This book was originally part of the jottings I kept during a two years’
cruise of Jack London and myself in the forty-five-foot ketch _Snark_
into the fabulous South Seas, by way of the Hawaiian Islands. The
seafaring portion of my notes was published in 1915 as “The Log of the
_Snark_.” The record of five months spent in the Paradise of the
Pacific, Hawaii, I made into another book, “Our Hawaii,” issued in 1917.
The present volume is a revision of the other, from which I have
eliminated the bulk of personal memoirs, by now incorporated into my
“Book of Jack London,” a thoroughgoing biography. I have substituted
more detail concerning the Territory of Hawaii, and endeavored to bring
my subject up to date. Also, instead of making an independent work out
of Jack London’s three articles, written in 1916, entitled, “My Hawaiian
Aloha,” I am making them a part of my book, placing them first, because
of their peculiar value with regard to vital points of view on Hawaii.
These articles, published in 1916 in _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_, were
pronounced by one citizen of Honolulu, eminent under more than two forms
of government in the troublous past of the Group, as of a worth to
Hawaii not to be estimated in gold and silver.
“They don’t know what they’ve got!” Jack London said of the American
public, when, in the _Snark_, he made Hawaii his first port of call, and
threw himself into the manifold beauty and wonder of this territory of
Uncle Sam. And “They don’t know what they’ve got,” he repeated to each
new unscrolling of its wonder and beauty during those months of
enjoyment and study of land and people. On his fourth visit, after the
breaking out of the Great War, he amended: “Because they have no other
place to go, they are just beginning to realize what they’ve got.”
The knowledge of the average American is woefully scant concerning this
islands possession, and woefully he distorts its very name, in
conversation and song, into something like Haw-way’-ah. To an adept in
the musical language there are fine nuances in the vowelly word; but
simple Hah-wy’-ee serves well.
What does the average middle-aged American know of the amazing history
of this amazing “native” people who vote as American citizens and sit in
the seats of government? The name Hawaii calls to memory vague dots on a
map of the Pacific Ocean, bearing a vaguely gastronomic caption that in
no wise reminds him of the Earl of Sandwich, Lord of the British
Admiralty, and patron of the intrepid discoverer, Captain Cook, whose
valiant bones even now rest on the Kona Coast. Savage, remote, alluring,
adventurous, are the impressions. Few have grasped the fact that that
pure Polynesian, Kamehameha I, the Charlemagne of Hawaii, deserves to
rank as one of the most remarkable figures of all time for his
revolutionary genius, unaided by outland influences. Dying in 1819,
little more than a year before the first missionaries sailed from
Boston, he had fought his way to the consolidation under one government
of the group of eight islands, ended feudal monarchy, abolished
idolatry, and all unknowing made land and inhabitants ripe for Christian
civilization and exploitation.
Of the many whom I have questioned, only one ever heard that, even
previous to the discovery of gold in California and the starting of our
forbears over the Plains by ox-team or across the Isthmus of Panama,
early settlers in California were sending their children to the
excellent missionary schools of these isles of inconsequential name.
Also they imported their wheat from the same “savage” strand.
In this my journal, covering those few months spent a decade ago in
Hawaii, concluding with a resume of experiences there in 1915, 1916,
1919 and 1920, I have tried to limn a picture of the charm of the
Hawaiian Islander as he was, and of his becoming, together with the
enchantment of his lofty isles and their abundant hospitality.
Men will continue to sorrow because circumstances may hold them from
exploring the South Pacific; meantime they neglect the romance and
loveliness that is close at hand, less than a week’s voyage from the
mainland.
Charmian London.
Jack London Ranch,
Glen Ellen, California.
1921.