches of Christian work under its care.
It may be doubted whether any city in Christendom of equal size has a
larger proportion of intelligent Christian workers, who give more of
their substance in the cause of beneficence, than the foreign residents
of Honolulu.
[Sidenote: _Churches in the Capital._]
The first native church in this city was organized under the pastoral
care of the Rev. Hiram Bingham, who came to the Islands in 1820. In
1836 his congregation, which sometimes numbered 4,000, were worshiping
in a thatched house that covered an area of 12,348 square feet; this
afterward gave place to the stone church, which stands as one of
the landmarks of the city. The plan of the building was made by Mr.
Bingham, and most of the materials for it were collected under his
supervision. The massive walls were raised to a considerable height,
when he was called to return to the fatherland on account of the
failing health of his beloved wife. Both husband and wife died in
the United States, leaving behind them examples of rare devotion and
blessed memories.
The Rev. R. Armstrong became the successor of Mr. Bingham, until called
to be Minister of Education for the Hawaiian kingdom, when the Rev. E.
W. Clark assumed the pastorate until he left for the United States.
In 1863, the present incumbent, Rev. H. H. Parker, was ordained and
installed the fourth pastor of this church.
The second Hawaiian church in Honolulu was organized many years ago
under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Lowell Smith, and since his
resignation, it has been successively under the care of the Rev. A. O.
Forbes, and of two native pastors.
Near the large stone church is the flourishing Kawaiahao Female
Seminary. Its germ was a small family school, under the care of the
Rev. L. H. Gulick and wife. Miss Lydia Bingham, principal of the
Ohio Female College near Cincinnati, was called to take the charge
of this school. Under her patient energy and tact, with the help of
her assistants, it prospered greatly, and became a success. When Miss
Bingham came to Hilo, the seminary was committed to the charge of her
sister, whose earnest labors for seven years in a task that is heavy
and exhausting so reduced her strength, that in June, 1880, she was
obliged to resign her post. It is now occupied by Miss Helen Norton, a
graduate of South Hadley.
At Punahou, about two miles east of Honolulu, stands a quiet little
institution called Oahu College. The location is beautiful, healthy,
and convenient. The buildings stand just at the opening of an
enchanting valley, and near a spring of cool crystal water; there are
lofty and verdant hills in the background, and the broad waters of the
Pacific in front. The land was once owned by the Rev. H. Bingham, and
was given by him to this institution.
The foundations of the Punahou school were laid with the prayers
and benedictions of all the fathers and mothers of the mission, and
of its friends and patrons. For years it was devoted exclusively to
the children of the missionaries; but as foreign residents and their
children increased, the accommodations were enlarged and the doors
opened to others. The college has grown and been greatly prospered.
It has had many graduates, who have done honor to their professors,
to themselves, and to the cause of science and Christianity. It needs
and deserves endowments. We doubt not it would receive generous and
efficient aid from American benefactors, could they come near enough to
feel its wants and appreciate its merits.
[Sidenote: _Out-Stations on Oahu._]
The missionary out-stations on Oahu were but three, viz: Ewa, Waialua,
and Kaneohe. I used to visit these places when large congregations
assembled to be instructed by their pastors; but the population has
decreased, the churches are diminished, and the remnants of these once
prosperous flocks, now under the care of native pastors, show but
little of their former life.
At Waialua there was established, by the Rev. O. H. Gulick, a
boarding-school for Hawaiian girls. On his removal as a missionary to
Japan, the institution obtained as an efficient principal the daughter
of the Rev. J. S. Green (Miss Mary Green), under whose care the school
still flourishes.
Mr. Parker and I once went as delegates of our mission around Oahu,
visiting every station, going much from house to house, teaching,
exhorting, and praying in families, in fields, and by the wayside, and
holding meetings in school-houses, churches, and private dwellings, and
endeavoring to reach all with the life-giving Word. It was a laborious
but interesting tour. In some villages we found many ignorant, stupid,
and misled people. Some were Romanists, some Mormons, and others
without any creed, or faith, or hope. Like brutes they were living, and
like brutes dying.
We met many confident Romanists, some with their catechism and rosary,
and with full assurance that they were on the direct road to Paradise,
and that all who differed from them were bound to perdition. I asked
some of them if they read the Bible, and they answered “Yes,” showing
me their little catechism, with more prayers to Mary than to God. I
asked one who claimed to be a teacher how many commandments there were
in the Decalogue. He answered “Ten”; but on going through with them in
order, I found that he omitted the second, and divided the tenth into
two parts to make good the number.
The island of Kauai is separated from Oahu by a channel some
seventy-five miles wide. It is 8,000 feet high and nearly circular,
being thirty miles long and twenty-eight wide. It is a lovely and
fertile island, and some of its mountain and valley scenery is
exquisitely beautiful. Although of igneous origin, yet the degradation
caused by time, by winds and water, gives the island the appearance of
a more ancient formation than that of the other islands of the group.
Its cones and hills are rounded by attrition, and its pit craters are
so nearly filled by alluvial deposits that they are far less distinctly
marked than those of Maui and Hawaii.
Historic geology tells us that the Islands were probably formed in
a successive order, commencing with Kauai in the north-west and
continuing in a south-east direction to Hawaii, which is still in the
hands of the Founder, and unfinished.
[Sidenote: _A Glimpse of Kauai._]
Kauai was very early occupied as a mission field, and the Whitneys,
Gulicks, Lafons, Doles, Wilcoxes, Johnsons, and Rices have been
faithful laborers there; but all have left the scenes of time or
engaged in other pursuits; and the good Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Smith and
Mrs. Rice alone remain of the mission band.
As this island was somewhat remote and out of the track of my annual
voyagings to Honolulu, and in former years could be reached only by
schooners that were liable to make slow passages, I never felt that I
had the time to visit it until in 1874. An opportunity then offering to
make the circuit-trip in a steamer, I enjoyed the privilege of spending
one night with the hospitable family of Dr. Smith, and of touching at a
few points, where I found the beauty and luxuriance of the island equal
to their fame.
Much capital has been invested there in sugar plantations, and the
skill and industry of those who have enlisted in this enterprise have
produced crops worth millions of dollars. The island has a considerable
proportion of arable land, its flora is luxuriant, and its vegetation
covers the island even to the highest hill-tops.
This rapid glance at the different islands is mainly to mention a
few facts respecting the transformations in this so recently heathen
archipelago. Over all the group the changes, physical and moral,
are wonderful. Everywhere schools and churches abound; knowledge and
wealth increase; commerce is active; more than a hundred thousand
acres of our soil wave with crops; the noise of artisans is heard; our
smelting-furnaces glow at midnight; and day and night the steam-whistle
echoes among our hills. Our climate, our scenery, our peace and
security, are privileges that are hardly rivalled in any land, and
all that we need to secure permanent peace and prosperity, with ever
advancing progress, is thankfulness to the Giver, and a faith devoted
to all that is pure.
The amount given by the churches of the United States for evangelic
work here must have been, from the beginning, about one million and
a half dollars, and the number of laborers sustained, in whole or in
part, by appropriations of the American Board, has been one hundred and
seventy.
At the present time there are only four foreign pastors for the twenty
native churches of Hawaii; on Maui, Molokai, and Lanai there are
nineteen native churches with no foreign pastors; on Oahu there are
eleven native churches and but one foreign pastor; on Kauai six native
churches and no foreign pastor, making in all, fifty-six Hawaiian
churches with only five foreign pastors.
[Sidenote: _The Close of Mission Work in Hawaii._]
Many of the fathers and mothers of the mission have finished their
course and gone home; their dust sleeps in this land of their
adoption, or in the land of their birth. Some were recalled, some
entered the Government service, and some of those who were still at
their posts, earnest and active, were advised to resign. Then the
Board, feeling that its work as a Board was virtually accomplished
here, ceased to consider this a mission field, and, entering upon a new
policy, sent out no more reinforcements, and urged the installation of
native pastors over churches that had been gathered and fed with tender
care by the faithful shepherds of the flock.
Some of our thoughtful brethren feared that a retrograde movement
would come with such a change; others reasoned that where the Word
and the Spirit converted the heathen, the same regenerating power
would provide among those converts, suitable men to act as pastors and
teachers. But our native converts were as children, and up to this day
many of them need milk rather than strong meat. They are weak, fickle,
and easily turned from the way. Intelligent and patient adherence to
a work which calls for watchfulness and continuous care, and a deep
and conscientious feeling of responsibility, can not be found or soon
developed among a primitive race like the Polynesians. China, Japan,
and India have their old civilization with its literature, their men
of keen intellect, capable of heading and guiding enterprises of
importance; men of reasoning and thinking minds, who when convinced of
the truth and importance of the Christian religion, and persuaded to
receive it as a rule of life, are soon prepared to become leaders and
teachers of others.
It is not so with the Polynesians. Prematurely to leave them to
teach, guide, and govern themselves in the concerns of the soul, may
be more disastrous and more fatal than to leave babes to take care
of themselves while the parents withdraw. The Word and Spirit of the
Lord have, in the missionaries, provided agents for the conversion
of the savages, and in these missionaries God has provided “nursing
fathers and nursing mothers” for these infant churches. To my mind the
only practical question in regard to our Pacific Islands churches is,
_when_ may they be wisely and safely left to the care of pastors from
among themselves, or in other words, when does this child come to his
majority?
[Sidenote: _State of the Hawaiian Churches._]