PART THREE

Hawaii is a great experimental laboratory, not merely in agriculture,

but in ethnology and sociology. Remote in the heart of the Pacific, more

hospitable to all forms of life than any other land, it has received an

immigration of alien vegetable, insect, animal and human life more

varied and giving rise to more complicated problems than any other land

has received. And right intelligently and whole-heartedly have the

people of Hawaii taken hold of these problems and striven to wrestle

them to solution.

A melting pot or a smelting pot is what Hawaii is. In a single school,

at one time I have observed scholars of as many as twenty-three

different nationalities and mixed nationalities. First of all is the

original Hawaiian stock of pure Polynesian. These were the people whom

Captain Cook discovered, the first pioneers who voyaged in double canoes

from the South Pacific and colonized Hawaii at what is estimated from

their traditions as some fifteen hundred years ago. Next, from Captain

Cook’s time to this day, has drifted in the haole, or Caucasian—Yankee,

Scotch, Irish, English, Welsh, French, German, Scandinavian—every

Caucasian country of Europe, and every Caucasian colony of the world has

contributed its quota. And not least to be reckoned with, are the

deliberate importations of unskilled labor for the purpose of working

the sugar plantations. First of these was a heavy wave of Chinese

coolies. But the Chinese Exclusion Act put a stop to their coming. In

the same way, King Sugar has introduced definite migrations of Japanese,

Koreans, Russians, Portuguese, Spanish, Porto Ricans, and Filipinos.

With the exception of the Japanese, who are jealously exclusive in the

matter of race, all these other races insist and persist in

intermarrying, and the situation here should afford much valuable data

for the ethnologist.

Of the original Hawaiians one thing is certain. They are doomed to

extinction. Year by year the total number of the pure Hawaiians

decreases. Marrying with the other races as they do, they could persist

as hybrids, if—_if fresh effusions of them came in from outside sources

equivalent to such continued effusions as do come in of the other

races._ But no effusions of Polynesian come in nor have ever come in.

Steadily, since Captain Cook’s time, they have faded away. To-day, the

representatives of practically all the old chief-stocks and royal-stocks

are half-whites, three-quarter whites, and seven-eighths whites. And

they, and their children, continue to marry whites, or seven-eighths and

three-quarters whites like themselves, so that the Hawaiian strain grows

thinner and thinner against the day when it will vanish in thin air. All

of which is a pity, for the world can ill afford to lose so splendid and

lovable a race.

And yet, in this period of world war wherein the United States finds it

necessary to prepare against foes that may at any time launch against it

out of the heart of civilization, little Hawaii, with its hotch potch of

races, is making a better demonstration than the United States.

The National Guard has been so thoroughly reorganized, livened up, and

recruited that it makes a showing second to none on the Mainland, while,

in proportion to population, it has more of this volunteer soldiery than

any of the forty-eight states and territories in the United States. In

addition to the mixed companies, there are entire companies of

Hawaiians, Portuguese, Chinese (Hawaii-born), and Filipinos; and the

reviewing stand sits up and takes notice when it casts its eyes over

them and over the regulars.

[Illustration: (1) The Peninsula. (2) The Hobron Bungalow. (3) The

_Snark_, and the owner ashore.]

No better opportunity could be found for observing this medley of all

the human world than that afforded by the Mid-Pacific Carnival last

February when the population turned out and held festival for a week.

Nowhere within the territory of the United States could so exotic a

spectacle be witnessed. And unforgettable were the flower-garlanded

Hawaiians, the women _pa’u_ riders on their lively steeds with flowing

costumes that swept the ground, toddling Japanese boys and girls,

lantern processions straight out of old Japan, colossal dragons from the

Flowery Empire, and Chinese school girls, parading two by two in long

winding columns, bare-headed, their demure black braids down their

backs, slimly graceful in the white costumes of their foremothers. At

the same time, while the streets stormed with confetti and serpentines

tossed by the laughing races of all the world, in the throne room of the

old palace (now the Executive Building) was occurring an event as

bizarre in its own way and equally impressive. Here, side by side, the

two high representatives of the old order and the new held reception.

Seated, was the aged Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning sovereign of

Hawaii; standing beside her was Lucius E. Pinkham, New England born, the

Governor of Hawaii. A quarter of a century before, his brothers had

dispossessed her of her kingdom; and quite a feather was it in his cap

for him to have her beside him that night, for it was the first time in

that quarter of a century that any one had succeeded in winning her from

her seclusion to enter the throne-room. And about them, among

brilliantly uniformed army and navy officers from generals and admirals

down, moved judges and senators, sugar kings and captains of industry,

the economic and political rulers of Hawaii, and many of them, they and

their women, intermingled descendants of the old chief stocks and of the

old missionary and merchant pioneers.

And what more meet than that in Hawaii, the true Aloha-land which has

welcomed and loved all wayfarers from all other lands, that the

Pan-Pacific movement should have originated. This had its inception in

the mind of Mr. Alexander Hume Ford—he of Outrigger Club fame who

resurrected the sports of surf-boarding and surf-canoeing at Waikiki.

Hands-Around-the-Pacific, he calls the movement; and already these

friendly hands are reaching out and clasping all the way from British

Columbia to Panama, from New Zealand to Australia and Oceanica, and on

to Java, the Philippines, China and Japan, and around and back again to

Hawaii, the Cross-Roads of the Pacific and the logical heart and home

and center of the movement.

Hawaii is a Paradise—and I can never cease proclaiming it; but I must

append one word of qualification: _Hawaii is a paradise for the

well-to-do._ It is not a paradise for the unskilled laborer from the

mainland, nor for the person without capital from the mainland. The one

great industry of the islands is sugar. The unskilled labor for the

plantations is already here. Also, the white unskilled laborer, with a

higher standard of living, cannot compete with coolie labor, and,

further, the white laborer cannot and will not work in the canefields.

For the person without capital, dreaming to start on a shoestring and

become a capitalist, Hawaii is the last place in the world. It must be

remembered that Hawaii is very old... comparatively. When California was

a huge cattle ranch for hides and tallow (the meat being left where it

was skinned), Hawaii was publishing newspapers and boasting schools of

higher learning. During the early years of the gold rush, before the

soil of California was scratched with a plow, Hawaii kept a fleet of

ships busy carrying her wheat, and flour, and potatoes to California,

while California was sending her children down to Hawaii to be educated.

The shoestring days are past. The land and industries of Hawaii are

owned by old families and large corporations, and Hawaii is only so

large.

But the homesteader may object, saying that he has read the reports of

the millions of acres of government land in Hawaii which are his for the

homesteading. But he must remember that the vastly larger portion of

this government land is naked lava rock and not worth ten cents a square

mile to a homesteader, and that much of the remaining land, while rich

in soil values, is worthless because it is without water. The small

portion of good government land is leased by the plantations. Of course,

when these leases expire, they may be homesteaded. It has been done in

the past. But such homesteaders, after making good their titles, almost

invariably sell out their holdings in fee simple to the plantations.

There is a reason for it. There are various reasons for it.

Even the skilled laborer is needed only in small, definite numbers.

Perhaps I cannot do better than quote the warning circulated by the

Hawaiian Promotion Committee: “No American is advised to come here in

search of employment unless he has some definite work in prospect, or

means enough to maintain himself for some months and to launch into some

enterprise. Clerical positions are well filled; common labor is largely

performed by Japanese or native Hawaiians, and the ranks of skilled

labor are also well supplied.”

For be it understood that Hawaii is patriarchal rather than democratic.

Economically it is owned and operated in a fashion that is a combination

of twentieth century, machine-civilization methods and of medieval

feudal methods. Its rich lands, devoted to sugar, are farmed not merely

as scientifically as any land is farmed anywhere in the world, but, if

anything, more scientifically. The last word in machinery is vocal here,

the last word in fertilizing and agronomy, and the last word in

scientific expertness. In the employ of the Planters’ Association is a

corps of scientific investigators who wage unceasing war on the insect

and vegetable pests and who are on the travel in the remotest parts of

the world recruiting and shipping to Hawaii insect and micro-organic

allies for the war.

The Sugar Planters’ Association and the several sugar factors or

financial agencies control sugar, and, since sugar is king, control the

destiny and welfare of the Islands. And they are able to do this, under

the peculiar conditions that obtain, far more efficiently than could it

be done by the population of Hawaii were it a democratic commonwealth,

which it essentially is not. Much of the stock in these corporations is

owned in small lots by members of the small business and professional

classes. The larger blocks are held by families who, earlier in the

game, ran their small plantations for themselves, but who learned that

they could not do it so well and so profitably as the corporations,

which, with centralized management, could hire far better brains for the

entire operation of the industry, from planting to marketing, than was

possessed by the heads of the families. As a result, absentee ownership

or landlordship has come about. Finding the work done better for them

than they could do it themselves, they prefer to live in their Honolulu

and seaside and mountain homes, to travel much, and to develop a

cosmopolitanism and culture that never misses shocking the traveler or

newcomer with surprise. All of which makes this class in Hawaii as

cosmopolitan as any class to be found the world over. Of course, there

are notable exceptions to this practice of absentee landlordism, and

such men run their own plantations and corporations and are active as

sugar factors and in the management of the Planters’ Association.

Yet will I dare to assert that no owning class on the mainland is so

conscious of its social responsibility as is this owning class of

Hawaii, and especially that portion of it which has descended out of the

old missionary stock. Its charities, missions, social settlements,

kindergartens, schools, hospitals, homes, and other philanthropic

enterprises are many; its activities are unceasing; and some of its

members contribute from twenty-five to fifty per cent of their incomes

to the work for the general good.

But all the foregoing, it must be remembered, is not democratic nor

communal, but is distinctly feudal. The coolie and peasant labor

possesses no vote, while Hawaii is after all only a territory, its

governor appointed by the President of the United States, its one

delegate sitting in Congress at Washington but denied the right to vote

in that body. Under such conditions, it is patent that the small class

of large land-owners finds it not too difficult to control the small

vote in local politics. Some of the large land-owners are Hawaiian or

part Hawaiian, as are practically all the smaller land-owners. And these

and the land-holding whites are knit together by a common interest, by

social equality, and, in many cases, by the closer bonds of affection

and blood relationship.

Interesting, even menacing, problems loom large for Hawaii in the not

distant future. Let but one of these be considered, namely, the Japanese

and citizenship. Granting that no Japanese immigrant can ever become

naturalized, nevertheless remains the irrefragable law and fact that

every male Japanese, Hawaii-born, by his birth is automatically a

citizen of the United States. Since practically every other person in

all Hawaii is Japanese, it is merely a matter of time when the

Hawaii-born Japanese vote will not only be larger than any other

Hawaiian vote, but will be practically equal to all other votes

combined. When such time comes, it looks as if the Japanese will have

the dominant say in local politics. If Hawaii should get statehood, a

Japanese governor of the State of Hawaii would be not merely probable

but very possible.

One feasible way out of the foregoing predicament would be never to

strive for statehood but to accept a commission government, said

commission to be appointed by the federal government. Yet would remain

the question of control in local politics. The Japanese do not fuse any

more than do they marry out of their race. The total vote other than

Japanese is split into the two old parties. The Japanese would

constitute a solid Japanese party capable of out-voting either the

Republican or Democratic parties. In the meantime the Hawaii-born

Japanese population grows and grows. In passing it may be significantly

noted that while the Chinese, Filipinos, and Portuguese flock

enthusiastically into the National Guard, the Japanese do not.

But a truce to far troubles. This is my Hawaiian aloha—my love for

Hawaii; and I cannot finish it without stating a dear hope for a degree

of honor that may some day be mine before I die. I have had several

degrees in the past of which I am well proud. When I had barely turned

sixteen I was named Prince of the Oyster Pirates by my fellow pirates.

Since they were all men-grown and a hard-bitten lot, and since the term

was applied in anything but derision, my lad’s pride in it was justly

great. Not long after, another mighty degree was given me by a shipping

commissioner in San Francisco, who signed me on the ship’s articles as

A.B. Think of it! Able-bodied! I was not a landlubber, nor an ordinary

seaman, but an A.B.! An able-bodied seaman before the mast! No higher

could one go—before the mast. And in those youthful days of romance and

adventure I would rather have been an able-bodied seaman before the mast

than a captain aft of it.

When I went over Chilcoot Pass in the first Klondike Rush, I was called

a _chechaquo_. That was equivalent to new-comer, greenhorn, tenderfoot,

short horn, or new chum, and as such I looked reverently up to the men

who were sour-doughs. It was a custom of the country to call an

old-timer a sour-dough. A sourdough was a man who had seen the Yukon

freeze and break, traveled under the midnight sun, and been in the

country long enough to get over the frivolities of baking powder and

yeast in the making of bread and to content himself with bread raised

from sour-dough.

I am very proud of my sour-dough degree. A few years ago I received

another degree. It was in the West South Pacific. A kinky-headed,

asymmetrical, apelike, head-hunting cannibal climbed out of his canoe

and over the rail and gave it to me. He wore no clothes—positively no

covering whatever. On his chest, from around his neck, was suspended a

broken, white China plate. Through a hole in one ear was thrust a short

clap pipe. Through divers holes in the other ear were thrust a freshly

severed pig’s tail and several rifle cartridges. A bone bodkin four

inches long was shoved through the dividing wall of his nose. And he

addressed me as “Skipper.” Owner and master I was, the only navigator on

board, without even a man I could trust to stand a mate’s watch; but it

was the first time I had been called Skipper, and I was mighty proud of

it.

I’d rather possess these several degrees of able seaman, sour-dough, and

skipper than all university degrees from Bachelor of Arts to Doctor of

Philosophy. They mean more to me, and I am prouder of them. But there is

yet one degree I should like to receive, than which there is no other in

the wide world for which I have so great a desire. It is _Kamaaina_.

Kamaaina is Hawaiian. It contains five vowels, which, with the three

consonants, compose five syllables. No syllable is accented, all

syllables are pronounced, the vowels having precisely the same values as

the Italian vowels. Kamaaina means not exactly old-timer or pioneer. Its

original meaning is “a child of the soil,” “one who is indigenous.” But

its meaning has changed, so that it stands to-day for “one who

belongs”—to Hawaii, of course. It is not merely a degree of time or

length of residence. It applies to the heart and the spirit. A man may

live in Hawaii for twenty years and yet not be recognized as a kamaaina.

He has remained alien in heart warmth and spirit understanding.

Nor can one assume this degree for oneself. Any man who has seen the

seasons around in Alaska automatically becomes a sour-dough and can be

the first so to designate himself. But here in Hawaii kamaaina must be

given to one. He must be so named by the ones who do belong and who are

best fitted to judge whether or not he belongs. Kamaaina is the proudest

accolade I know that any people can lay with the love-warm steel of its

approval on an alien’s back.

Pshaw! Were it a matter of time, I could almost be reckoned a kamaaina

myself. Nearly a quarter of a century ago—to be precise, twenty-four

years ago—I first saw these fair islands rise out of the sea. I have

been back here numerous times. As the years pass, I return with

increasing frequency and for longer stays. Of the past eighteen months I

have spent twelve here.

Some day, some one of Hawaii may slap me on the shoulder and say,

“Hello, old kamaaina.” And some other day I may chance to overhear some

one else of Hawaii speaking of me and saying, “Oh, he’s a kamaaina.” And

this may grow and grow until I am generally so spoken of and until I may

at last say of myself: “I am a kamaaina. I belong.” And this is my

Hawaiian Aloha:

Aloha nui oe, Hawaii Nei!

Jack London.

Puuwaawaa Ranch, Hawaii,

April 19, 1916.

* * * * *

Pearl Harbor, Oahu,

Territory of Hawaii,

Tuesday, May 21.

Come tread with me a little space of Paradise. Many pleasant acres have

I trod hitherto, but never an acre like this. It is so beautiful and

restful and green. Green upon green. With blue-depthed shadows imposed

from green-depthed foliage of great trees upon thick deep lawn that

cushions underfoot. Bare foot. For one somehow dissociates the idea of

footwear with an acre of Elysium. It is one of the paradisal blessings

of this new Sweet Home of ours that we may blissfully pace it unshod,

and for the most part unobserved.

The street is a mere white, meandering, coral-powdered by-way; no thing

less inquisitive than the birds abides in the adjoining garden, where a

rustic dwelling shows but vaguely amidst a riot of foliage; and on our

southern boundary is a tropic tangle of uninhabited wildwood, fronting

upon a native fishpond—an elongated bit of bay inclosed by a low wall

of masonry of such antiquity that no tradition of Hawaii can place its

origin.

Bayward the outlook is a shadowy coral reef, swept by tepid pea-green

tides; and to its outer rim extends a slender wooden jetty, at the end

of which our ship’s boat can lie even at low tide.

An eighth of a mile beyond in the rippling chrysoprase flood of Pearl

Harbor, “Dream Harbor” Jack loves to call it, swings our Boat of Dreams,

our little _Snark_, anchored in the first port of call on her mission of

pure golden adventure—a gallant foolishness, perhaps, but if we be

fools, let us be gallant ones. Whenever my eyes come to rest on her

shining shape, I feel them growing big with visions of the coming years

on her deck; and then, remembering vivid incidents of the voyage, drift

back to the present with a pleased sense of several laps of adventure

already run. Not the least of these is mere living in a shady nook of

Paradise where one’s eyes must quest twice in the green gloom among the

big trees to discover, near the waterside, the habitation—a very small,

very rustic, very simple brown bungalow of three rooms.

Already, in swimming suits, we have ventured the reef at high tide, with

unbounded delight in the sun-washed liquid silk. Our goal for to-morrow

is the yacht, as there is scant danger from man-eating sharks in this

sheltered harbor.

Beyond the _Snark_, across this arm of the sea, over low green volcanic

hills lying southeast between Pearl Lochs and Honolulu, one is just able

to glimpse the rosy bulk of Diamond Head, trembling in the fervent

sunlight. To the north, over vast rice fields and upland plantations,

shrug the rugged, riven Koolau Mountains, their heads lost in heavy

cloud masses that everlastingly roll and shift above these tropic

ranges.

Pearl Harbor embraces some twelve square miles, divided naturally into

three lochs, or arms, by two peninsulas, on the eastern of which lies

the village dignified by the suggestive name of Pearl City. Trust me for

having already gleaned the information that the locality has been these

many years filched of its jewels.

On the southeastern extremity of our particular “neck of the woods,”

stray a few suburban homes of Honolulans, of which ours is one. Tochigi,

Nipponese and poet-browed cabin boy of the _Snark_, is to live ashore

with us and resume his erstwhile household service, while the rest of

the yacht’s complement will retain their accommodations aboard. In these

protected waters, the boat lies at least as steady as a house on wheels,

as she swings to ebb and flow.

Strangely content are we in the unwonted tranquillity of motion and

sound, lacking wish to venture afield, even to Honolulu, about twelve

miles distant by the railroad. Enough just to rest and rest, and gaze

around upon the beautiful, long-desired world of island. Scarcely can we

glance athwart the apple-green water but there curves a span of rainbow

between our eyes and the far hills, and like as not a double-span, with

promise of a triple-bow; while frequent warm showers delicately veil the

land’s vivid emerald with all melting tints of opal.

Very florid, all this, you will smile—a bit overdone, perhaps? Gird at

my word-storms if you will. Then consider ... and take ship for this

“fleet of islands” in the western ocean. It isn’t real; it can’t be—too

sweet it is, the round twenty-four hours. Here but the one night and

day, already we grope for new forms of expression, as will you an you

follow the sinking sun.

The heat is not oppressive, even though the season is close to summer.

But one must realize that Hawaii is only subtropical. To be precise, the

group of eight inhabited islands occupies a central position in the

North Pacific, and lies just within the northern tropic. For the benefit

of any sailor who may run and read, Jack says I might as well be still

more explicit, and record that the _Snark_, now anchored about 2000 sea

miles southwest of her native shore, lies between 18° 54′ and 22° 15′

north latitude, and between 154° 50′ and 160° 30′ of longitude west of

Greenwich. These islands are blessed with a lower temperature than any

other country in the same latitude. The reasons are simple enough—the

prevailing “orderly trades” that blow over a large extent of the ocean,

and the ocean itself that is cooled by the return current from the

region of Bering Straits. Pleasantly warm though we found the waters of

Pearl Harbor this bright morning, yet are they less warm by ten degrees

than the waters of other regions in similar latitudes.

And now, to go back a little and recount how we came to rest in this

fair haven—Fair Haven, in passing, was the name bestowed upon Honolulu

Harbor by one of her discoverers, Captain Brown, when, in 1794, in his

schooner _Jackal_, accompanied by Captain Gordon in the sloop _Prince

Lee Boo_, he entered the bay, and mixed in local affairs by selling arms

and ammunition to King Kalanikupule of Oahu, who was resisting an

invasion from the sovereign of the island of Maui, Kaeo. Right near us

here, at Kalauao on the way to Honolulu, a red battle was waged, in

which Kalanikupule, assisted by Captain Brown and his men, overthrew the

powerful enemy. Poor Captain Brown was born unlucky, it would seem.

Firing a salute the next day from the _Jackal_, in honor of the victory,

a wad from his guns went wild and killed Captain Kendrick, who was

quietly dining aboard his own vessel, the _Lady Washington_. The

blameless skipper’s funeral, being of a different sort from the native

ceremony, was looked upon by the Hawaiians as an act of sorcery to

induce the death of Captain Brown. Kalanikupule paid the latter four

hundred hogs for his assistance in the struggle with the vanquished

Kaeo, and Brown, after the sailing of the _Lady Washington_ for China,

put his men to salting down the valuable pork at Kaihikapu, an ancient

salt pond between Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.

One day while the _Jackal’s_ mate, Mr. Lamport, and the sailors were

gathering salt, Kamohomoho, uncle of Oahu’s king, boarded the _Prince

Lee Boo_ and the _Jackal_, and more than made good the “act of sorcery”

by dispatching poor Brown as well as Gordon, imprisoning those of the

crews not employed ashore. Lamport and his men were captured, but their

lives spared. The gratitude of the royal family for favors rendered had

been outbalanced by ambition for a modern navy with which to attack

Kamehameha the Great on the “Big Island,” Hawaii. On the voyage,

however, the white seamen regained possession of the vessels, sent the

natives ashore in their own canoes which were being towed, and lost no

time following the _Lady Washington_ to the Orient.

I become lost in the history of the men who blazed our trail to these

romantic isles, forgetting that this is the chronicle of a more modern

adventure, and return to this idyllic resting spot after the tumult of

our first traverse on the bit of boat yonder.

And yet, casting back over those twenty-six days of ceaseless tossing,

we are aware only of pleasure in the memory of every happening,

disagreeable and agreeable alike. In fact the last week aboard was so

cozy and homelike that more than often we caught ourselves regretting

the imminent termination of the cruise. Even at this moment of writing,

despite blissful surroundings, did I not know that the _Snark’s_ dear

adventure were but just begun, I should be robbed indeed, so in love am

I with sea and _Snark_:

“For the wind and waterways have stamped me with their seal.”

We picked up a good slant of wind to make Honolulu yesterday morning—an

immeasurable relief after the worrisome calm of the night before, during

which we had taken our turns at the idle wheel and scanned the contrary

compass with all emotions of anxiety; while the helpless yacht swung on

every arc of the circle, with no slightest fan of air to fill her limp

sails that flapped ponderously in the glassy offshore heave. Never shall

I forget my own tense double-watch of four hours, straining eye and ear

toward the all-too-nigh coral reefs off Koko Head, with Makapuu Point

light blinking to the northeast. But when a dart of sun through a

decklight woke me from brief sleep, we were spanking along smartly in a

cobalt sea threshed white on every rushing wave, with the green and gold

island of Oahu shifting its scenery like a sliding screen as we swept

past tawny Diamond Head and palm-dotted Waikiki toward Honolulu Harbor.

After an oddly fishless voyage of four weeks from San Francisco (called

by the natives Kapalakiko—pronounced Kah-pah-lah-ke-ko), we were

joyously excited over a school of big porpoises, “puffing-pigs,” intent

as any flock of barnyard fowl to cross our fleeing forefoot. Undignified

haste was their only resemblance to domestic poultry, for in general

movement they were more like sportive colts hurdling in pasture with

snort and puff—sleek sides glistening blue black in the brilliant

sunlight.

To our land-eager eyes, the beautiful old city was the surpassing

picture of her pictures, when, still outside, we came abreast of her

wharves—the water front with ships and steamers moored beside the long

sheds, and behind, the Pompeian-red Punch Bowl, so often described by

early voyagers; the suburban heights of Tantalus; the purple-deep rifts

of valleys and gorges; and the green-and-violet needled peaks

upthrusting through dense dark cloud rack.

Barely had we finished Martin’s eggless breakfast, when a government

launch frothed alongside, and the engineer’s cheery “Want a line,

Jack—eh?” sounded classic assurance of Hawaii’s far-famed grace of

hospitality. Despite my sanguine temperament, I had been conscious of a

premonition that something unfortunate would happen upon our arrival,

probably due to the impression left by the hasty ship chandler of San

Francisco, who unjustly libeled the _Snark_ in Oak land and delayed our

sailing; so this gracious “Want a line, Jack?” was music to my ears. You

see, Jack London is not infrequently arrested, or nearly arrested, for

one reason or another, whenever he sets his merry foot upon foreign soil

(I have disquieting memories of Cuba, Japan, and Korea); and Hawaii

_seems_ like foreign soil, albeit annexed by the Stars and Stripes.

The morning paper, the _Pacific Commercial Advertiser_, preceded

Immigration Inspector and Customs Inspector over the rail, and they

laughingly pointed to a conspicuously leaded item that the _Snark_ was

supposed to be lost with all on board—bright tidings already cabled to

California and read by our horrified families and friends! We cannot

help wishing we were early enough here to be handed the very first

English newspaper published at Honolulu, in 1836—the _Sandwich Islands

Gazette_. And two years before that, the Hawaiian sheets, _Kumu Hawaii_

and _Lama Hawaii_, were the initial newspapers in the Pacific Ocean.

Speed is not the object of our junketing in the Seven Seas; but if we of

the _Snark_ had known any hurt vanity about the length of our passage,

it would have been amply offset by a report the inspectors made of the

big bark _Edward May_, arriving six days before, which beat our tardy

record but forty-eight hours, after an equally uneventful voyage.

Meanwhile the pilot had come aboard, a line was passed for’ard to the

launch, and we now ripped and zipped over a billowy swell to meet the

port physician, whose snowy launch could be seen putting out from a

wharf. That dignitary, once on deck, scanned our clean bill of health,

asked a few routine questions—one of which was whether we carried any

rats or snakes; and all three officials pronounced us free to enter the

port of Honolulu. Whereupon Jack stated that we were bound for Pearl

Lochs, to take possession of a cottage lent us by a friend. We were then

told that the wharves of Honolulu were lined with her citizens, waiting

to garland us in welcome; but too impelling behind our eyes was the

fancied picture of the promised retreat by the still waters of Pearl

Lochs, so we thanked our kind visitors, secured a launch, and towed

resolutely past the hospitable city.

“It does seem a darned shame,” Jack mused regretfully. “But what can we

do with all our plans made for Pearl Harbor?” “And anyway,” he added, “I

don’t want the general public to see a boat of mine sail, looking as if

she’s been half-built and then half-wrecked, the way this one does....

I’ve got _some_ pride.”

Then all attention was claimed by the beauty of our westward way to the

harbor entrance, as we skirted a broad shoreward reef where green

breakers burst into fountains of tourmaline and turquoise, shot through

with javelins of sun gold, and the air was filled with rainbow mist. Our

boat slipped along in a world compounded of the very ravishment of

suffused colors—land and sea, it was all of a piece; while off to the

southeastern horizon ocean and sky merged in silvery azure, softly

gloomed by shadowy shapes of other Promised Islands.

Turning almost due north into the narrow reef entrance to the Lochs, we

could easily have sailed unassisted, even with the light breeze then

remaining, so well marked is the channel which has been dredged, full

thirty feet deep, to admit passage of the largest vessels into this

land-locked harbor, invaluable acquisition to the American

government—the finest naval station in the Pacific, if not in the

world. Its low banks show both lava and coral formation, and vast cane

plantations and gently terraced rice fields slope their green leagues

back to the foothills of the Waianae Mountains. Scattered over the rice

areas are picturesquely tattered Mongolians, who utter long resonant

calls to frighten the marauding ricebirds, which, swarming up in black,

disturbed clouds, are brought down with shotguns.

We two, with oneness in love of our watery roaming, were happy and

vociferous as a pair of children, entering this our first port. Had we

given it a thought, we could have wished for a less civilized landfall,

with conscious missing of a native face or two. But I am sure this never

entered our busy heads—not mine, at any rate; and my memory of Jack’s

alert and beaming face precludes doubt of his contentment with things as

they were.

Presently, as we wound along between the western peninsula and a little

green islet, he called attention to the snowy bore of a tiny craft

racing toward us. In short order a smart white launch was rounding up

with dash and style befitting the commodore of the Hawaiian Yacht Club,

Mr. Clarence Macfarlane, who, with Mr. Albert Waterhouse, had learned by

telephone from Honolulu of our arrival, and hurried out to make us

welcome. Both of these “dandy fellows,” as Jack promptly rated them,

sent a warm glow through us by the unassuming good will of their

greeting eyes and hand-grasp, while the first word on their lips was the

beautiful Hawaiian “_Aloha!_” (ah-lo-hah) that is epitome of hearty

welcome, broad hospitality, and unquestioning friendship. No noise nor

flurry was theirs, as they set foot on the deck of the much-bruited

_Snark_; only the kindest, quietest, make-yourself-at-home manner, as if

we had all been acquainted for years, or else that it was the most usual

thing in the world to receive a wild man and woman who had essayed to

circumnavigate the globe in an absurd shallop of outlandish rig. But

those keen sailor eyes missed jot nor tittle of the vessel’s lines and

visible equipment, for to the mind of the world at large this boat, “the

strongest of her size ever built,” to quote her owner, with convenient

English dogger bank sail plan, is a somewhat questionable experiment. I

intercepted Albert Waterhouse’s roving glance on its return from

examining the stepping of the stout mizzenmast, which stepping

constitutes the main difference between this imported ketch-rig and the

more familiar yawl. The comprehending laugh in my own eyes called out a

roguish, half-embarrassed twinkle in his. But “She’s some boat!” he

appreciated, taking in the sturdy sticks and teak deck fittings.

Then he related how he had been commissioned to turn over the bungalow

and do what he could to make us at home. His first neighborly service

was to see the _Snark_ properly anchored, the while I strained eyes

across the eighth mile of gray green water to glimpse our home amongst

the plumy foliage.

Leaving the crew aboard to make everything snug, Jack and I were carried

by launch farther up the Loch to a long foot pier that leads over the

shallow shore reef to a spacious suburban home.

And here occurreth a teapotful of mischance. Let none question that

negotiating several hundred feet of narrow, stationary, unrailed bridge

above shifting water, by legs that for over three weeks have known only

a pitching surface of forty-five by fifteen, is little short of tragedy

for one who would make seemly entry into an hospitable strange land. I

know how Jack looked; I can only tell how I felt. And he was distinctly

unkind. He made no secret of his amusement at my gyrations, although to

my jaundiced eye his own progress was open to criticism.

Repeatedly I had to apologize for the frantic dabs made at our friends

to prevent myself from going headlong into the water. That interminable

board walk would rise straight up until I felt obliged to lean acutely

forward to the ascent, in terror of bumping a sunburnt nose—only to

find that it had abruptly slanted downward, whereupon I must angle as

giddily backward to preserve balance. From the rear, Jack, in

difficulties of his own, tittered something about his wife’s “sad walk,”

and I remember retorting with asperity that it was a pity he had never

noticed it before. Then we all fell to laughing and, very much better

acquainted, somehow gained the coral-graveled pathway that led into a

garden of lawns, hedged by scarlet-blooming shrubbery, and shaded by

great gnarled trees that would have delighted Doré’s tortured fancy.

In response to her husband’s shout of “Here they are, Gretchen!” Mrs.

Waterhouse moved towards us on bare sandaled feet across the broad

veranda of the big cool house, a cool and unruffled vision of woman,

stately in long unbroken lines of sheer muslin and lace.

“You poor child,” was her greeting to me, with arm-around hovering me

into a white bathroom sweet-scented and piled with fluffy towels. “You

must be nearly tired to death. Just come right in here and rest your

bones in a good hot bath before lunch.”

Rightly she guessed our tired bones; and rightly she prescribed the

beneficence of steaming water. But the ache was from violent stresses of

accommodating our precious skeletons to a stable environment, rather

than from any hardships of sea-buffeting. Fifteen minutes’ relaxation in

that shining tub made me all new; and once more in my blue silk

bloomer-suit, I joined the happy captain of my boat and heart. Likewise

bathed and refreshed, his wet hair futilely brushed to snub the curling

ends, sprawling in cool white ducks upon a very wide couch spread deep

with fine-woven native mats, he was immersed in a magazine of later date

than our sailing from California. No one was about for the moment, and

we lay and looked around with wordless content in this, our first

household of Hawaii. Everything was restfully shaded by vines, yet

nothing dark, what of the light polished floors, light walls and

handsome rattan furniture from Orient and Philippines. Roomy window

seats, banked with cushions, lovely pictures, and a grand piano,

furnished an air of city elegance to the equally refined summer

rusticity.

Jack, watching under his long lashes, smiled indulgently.

“Funny way to make a living, Mate-Woman!” Often he thinks aloud about

his selection of a means of livelihood, and ever grows more convinced

that he chose the best of all ways for him—and me. “I carry my office

in my head, and see the world while I earn the money to see it with.”

Entered Gretchen with her lovely babe, breathing beauty and comfort and

cleanliness, followed by her husband who announced luncheon with a

jolly: “Come on, you famished seafarers, and see what there is to eat!”

But first we must be crowned, I with a wreath of small pink rosebuds,

dainty as a string of coral, while around Jack’s neck was laid a wide

circlet of limp green vine, glossy and fragrant. Commodore Macfarlane

was decorated in the same charming way that the white dwellers of the

Islands have adopted from the native custom.

The meal was furnished forth on a wide veranda, or _lanai_

(lah-nah’-e—quickly lahn-I), screened with flowering vines, and our

host and hostess were on tiptoe to see whether or not we would try the

native dishes which form part of their daily menu. As Jack said

afterward, they “let us down easy,” because, instead of experimenting on

our _malihini_ (newcomer) palates with straight _poi_, some of the

smooth pinkish gray paste was diluted with cold water and milk, and a

pinch of salt was added. Served in a long thin glass, it was called a

poi cocktail. I scarcely see how one could dislike it. The plain thick

poi, unseasoned, would be debatable to those unfortunates who dread

sampling anything “odd”; but we took to it instanter. It must have

excellent food value, being as it is the staple of all Pacific native

peoples who are lucky enough to have right conditions for its raising.

They showed us how to combine the unseasoned poi with accessories—a

spoonful of the cool gray mush with a bite of meat or salt dried fish.

Eaten by itself, poi is somewhat flat in taste, like slightly fermented

starch. I do not know whether they were joking, but our friends told us

that it is used successfully for wall-paper paste! In these days it is

manufactured by machinery in nice sanitary factories. Originally it was

made by first roasting the tuber of the plant known throughout the South

Seas as _taro_, _Arum esculentum_ (_kalo_ in the old Hawaiian), wrapped

in leaves, among heated rocks in the ground, then pounding the malleable

mass with stone pounders and manipulating it with the hands. It would be

noteworthy if foot work had not also been utilized, as by the Italians

in macaroni making.

Also we were regaled with the tuber itself fresh boiled—a very good

vegetable, prepared like a potato, with butter, salt, and pepper. It

would be hard to give an idea of the flavor, and so many writers have

failed to describe foreign tastes that as yet I am not going to try,

save to state that I feel sure taro would prove a palatable substitute

for both bread and potatoes, if one were deprived of the old standbys.

Jack was interviewed by several perspiring newspaper men who had taken

the first train to Pearl City after the elusive _Snark_ had passed out

of sight; and in the mid-afternoon we were guided to our new dwelling,

distant about ten minutes’ walk. We met the entire crew bound for the

village to see what they could see. Tochigi, cabin-boy, alas, failed to

return until evening, so that I was obliged to do the unpacking. For

Jack had developed a vicious headache, due to smoking cigarettes after

abstaining during the voyage, and I hastened to reduce all confusion and

establish a serene home atmosphere; but I must confess that the really

happy task was an uphill one, when it wasn’t downhill, due to the sad

walk that led me devious ways and many extra steps, with frequent halts

to orient a revolving brain.

By seven, with still no Tochigi, and not a scrap to eat, came a tap on

the door. As if in answer to a wish, there stood a smiling woman bearing

a tray of enormous tomatoes and cucumbers, a napkined loaf of newly

baked bread, and a generous pat of homemade butter. She is our nearest

neighbor, Miss Frances Johnson, descendant of an old missionary family,

with whom we have made arrangements to board.

No sooner had she gone, than another neighbor brought an offering of

_papaias_ (pah-py’-ahs)—wonderful green-and-yellow melon things that

grow on trees—and asked what further he could do for us. The

combination of old-world and new-world neighborliness was quite

overwhelming, and I was more than grateful, for by now poor Jack had

taken to the big white bed, although he weakly admitted that he might

eat a tomato if urged.

At length, he fell sound asleep under the well-tucked cloud of fine

bobinet that graces all Hawaiian beds and I breathed a sigh of relief.

My troubles had only begun.

When the crew passed through on their return to the yacht, I softly

called Martin to look at the kitchen-sink faucet, which was not working

properly. No sooner had he turned on the water, than up wriggled a truly

appalling centipede all of five inches in length, the only thing

comparable to a serpent in this Eden. The leathery toughness of the

monstrous insect, which was as thick as my finger, made the slaying of

it an eminently lively and disgusting tussle. Martin finally vanquished

the leggy foe, but we kept a wary eye for its possible mate. Fate left

it to me, alone in the bathroom—for I would not disturb Jack’s healing

slumbers,—to deal with the bereft one. After scissoring off its ugly

fanged head, I fled to bed, fervently trusting to dream of things with

wings—birds, butterflies, angels. No remembered assurances of the very

mild venomousness of this transplanted little dragon can ever lessen its

hideous offensiveness. In my mind there is filed away a word of protest

for its every leg, of which, despite its name, I counted but

seventy-four. The people here pay scant attention to this insect’s bite.

In the morning I summoned Tochigi to remove the mutilated remains. Oh,

of course, before cremation they must be displayed to an admiring

audience of husband. For even more fussy is he than I, about crawly

things, and he could see, by involuntary reminiscent tremors, that my

overworn nerves had been somewhat shaken by the encounter. Not having

laughed at me, we could laugh in company later in the morning when,

hair-brush in hand, he went right into the air with a “Great Scott!”

before an ill-looking hairy gray spider, some four or five inches

across, that dropped from the ceiling and clattered upon the bureau top.

Was it Mark Twain who, disturbed at his writing by one of these, put the

cuspidor upon it, claiming that a fringe of legs showed all around the

vessel? Somewhere I have read that these spiders are descendants of the

tarantula; but they have descended a long way, for tarantulas are meaty

monsters compared with these paper-and-fuzz household gods of Hawaii,

which harm nothing but mosquitoes and other dispensable vermin.

Jack had slept off the headache, and was able to enjoy his first

luncheon at Miss Johnson’s. She served a most appetizing table for us

seaworn pilgrims—a capital steak, done rare to a nicety, accompanied by

taro which had been boiled and then sliced and fried lightly in fresh

butter; cool platefuls of raw tomatoes and cucumbers, in oil and lemon;

poi, with dried salt _aku_ (ah-koo—bonita), papaias, and avocados—the

almost prohibitively expensive alligator pears that we know in

California, where they are sent by steamer and in shipping deteriorate;

and bananas so luscious that we declared we had never before tasted

bananas. These and sweet seedling oranges, as well as papaias, thrive in

the fragrant garden of roses and hibiscus and palms, seen through

Venetian blinds from where we sat at table, eating hothouse viands in

the hothouse air.

We came away congratulating ourselves and each other upon such a

feasting place within two minutes’ walk of our own little red gate; and

the trio of ladies granted indulgence to drop over in any garmenture

that pleases our mood, and also offered the piano for my use. Although

even on this warm leeward side of Oahu the temperature is said to range

only from 60° to 85°, with a mean of 74°, the humid quality of the

atmosphere invites loose lines of apparel, of duck and summer lawn. In

the dreamy green privacy of our lovely acre, it is kimono and kimono,

with not much else to mention. And I am already planning certain flowing

gowns of muslin and lace, on the pattern of Gretchen Waterhouse’s home

attire, which flouncy robe is called a _holoku_ (ho-lo-koo). It is a

worthy development from the first clothing introduced by the

missionaries, the simplest known design—like that cut by our childhood

scissors for paper dolls, and called _muumuu_ (moo-oo-moo-oo smoothly)

by the Hawaiians. In time this evolved into the full-gathered Mother

Hubbard atrocity; but in this year of grace it is a sumptuous, swinging,

trailing model of its own, just escaping the curse of the Mother Hubbard

and somehow eliding the significance of wrapper. Not all women would

look as well in the holoku as does Mrs. Albert, who is straight and tall

and walks as if with pride in her fine height and proportion, as large

women should walk. A great measure of the holoku’s good looks depends

upon its being carried well. The muumuu, in its pristine simplicity, is

still used by native women for an under-garment, and, in all colors of

calico, for swimming, although I have yet to learn how it could permit

freedom of movement in the water.

Jack smiled to me just now, after I had read him the above: “I hope you

will get some of those loose white things. I like them.”

Paucity of coast mail would indicate that relatives and friends have

been chary of wasting energy on letters that might never be received by

such reckless rovers. O ye of scant faith in the _Snark’s_ oaken ribs

and her owner’s canny judgment!

The mail is brought by a tiny bobtail dummy and coach run by one, Tony,

from Pearl City, a mile away, to a station near the end of the

peninsula. Tony is a handsome little swarthy fellow, regarded by me with

much interest, as my first Hawaiian on his native heath. Certain

misgivings at sight of him rendered my surprise less to learn that he is

full-blooded Portuguese. Alack, my first Hawaiian is a Portuguese—and

of course Jack is hilarious.

Another caller crossed the springy turf of our garden—one who, having

been told we were looking for saddle animals, came to suggest that we

bring up our saddles the first of next week, and ride two of his horses

back to the peninsula, where we are welcome to them as long as we

please. Truly, the face of Hawaii hospitality is fair to see. What a

place to live, with the gift of a roof from the rain, tree tops from the

noonday sun, a peaceful space in which to work, strange pleasant foods

irreproachably set forth, a warm vast bowl of jade for swimming, and

fleet steeds for less than the asking! As this latest gift bringer

departed, Jack, touched to huskiness, said:

“A sweet land, Mate, a sweet land.”

And now our green gloom purples into twilight where we have lain upon

the sward the long afternoon; and twice my companion has hinted at a dip

before dinner.

[Illustration: (1) Damon Gardens, Honolulu. (2) Rice Fields on Kaunai.]

May 22.

Too bright and warm the morning to stay asleep even in this arboreal

spot, we rose at six. Another and earlier riser played his part, that

disturber of peace—the saucy mynah bird, whose matin racket is full as

soothing as that of our cheerfully impudent blue jay in the Valley of

the Moon. “False” mynah though he is said to be, there is nothing false

about either his voice or his manners, both of which are blatantly real

and sincere in their abandon. Imported from India, to feed on the

cutworm of a certain moth, he has made himself more at home than any

other introduced bird, and has been known to pronounce words. He is a

sagacious and interesting rowdy; but could one have choice in feathered

alarm clocks, the silver-throated skylark, another importation to

Hawaii, would come first.

But who should complain? We had not stirred for nine solid, dreamless

hours—speaking for myself, for Jack always dreams, and vividly.

In search for an ideal work-room, he pounced upon a shaded, wafty space

out of doors, mountainward of the bungalow. Tochigi found a small table

and box-stool for that left foot which always seeks for a rest when Jack

settles to writing. A larger box serves to hold extra “tools of trade,”

such as books and notes. Each morning, at home or abroad, Tochigi

sharpens a half dozen or more long yellow pencils with rubber tips, and

dusts the table, but never must he disturb the orderly litter of

note-pads, scribbled and otherwise.

Within a couple of brisk hours, under my direction, the boy finished the

work of settling, not the least item being the installing of our big

Victor and some three hundred disks; then nothing would do but Jack

would have me whirring off Wagnerian overtures and other orchestral

“numbers” while I pattered about in Japanese sandals.

By nine, with a big palm fan I was joining him in the hammock where he

hung between two huge algarobas, surrounded by a batch of periodicals

forwarded from the Coast, and we felicitated ourselves upon having risen

in the comparative cool of the morning and done the more active part of

the day’s work. Owing to a stoppage of the blessed Trades the air was

enervatingly heavy. For the past month Hawaii has known the same unusual

atmospheric conditions that marked our passage. Only a mild south wind

blows—the Kona, “the sick wind,” and it does seem to draw the life out

of one. We are warned that when a Kona really takes charge, all things

that float must look lively. Because this is not the regular season for

Konas, old sea-dogs are wagging their heads.

“Do you know what you are?” I quizzed Jack, having outrun him by a word

or two in the race for knowledge.

“No, I don’t. And I don’t care. But do _you_ know _where_ you are?” he

countered.

“No, _I_ don’t. _You_ are a _malihini_—did you know that?”

“No, and I don’t know it now. What is it?”

“It’s a newcomer, a tenderfoot, a wayfarer on the shores of chance, a—”

“I like it—it’s a beautiful word,” Jack curbed my literary output. “And

I can’t help being it, anyway. But what shall I be if I stay here?”

Recourse to a scratch-pad in my pocket divulged the fascinating

sobriquet that even an outlander, be he the right kind of outlander,

might come in time—a long time—to deserve. It is _kamaaina_, and its

significance is that of old-timer, and more, much more. It means one who

_belongs_, who has come to belong in the heart and life and soil of

Hawaii; as one might say, a subtropical “sour-dough.”

“How should it be pronounced, since you know so much?”

“Kah-mah-ah-ee-nah,” I struggled with careful notes and tongue. “But

when Miss Frances says it quickly, it seems to run into

‘Kah-mah-I’-nah.’—And you mustn’t say ‘Kammy-hammy-hah’ for

‘Kam-may-hah-may’-hah,’” I got back at him, for Kamehameha the Great’s

name had tripped us both in the books read aloud at sea.

“I’d rather be called _‘Kamaaina’_ than any name in the world, I think,”

Jack ignored my efforts at his education. “I love the land and I love

the people.”

For be it known this is not his first sight of these islands. Eleven or

twelve years ago, on the way to the sealing grounds off the Japan coast

in the _Sophie Sutherland_, he first saw the loom of the southernmost of

the group, Hawaii, on its side Kilauea’s pillar of smoke by day and

fiery glow by night. Again, in 1904, bound for Korea as correspondent to

the Japanese-Russian War, he was in Honolulu for the short stop-over of

the _Manchuria_, and spent as brief a time there on his return aboard

the _Korea_ six months later. And ever since, despite the scantiness of

acquaintance, he has been drawn to return—so irresistibly as now to

make a very roundabout voyage to the Marquesas in the South Pacific, in

order that Hawaii might be first port of call.

“Here’s something I didn’t show you in the mail,” he said presently,

picking up a thick envelope addressed in his California agent’s hand. It

contained a sheaf of rejections of his novel “The Iron Heel” which has

proved too radical for the editors, or at least for their owners’

policies. “I had hoped it was _timely_,” he went on, “and would prove a

ten-strike; but it seems I was wrong.

“They’re all afraid of it, Mate-Woman. They see their subscriptions

dropping off if they run it; but they give hell to us poor devils of

writers if they catch us writing for the mere sake of money instead of

pure literature. What’s a fellow to do? We’ve got to eat, and our

families have got to eat. And we’ve got to buy _holo_—what do you call

those flowy white things? for small wives;—and sail boats, and gather

fresh material for more stories that will and won’t sell...” he trailed

off lugubriously.

Thus Jack on his unsuccessful and very expensive novel. Whereupon he

shrugs his wide shoulders under the blue kimono, girds the fringed white

obi a little more snugly, picks up a note-pad and long sharp pencil, and

makes swift, sprawling notes for a Klondike yarn on which he has been

working, “To Build a Fire.” I catch myself holding back tears of

disappointment in his disappointment, and hoping he knows the half of

how sorry I am. When I turn to look at him again, he is shaking

uncontrollably in a fit of giggles over a cartoon in _Life_.

Perspiring this afternoon even in the thick shade of the gnarled

algarobas, we watched the “dear old tub” swirl on her chain cable in

stiff little squalls, and noted with satisfaction that her anchors seem

to have taken firm hold despite the reputed “skaty” bottom of this part

of the harbor.

After the exertion of a vociferous rubber of cribbage, the crisp

sage-green wavelets on the reef invited us to come out and play. So fine

was the water that, once at the outer edge of the coral, I decided to

venture as far as the yacht.

Martin, who vanished Honolulu-ward yesterday, returned this morning

laden with an assortment of produce—all he could carry. His ambition

was to be photographed rampant in the midst of tropical plenty for the

wonder and envy of his Kansan acquaintance. The fruity properties for

the tender scene cost him all of five dollars. A mainlander might

naturally conjecture Hawaii to be a land of almost automatic abundance;

but the price Martin paid is illustration of the not economical cost of

living. Meat is very high, and even fish, as this morning when Tochigi

had to pay twenty-five cents for three small mullet, Hawaii’s best “meat

that swims” (that is Jack’s) peddled by a Chinese fisherman. And

everything else is in proportion.

Unfortunately the papaia on our trees is not yet ripe. Jack is wild

about this fruit, and has it for every breakfast. I like it, too, but

the larger part of my pleasure is in looking at it, especially on its

tree, which is too artificially beautiful to seem a live plant. Never

have we read nor heard any adequate description of a papaia tree; but it

is the most remarkable we have ever seen. The trunks of our papaias are

six or seven inches in diameter, rise perfectly straight without a

branch nearly to the top, where the fruit clusters thick and close

around the carven hole, for so the ash-colored wood appears with its

indented markings. Among the “melons” and above them are very soft large

palmated leaves, some close to the trunk and some on slender stems. And

then there are the blossoms, on the axils of the leaves, twisting and

twining where the fruit comes later, little flowerlets not unlike orange

blossoms in appearance and odor. The trunk is said to be hollow; and

there are male and female trees, which should be planted in company to

insure a good yield—for both share in bearing. The young trees are not

so tall but one can easily reach the fruit; but the trees at Miss

Johnson’s call for a stepladder, or stout hands and knees for climbing.

Papaia faintly resembles cantaloupe and muskmelon, although more evenly

surfaced; and it tastes—how does it taste? We have about decided upon

“sublimated pumpkin, very sublimated, but sweeter.” For the table, it is

cut in half, lengthwise, its large canary-yellow interior scraped of a

fibrous lining and a handful of slippery black seeds coated with a sort

of mucus, that look like caviar, and is then set in the ice box before

serving with lemon. In conjunction with beauty and flavor, the fruit has

strong peptonic virtues, and some one told us it would disintegrate a

raw beefsteak overnight.

So Martin had us “snap” him, properly alert amidst his Pacific

plentitude, banked under an algaroba at the waterside—cocoanuts,

watermelons, pineapples, oranges, lemons, mangoes (real mangoes but

tastelessly unripe), guavas, and bananas; not to mention papaias and

taro, and a homely cabbage or two for charm against nostalgia. After

which nothing would do for him but he must pose Jack and myself. Martin

can now be heard developing films in our bathroom, his principal noise a

protest at the warmth of the “cold” water.

May 23.

Beginning to wonder why Tochigi was so late laying breakfast on the end

of the long table that holds the phonograph and the typewriter, our

surprise was sweet when with a flush on his olive cheeks he led us out

to where he had set a little table under the still trees. It was strewn

with single red hibiscus and glossy coral peppers from a low hedge that

trims the base of the cottage. He served a faultless meal of papaia,

shirred eggs, a curled shaving of bacon, and fresh-buttered toast, with

perfect coffee brewed in the _Snark’s_ percolator.

Breakfast over, for an hour we lingered at table reading aloud snatches

of books on Hawaii, and laughing over some of the freaks of her

mythology, which are not in the main so dissimilar from those of other

races, including the Caucasian, as entirely to justify our superior

mirth.

All the time I am conscious of a wish that is almost a passion to share,

with any who may read this diary, the loveliness of this smiling garden

so green and so sweet-scented when little winds wake the acacia laces of

the umbrageous algarobas; where nothing really exists beyond our red

wicket, but dreams may be dreamed of mirage-like mountains shimmering in

the tropic airs across the fairy lagoon.

Strolling to the bank, we sit in long grass with our feet over the

seaweed-bearded coral, and lazily watch three native women—the first we

have seen—in water to their ample waists, with holokus tucked high,

wading slowly in the reef-shallows. One carries a small box with glass

bottom, and now and again she bobs under with the box, and then comes up

laughing and flinging back her dark hair that waves and ringlets in the

sun. They are hunting crabs and other toothsome sea food, which they

snare in small hooped nets with handles; and their mellow contralto

voices strike the heavy air like full-throated bells, as they gossip and

gurgle or break into barbaric measures of melody. Whether it be hymn or

native song, the voices are musically barbaric. Upon discovery of us, a

truly feminine flurry of bashfulness overcomes them, but they smile like

children when we call “Aloha!” and repeat the sweet greeting softly. The

mirage effect of the scene is furthered by a motionless reflection of

the white yacht in the glassy water, as well as of the far shore and

billowy reaches of snowy cloud. The very thought of work is shocking in

such drowsy unreality of air and water and earth. Poor Jack groans over

self-discipline and there is a lag in his light and merry foot when he

finally makes for the little work table, brushes off a brown pod and

leafy lace pattern from the algaroba, and dives into the completion of

“To Build a Fire.”

May 25.

Observing those native women (_wahines_—wah-he-nays) harvest crabs gave

me an idea. Stirring betimes, virtuously I gathered a novel breakfast

for my good man. In other words, I set baited lines along the jetty, and

was soon netting the diminutive shellfish that hurried to the raw meat.

No hooks are used; the crab furnishes these, and, being a creature of

one idea, forgets to let go his juicy prize when the string begins to

pull, so that by the time he does relinquish hold, the net is ready for

his squirming fall. Although small, these yellowish gray, red-spotted

crabs are spicily worth the trouble of picking to pieces.

Here is a peculiar thing: the fish of Pearl Lochs seldom bite, and must

be either netted or speared native fashion. To be sure, there are the

ancient fishponds, where it would be easy to use a seine; but these

ponds are closely protected by their owners, and no uncertain penalties

are exacted for poaching. There are no privileges connected with the

long pond that flanks our boundary to the north, so we must depend upon

the unromantic peddler for our sea fruit.

No lingering could we allow ourselves at table this morning, for we were

bound Honolulu-ward on the forenoon train, to bring back the horses.

“Wish I had a million dollars, so I could really enjoy life here,”

yawned Jack, arms above head and bare feet in the warm, wet grass (it

had rained heavily overnight), as he moved toward his work, with a

longing eye hammockward.

Always have I remembered, from my days at Mills College, where I met and

loved my first Hawaiian girls, the enthusiasm of Mrs. Susan L. Mills

over the cross-saddle horse craft of women in Honolulu, where she and

her husband founded a school in early days. So I do not hesitate to ride

my Australian saddle here.

And so, trousered, divided-skirted, booted and spurred, both of us

coatless, as the day promised to be sultry, we walked to Tony’s little

dummy-train, on which, with fellow passengers of every yellow and brown

nationality except the Hawaiian, we traveled to the very

Japanesque-Americanesque village of Pearl City, to join the

through-train. During the half-hour ride, we enjoyed the shining

landscape of cane and terraced rice, long rolling hills, and the

alluring purple gorges and blue valleys of the mountains. The volcanic

red of the turned fields is like ours in Sonoma County, with here and

there splashes of more violent madder than any at home.

I had expected Oahu to be more tropical, palmy and jungly. But I

woefully lacked information, and the disappointment is nobody’s fault

but my own. Even the cocoanut palms of Hawaii are not indigenous, nor

yet the bananas, breadfruit, taro, oranges, sugar cane, mangoes—indeed,

this group does not lie in the path of seed-carrying birds, and it

remained for early native geniuses navigating their great canoes by the

stars, and white discoverers like Cook and Vancouver, to introduce a

large proportion of the trees and plants that took like weeds to the

fertile soil.

Of all imported trees, the algaroba _Prosopis juliflora_ (Hawaiian,

_kiawe_—ke-ah’-vay) has been the best “vegetable missionary” to the

waiting territory, and flourishes better here than in its own countries,

which seem to include the West Indies, the southern United States, and

portions of South America. One writer fares farther, and claims that it

is the Al-Korab, the husks of which the Prodigal Son fed to the swine he

tended. The first seed of the algaroba is supposed to have been brought

to Hawaii from Mexico by Father Bachelot, founder of the Catholic

Mission, and was planted by him in Honolulu, on Fort Street, near

Beretania, the inscription giving the date as 1837. But an old journal

of Brother Melchoir places the date as early as 1828. This tree is still

alive and responsible for above 60,000 acres of algaroba growth in

Hawaii. Left to itself, the algaroba seems to prefer an arid and stony

bed, judging from the manner in which it has reclaimed and forested the

reefy coast about Honolulu, making beautiful what was formerly a bare

waste. On this island as well as on Molokai, Maui, and Hawaii, it has

changed large tracts of rocky desert into abundantly wooded lands. The

algaroba shades the ground with a dense brush, and attains all heights

up to fifty and sixty feet—as these in our garden, where the boles have

been kept trimmed and show their massive twisted trunks and limbs in

contrast to their light and feathery foliage. The wood is of splendid

quality, the pods are a most useful stock feed, while bees love the

sweet of the blossoms and distill excellent honey. One of the two kinds

of gum exuded is used like gum arabic. Containing no tannin, it has been

used, dissolved in water, in laundries in other countries than Hawaii,

where for some reason it is not appreciated.

Speeding along, we noticed a number of the exotic monkey-pod trees. The

tropical-American name is _samang_, though sometimes it is called the

rain-tree, from its custom of blossoming at the beginning of the rainy

season. Broad-spreading, flat-topped, with enormous trunk, like the

algaroba it is a member of the acacia family, folding its feathery

leaves at night. It is wonderfully ornamental for large spaces, but

cannot be used to shade streets, as its quick growth plays ludicrous

havoc with sidewalks and gutters. I have read that a common sight in the

Islands is a noonday monkey-pod shade of a hundred and fifty feet

diameter.

“The Japanese city of Honolulu!” burst from my astonished lips, once we

were out of the station and walking toward the famous fish market. For

the Japanese are in possession of block after block of tenements, stores

and eating places, that fairly overlap one another, while both men and

women go about their business in the national garb of kimono and

sandals.

The market was more or less depleted of the beautiful colored fish Jack

had been so desirous for me to see, and we plan to come back some time

in the early morning, when both the fish and the quaint crowd are at

their best.

Not until in the business center of the city proper were our eyes

gladdened by the sight of our own kind and of the native Hawaiians,

though the latter have become so intermixed with foreign strains that

comparatively few in Honolulu can be vouched for as pure bred. According

to the latest census, there are less than 30,000 all-Hawaiians in Hawaii

Nei, with nearly 8000 hapa-haoles (hap-pah-hah-o-lays—quickly

hah-pah-how-lees), which means half-whites. The total population of

Honolulu is around the 40,000 mark, and of these roughly 10,000 only are

white.

I had pictured Honolulu differently; and the abrupt evidence of my eyes

was a trifle saddening. The name Honolulu is said to mean “the

sheltered,” and it would not inaptly refer to the population of

far-drifted nationalities that shelters in its hospitable confines.

Soon, however, all temporary dash to my hopes became absorbed in the

types that had given rise to disappointment, and in the unfolding of the

town itself, with its bright shop windows, and sidewalks where real,

unmistakably real, Hawaiian wahines sat banked in a riot of flowers,

themselves crowned with _leis_ (lay’ees—wreaths), and offering others

for sale.

Many of the Japanese are of a totally different breed from those in the

cities of California—the refined, student house-boys like our Tochigi

of the gentle voice and unfailing courtesy. The coolies in Hawaii are of

bigger, sturdier frame and coarser features, with a masculine,

aggressive expression in their darker-skinned faces. Jack’s practiced

eye leads him to think that a large proportion of them is from the rank

and file that served in the Japanese-Russian War three years ago.

We lunched in the Alexander Young Hotel, a modest skyscraper of gray

stone. It is altogether too continental looking for this sub-tropic

zone, but has a delightful café in the top story, affording a view of

the city. Here we learned two new dishes of the island. One was an

“alligator-pear cocktail,” sliced avocado in a peppery tomato-sauce; and

guava ice-cream, the deliciously flavored crushed fruit staining the

cream a salmon pink.

We could not help noting how many men go about in woollen business suits

of the cooler mainland. Jack remarked:

“I leave it to any one if it isn’t silly that in a tropic city the

conventions of altogether different climates should make slaves of men!”

I am glad we are not obliged to follow their example, but may happily be

counted with the “white-robed ones” who compose the fitting majority.

Pasadena with all its riot of roses is not more beautiful than lovely

Honolulu glowing with gorgeous flowering vines as well as large trees

that vie in abandon of bloom. And Honolulu has her roses as well.

Inside a garden gate, I sat me down, breathless with the astounding

mantle of color that lay over house and barns and fence. I had heard of

the poinciana regia, and bougainvillea, and golden shower, and was

already familiar with the single red and pink hibiscus in the West

Indies. And again we must register complaint that either the globe

trotters we have met have short memories or little care for these

things, for we were quite unprepared for the splendor.

“There can’t be any such tree,” Jack broke our silence before the

poinciana regia, the “flame tree,” and _flamboyante_ of the French. It

was named in honor of Poinci, Governor General of the West Indies about

the middle of the seventeenth century, who wrote upon their natural

history. I have never seen anything so spectacular growing out of the

ground. It might have been manufactured in Japan—like the fretted

papaia—for stage property. The smooth trunk expands at the base into a

buttress-like formation that corresponds to the principal roots, with an

effect on the eye of an artificial base broad enough to support the gray

pillar without underpinning. The tree grows flat topped, not unlike the

monkey-pod; and the foliage of fine pinnate leaves, superimposed

horizontally layer upon layer, carries out the “made in the Orient”

fantasy. But the wonder of wonders is the burst of flame that covers all

the green with palpitating scarlet. Clearly red in the flowering mass,

it is another marvel to examine the separate blossoms, one of which

covered the palm of my hand. In form it was suggestive of an orchid, and

there were one or two small, salmon-yellow petals. The petals were soft

and crinkly as those of a Shirley poppy, delicate fairy crêpe.

Under this colorful shelter, Mr. Rowell raises orchids for the market,

and I thought I never could tear myself from the floral butterflies. I

was sorry I could not carry on horseback the ones freely proffered.

In the rambling garden, we could but turn from one bursting wonder to

another. The most ramshackle building, chicken coop, fence, or outhouse

is glorified by the bougainvillea vine, named after the early French

navigator. In color a bright yet soft brick-red, or terra cotta, like

old Spanish tiling, it flows over everything it touches, sending out

showers and rockets that softly pile in masses on roof and arbor. I

discovered they were not exactly flowers, these painted petals, but more

on the order of leaves, or half-formed petals. It is the bracts

themselves, which surround the inconspicuous blossoms, that hold the

color—as with the poinsettia. We had already noticed, in other gardens,

great masses of magenta vine, which is also bougainvillea, and sports

two varieties, one a steady bloomer, season upon season. There are other

colors, too—salmon-pink, orange, and scarlet. And speaking of the

poinsettia, which, even in California, we cherish in pots, here in

magical Hawaii it thrives out of doors, sometimes to a height of fifteen

or twenty feet—as do begonias on some of the islands; but I, for one,

want to see to believe.

We are willing to accept anything about the guava, be it tree or shrub,

and it is both in this sunset land, for to-day we feasted on its yellow

globes—dozens of them. Ripe, they were better far than the ice cream, a

soft edible rind inclosing a heart of pulpy seeds crushed-strawberry in

tint, which, oddly enough, taste not unlike strawberries—stewed

strawberries with a dash of lemon. Before I realize it, I am breaking my

vow not to try describing flavors.

At length we must tear rudely from this Edenic inclosure, and saddle the

little bay mares. It was good to feel the creaking leather and the eager

pull on bits, though in the case of Jack’s mount, Koali (Morning Glory),

that eager pull was all in a retrograde direction when we attempted to

leave town. City limits were good enough for the Morning Glory, and her

rider had a perilous time on the slippery quadruped, who had evidently

been not too well trained. My heart was in my mouth at her narrow

escapes from electric cars, and from sliding sprawls on wet tracks.

Finally she capitulated, and all went smoothly once we struck the fine

stretch of road to the peninsula, which leads through the Damon

gardens—an enchanted wood. This is the way to travel, intimately in

touch with land and sea and sky, without having to crane our necks out

of car windows or after vanishing views on the wrong side of the coach.

We went leisurely, and found it very warm, with that heavy, moist,

perfumed air that more than all the scenery makes one feel the

strangeness of a new country. Tall sugar cane rustled in the late fan of

wind, and a sudden shower, warm as milk, wet our coatless shoulders.

Little fear of catching cold from a drenching in this climate where it

is always summer.

The owner of the mares assures us that all they need be fed is the

sorghum that grows outside our inclosure along the roadway, balanced by

a measure of grain twice daily. We are also at liberty to pasture them

in a handy vacant lot, and Tochigi will feed the grain which he has

stored in the tiny servant house.

“They’re used to outdoors day and night, so the sky is sufficient stable

roof,” their owner praised the climate.

May 28.

One old-time sojourner on this coral strand fitly wrote: “When all days

are alike, there is no reason for doing a thing to-day rather than

to-morrow.” Whether or not he lived up to his wise conclusion I do not

know; but the average hustling white-skin, filled with unreasonable

ambition to visit other shores, does not live up, or down, to any such

maxim. Maybe it is a mistake; maybe we should pay more heed to the lure

of _dolce far niente_. Even so, for us it is not expedient and we may as

well put it by. Jack does not regard it seriously, anyway. His

deep-chested vitality and personal optimism, together with his gift of

the gods, sleep under any and all conditions, if he but will to sleep,

quite naturally make him intolerant of coddling himself in any climate

under the sun, no matter how inimical to his supersensitive white skin.

And I decline to worry. It is so easy to acquire the habit of worrying

about one’s nearest and dearest, to the ruin of all balance of true

values. Nothing annoys and antagonizes Jack so much as inquiries about

his feelings when he himself has not given them a thought. Time enough

when the thing happens, is his practice, if not his theory; but in

justice I must say that he applies this unpreparedness only to himself,

and has ever a shrewd and scientific eye for the welfare of those

dependent upon him, though never will he permit himself to “nag.” “I’m

telling you, my dear,” once, twice, possibly thrice—and there’s an end

on’t.

Everything is freshening in the cool trade wind that is commencing to

wave the live-palm-leaf fans, and on the slate-blue horizon masses of

low trade wind clouds pile and puff and promise

refreshment—“wool-packs,” sailors call them. The past few days of

variable weather have roasted us one minute, and steamed us the next

when the un-cooling rains descended. But it is all in the tropic

pattern, and it is nice never to require anything heavier than summer

garments.

“Hello, Twin Brother!” Jack greeted me yesterday, when, booted and

trousered, I was bridling Lehua. “I wish you didn’t have to put on the

skirt, you look so eminently trim and appropriate!”

“Be patient,” I told him. “We’ll all be riding this way in a few years,

see if we aren’t. You wait.”

But the cheery prophecy of public good sense could not stifle a sigh as

I blotted out the natty boyish togs with the long, hot black skirt. What

a silliness to put the “weaker sex” to such disadvantages—as if we did

not manifest our bonny brawn by surviving to fight them!

To the village we cantered to have Koali and Lehua shod at the

blacksmith’s, and odd enough it was to see a Japanese working on their

hoofs. But for a succession of violent downpours, we should have taken a

long ride. There is inexpressible glory in this broken weather; one

minute you move in a blue gloom under a low-hanging sky and the next all

brilliance of heaven shines through, gilding and be jeweling the

vivid-green world.

This date marks a vital readjustment in ship matters. Two of the

_Snark’s_ complement are to return to the mainland, and Jack has cabled

a man to come down by first steamer and take hold of the engines. Not to

mention many other details of incomprehensible neglect aboard by the

undisciplinary sailing master, the costly sails have been left to mildew

in their tight canvas covers on the booms in all this damp weather, with

deck awnings stretched _under_ the booms instead of protectingly above.

And no bucket of water has been sluiced over the deck since our arrival

eight days ago, necessitating the not inconsiderable expense of

recalking thus early in the voyage. The appearance of the deck can be

guessed; and otherwise no effort has been put forth to bring the yacht

into presentable order, nor any interest nor head-work displayed in

forwarding repairs. If a salaried master will let his valuable charge

lapse, there is no cure but to get one who will not.

Last Sunday we lunched with the Waterhouses and their rollicking

week-end crowd from town, who showed what _they_ thought of conventional

restrictions in tropic cities, by spending the day in light raiment and

bare feet, resting or romping over house and grounds. Mrs. Gretchen’s

father, who is superintendent of the Honolulu Iron Works, was also

there, and came back with us to take a personal look-see at our wrecked

engine. To-day he made a special trip from the city, bringing an

engineer, and the upshot was a more encouraging report than he had

deemed possible from his first inspection. “Anyway,” he cheered our

dubiousness, “you’re a whole lot better off than the little yacht that

piled ashore on the reef outside yonder this morning.”

So Jack’s face, that had been fairly downcast for two or three days,

cleared like an Oahu sky after a thunder-shower; and later he said to

me, with a familiar little apologetic smile:

“Mate Woman, you mustn’t mind my getting a little blue sometimes. I

can’t help it. When a fellow does his damndest to be square with

everybody, buys everything of the best in the market and makes no kick

about paying for it, and then gets thrown down the way I’ve been thrown

down with the whole building and running of this boat, from start to

finish—why, it’s enough to make him bite his veins and howl. A man

picks out a clean wholesome way of making and spending his money, and

every goldarned soul jumps him. If I went in for race horses and chorus

girls and big red automobiles, there’d be no end of indulgent comment.

But here I take my own wife and start out on good clean adventure....

Oh, Lord! Lord! What’s a fellow to think!... Only, don’t you mind if I

get the blues _once_ in a while. I don’t very often.—And don’t think

I’m not appreciating your own cheerfulness. I don’t miss a bit of

it.—And you and I are what count; and we’ll live our life in spite of

them!”

Again referring to that beloved scrap heap, the _Snark_, there’s a

comedian in our own small tragedy, although he doesn’t know it. His

sweet and liquid name is Schwank, assumably Teutonic, and, with hands

eloquent of by-gone belaying pins, “every finger a fishhook, every hair

a rope yarn,” he tinkers about the boat in the capacity of carpenter.

With his large family, he lives on the other side of the peninsula, and

bids fair to be a great diversion to us all. Belike he has of old been a

sad swashbuckler for he hints at dark deeds on the high seas, of

castaways and stowaways, of smuggled opium and other forbidden treasure;

and he gloats over memories of gleaming handfuls of pearls exchanged for

handfuls of sugar in the goodly yesteryears. Why did he not make it

pailfuls of pearls while he was on the subject? In my own dreams of

pearl-gathering in the Paumotus and Torres Straits far to the southwest,

I never allow myself to think in less measure than a lapful. But

pondering upon this theatrical old pirate’s vaunted exchange, I cannot

help wishing I had been a sugar planter, for I care more for pearls than

for sugar.

Late this afternoon we took out the horses for a few red miles over the

roads of Honolulu Plantation. The rich, rolling country recalled rides

in Iowa, its high green cane, over our heads, rustling and waving like

corn of the Middle West. And everywhere we turned were the stout and

gnarly Japanese laborers, women as well as men. Female field laborers

may be picturesque in some lands; but I am blest if these tiny Japanese

women, with their squat, misshapen bodies, awful bandy legs, and blank,

sexless faces, look well in ours. Their heads are bound in white cloth,

while atop, fitting as well as Happy Hooligan’s crown, sit small

sun-hats of coarse straw. From under bent backs men and women alike

lowered at us with their slant, inscrutable eyes. Tony, who claims a

smattering of their language, tells us: “I think Americans no lika-da

talk those Japanese I hear on my train and Pearl City.” And there are

56,000[2] of them by now in this covetable Territory.

Sunday night we went up by train to Honolulu, to fulfill a dinner

engagement with Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes is editor of

the evening paper, _The Star_, and Mr. Walter Gifford Smith, editor of

the _Pacific Commercial Advertiser_, whom Jack had met here in 1904, was

also a guest. The others were Brigadier-General John H. Soper and his

family. General Soper is the first officer ever honored by the Hawaiian

Government—by any one of the successive Hawaiian Governments—with the

rank and commission of General. He had been in charge of the police

during the unsettled days of the Revolution, and later on was made

Marshal of the Republic of Hawaii, in effect previous to her annexation

by the United States.

Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes live in a roomy, vine-clambered cottage, set in a

rosy lane tucked away behind an avenue clanking with open electric cars;

such a pretty lane, a garden in itself, closed at one end, where a

magnificent bougainvillea flaunts magenta banners, and a slanting

coconut palm traces its deep green frondage against the sky.

This was a most pleasant glimpse into a Honolulu home, and our new

friends further invited us to go with them to a reception Wednesday

evening. Now, be it known that neither of us is overfond of public

receptions; but this one is irresistible, for Prince Jonah Kuhio

Kalanianaole and his royal wife are to receive in state, in their own

home, with the Congressional party, now visiting the Islands from

Washington, on the Reception Committee. Also, there is a possibility

that Her Majesty, Liliuokalani, the last crowned head of the fallen

monarchy, may be there. In these territorial times of Hawaii, such a

gathering may not occur again, and it is none too early for us to grasp

a chance to glimpse something of what remains of the incomparably

romantic monarchy.

May 29.

Heigh-O, palm-trees and grasses! This is a lovely world altogether, and

we are most glad to be in it. But it has its small drawbacks, say when

the honored Chief Executive of one’s own United States of America makes

an error quite out of keeping with his august superiority. This placid

gray-and-gold morning, arriving by first train from town, and before we

had risen from our post-breakfast feast of books at the jolly little

outdoor table, an affable young man, whose unsettled fortune—or

misfortune—it is to be a newspaper reporter, invaded our vernal

privacy. In his hand no scrip he bore, but a copy of _Everybody’s

Magazine_, portly with advertising matter, his finger inserted at an

article by Theodore Roosevelt on the subject of “nature-fakers.” In this

more or less just diatribe, poor Jack London is haled forth and flayed

before a deceived reading public as one of several pernicious writers

who should be restrained from misleading the adolescent of America with

incorrect representation of animal life and psychology. An incident in

Jack’s “White Fang,” published last fall, companion novel to “The Call

of the Wild,” is selected for damning evidence of the author’s

infidelity to nature. Our Teddy, oracle and idol of adventurous youth,

declares with characteristic emphasis that no lynx could whip a wolf-dog

as Jack’s lynx whipped Kiche, the wolf-dog. But the joke is on the

President this time, as any one can see who will take the trouble to

look up the description in “White Fang.” And lest you have no copy

convenient, let me explain that Jack never said the lynx whipped the

wolf-dog. Quite to the contrary—

“Why, look here,” he laughed, running his eye rapidly down the magazine

column, “he says that the lynx in my story killed the wolf-dog. It did

nothing of the kind. That doesn’t show that Mr. Roosevelt is as careful

an observer as _Everybody’s_ would have us believe. My story is about

the wolf-dog killing the lynx—and eating it!”

“I hope he’ll get it straight,” he mused after the departing form of the

reporter with a “good story.” “I can see myself writing an answer to Mr.

Roosevelt later on, in some magazine.”

Jack’s hope that his response to the charge of “nature-faking” would be

honestly reported, was a reflex to the relentless treatment he has

suffered from the press of the Pacific Coast. This is undoubtedly due to

the menace of his socialistic utterances; but what a distorted

civilization it is that makes a man who has unaided fought his way up

from nether levels of circumstance, pay so bitterly for his stark

humanitarian politics.

The newspapers of Honolulu, this Farthest West of his own country, have

shown toward him no influence of the unkindness of his natal State, but

have been all that is hospitable, and this in face of the rebuff put

upon their city when we sailed calmly by to the suburbs. From various

sources again we hear of the welcomes that were waiting along the

wharves, the garlands that were woven for our necks.

It must be forgiven that I jump from theme to theme in more or less

distracted manner; for if the way of my life is one of swift

adjustments, so must be the honest way of my chronicle. And so, from

Presidents, and reporters, wolf-dogs, and politics, lynxes, and ethics,

and histories of author-husbands, I shift to fripperies, and gala

gardens, and Polynesian princes.

My party-gown hangs on a line across a corner of the big room,

faultlessly pressed by the æsthetic Tochigi, with yards of Spanish lace,

souvenir of Santiago de Cuba, about the shoulders, arranged with

unerring taste by fair Gretchen. It is always a pleasure to hear her

benevolent “How are you people?” and Albert’s cheery “Zing!” at the red

gate. Often he and the Madonna stroll over in the dusk, in their hands

slender red-glowing punks to ward off mosquitoes—the “undesirable

immigrants” that have infested Hawaii’s balmy nights these eighty years,

ever since the ship _Wellington_, last from San Bias, Mexico,

unwittingly discharged them in her otherwise empty water barrels at

Lahaina, on Maui. It was a sad exchange for unpolluted drinking water.

Fortunately the days are free of the pests; but woe to the malihini who

kens not deftly how to tuck his bobinet under the edges of his mattress.

The enchantment of our lovely acre and the novel way of living, it would

seem, are being challenged by the varying temptations of the Capital.

To-night we attend the reception, and to-morrow ride to Waikiki to spend

a few days on the Beach.

Pearl Harbor, May 30.

We took the five o’clock train to Honolulu, and drove in a funny

one-horse carriage to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel for dinner. Ever since

Jack’s letters to me from Hawaii three years ago, I have longed to see

this noted tropic hostelry with its white tiers of balconies and its

Hawaiian orchestra, and the red and green lights which its foreign

visitors execrate and adore. Last evening, however, the hotel was

quiet—no music, no colored lights, and few guests. But the gardens were

there, and the fairy balconies, on the lowest of which we dined most

excellently, with an unforeseen guest. Before the “American-plan” dinner

hour, we were sitting in a cool corner, when a bearded young man stepped

briskly up:

“You’re Jack London, aren’t you?—My name is Ford.”

[Illustration: (1) Working Garb in Elysium. (2) Duke Kahanamoku, 1915.]

“Oh, yes,” Jack returned, quickly on his feet. “—Alexander Hume Ford. I

heard you were in Honolulu, and have wanted to see you. I’ve read lots

of your stuff—and all of your dandy articles in _The Century_.”

Mr. Ford could hardly spare time to look his pleasure, nor to be

introduced to me, before rushing on, in a breathless way that made one

wonder what was the hurry:

“Now look here, London,” in a confidential undertone. “I’ve got a lot of

whacking good material—for stories, you understand. _I_ can’t write

stories—there’s no use my trying. My fiction is rot—rot, I tell you. I

can write travel stuff of sorts, but it takes no artist to do that. You

_can_ write stories—the greatest stories in the world—and I’ll tell

you what: I’ll jot down some of the things I’ve got hold of here and

everywhere, and you’re welcome to them.... What d’you say?”

Jack suggested that he make three at our table, and he talked a steady

stream all through—of information about everything under the sky, it

would seem, for he has traveled widely. At present he is interested in

reviving the old Hawaiian sport of surf-riding, and promised to see us

at Waikiki, and show us how to use a board.

On the electric car bound for Waikiki, we found ourselves part of a

holiday crowd that sat and stood, or hung on the running-boards—a crowd

that convinced me Honolulu was Honolulu after all. The passengers on the

running boards made merry way for the haole wahine, while a beaming

Hawaiian, a gentleman if ever was one, gave me his seat, raising a

garlanded hat. The people made a kaleidoscope of color—white women in

evening gowns and fluffy wraps, laughing Hawaiian and hapahaole girls in

gaudy holokus and woolly crocheted “fascinators,” the native men

sporting brilliant leis of fresh flowers, the most characteristic being

the _ilima_, which, strung on thread, forms an orange-hued inch-rope

greatly affected for neck garlands and hat bands. Like ourselves, all

were making for the gardens of their Prince.

Some three miles from the center of town, we alighted at the big Moana

Hotel, where, in a lofty seaward lanai overlooking a palmy carriage

court, was spent our first hour at Waikiki, sipping from cool glasses

while we rested in large rattan chairs; for none but a malihini moves

quickly here in hours of relaxation, though the haoles of Hawaii work at

least as hard as on the mainland, and no shorter hours. Lovely indeed

was this my first glimpse of Hawaii’s celebrated watering place, as we

lounged in the liquid night-breeze from over rolling star-tipped waters

that broke in long white lines on the dim crescent beach.

Strolling across broad Kalakaua Avenue, we entered a park where great

looming trees were festooned high and low with colored lights—Prince

Cupid’s private gardens thrown wide to his own people as well as to

foreign guests. A prodigious buzz and hum came from a lighted building,

and we stepped over the lawns to a fanfare of martial music from

Berger’s Royal Hawaiian Band. From an immense open tent where many were

sitting at little tables, the lilting of a Hawaiian orchestra of guitars

and _ukuleles_ (oo-koo-lay’lees) blended into the festive din; and then,

threading purely the medley of sound, was heard a woman’s voice that was

like a violin, rising high and higher, dominating the throng until it

lapsed into absolute silence. It was the sweetest of Hawaiian singers,

Madame Alapai; and when she had finished a prodigious gale of applause

went up from all over the grounds, ceasing instantly at the first

crystal tone of her encore.

Like a child at a fair, I had no attention for the way of my feet in the

grass, and Jack laughed paternally at my absorption as he piloted me by

the elbow, with a “Dear Kid—it’s a pleasure to take you anywhere, you

do have such a good time!”

A pretty Hawaiian maid at the dressing-tent greeted us haole wahines

with a smiling “Aloha,” and led to where we women could shed wraps, and

dust noses and pat coiffures; after which the four of us picked a way

through the company, the women lovely in their trailing gowns, and men

in black and white evening attire or glittering army and navy uniforms.

All around under the trees in the back-ground hundreds of Hawaiians

looked on, their dusky faces and eyes eloquent with curiosity and

interest. Up a green terrace we paced, to the broad encircling lanai of

what looked to be an immense grass house. And grass house it proved, in

which the royal owners dwelt before the building of the more modern

mansion.

This entertainment, including as it did the Congressional party, was

unique in its significance. To the right of the receiving line stood the

delegate, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, affectionately known as

Prince Cupid, a well-known figure in Washington, D. C., a dark,

well-featured, medium-sized man in evening dress, handsome, but in my

eyes quite eclipsed by the gorgeous creature at his side, pure Hawaiian

like himself, his wife, the Princess Elizabeth. The bigness of her was a

trifle overwhelming to one new to the physical aristocracy of island

peoples. You would hesitate to call her fat—she is just big, sumptuous,

bearing her splendid proportions with the remarkable poise I had already

noticed in Hawaiian women, only more magnificently. Her bare shoulders

were beautiful, the pose of her head majestic, piled with heavy, fine,

dark hair that showed bronze lights in its wavy mass. She was superbly

gowned in silk that had a touch of purple or lilac about it, the perfect

tone for her full, black, calm eyes and warm, tawny skin. For

Polynesians of chiefly blood are often many shades fairer than the

commoners.

Under our breath, Jack and I agreed that we could not expect ever to

behold a more queenly woman. My descriptive powers are exasperatingly

inept to picture the manner in which this Princess stood, touching with

hers the hands of all who passed, with a brief, graceful droop of her

patrician head, and a fleeting, perfunctory, yet gracious flash of

little teeth under her small fine mouth. Glorious she was, the Princess

Kalanianaole, a princess in the very tropical essence of her. Always

shall I remember her as a resplendent exotic flower, swaying and bending

its head with unaffected, innate grace.

One and all, they filed by, those of her own race, proud and humble

alike, kissing the small, jeweled brown hand, while the white Americans

merely touched it with their own. And what came most sharply to me, out

of the conventionality, out of the scene so wrapped about with state and

pomp, was a fleeting, shifting glint of the wild in her full black eyes,

shining through the garmenture of her almost incredible culture and

refinement—a fitful spark of the passing savage soul of her, one of a

people but lately clothed in modern manners.

To the left of the deposed Princess, in a deep armchair, sat an even

more interesting, if not so beautiful, personage—no less than Queen

Lydia Kamakaeha Liliuokalani, last sovereign of the Kingdom of Hawaii,

sister and successor to the much-traveled King Kalakaua. The Queen is

rarely on view to foreigners, especially Americans, for she loves us

not, albeit her consort, Governor John Owen Dominis, dead these sixteen

years, was the son of a Massachusetts captain. I was glad to be well

down the line, as I had more time to watch her, for the vigor of her hot

fight of but yesterday to preserve the Crown of Hawaii is to me one of

the most interesting dramas in history—bleeding tragedy to her.

Photographs and paintings do not flatter Queen Liliuokalani. All I have

seen depict a coarseness and heaviness that is entirely absent. I was

therefore surprised, brought face to face with Her Majesty, to find that

face rather thin, strong, and pervaded with an elusive refinement that

might be considered her most striking characteristic, if anything

elusive can be striking. But this evasive effect, in a countenance

fairly European in feature, was due, I think, to the expression of the

narrow black eyes, rather close-set, which gave the impression of being

implacably savage in their cold hatred of everything American. However

the seeming, I have been assured that by this time the Queen has come

amiably to accept the U. S. A. in Hawaii, and to rise above all vengeful

feelings. Indeed during this very reception she greeted an erstwhile

arch-enemy: “I am glad to see you Mr—!” As near as I can figure it, she

was tricked and trapped by brains for which her brain, remarkable though

it be, was no match. Imagine her emotions, she who received special

favor from Queen Victoria at the Jubilee in London; she who then had the

present Kaiser for right-hand courtier at royal banquets, and the royal

escort of Duke This and Earl That upon public occasions, now sitting

uncrowned, receiving her conquerors.[3]

It is easier for the younger ones; but the Queen’s pretense looks very

thin, and my sympathy, for one, is warm toward her. There is no

gainsaying that truism, “the survival of the fittest,” in the far drift

of the human, and the white indubitably has proved the fittest; but our

hearts are all for this poor old Queen-woman; although I could not help

wondering if she would have liked us any better had she known. Most

certainly, when our eyes met in the short contact of glances there was

nothing of the tender suavity of the Hawaiian, only abysmal dislike.

Taking my cue from those preceding, I offered a dubious paw, which she

touched gingerly, as if she would much prefer to slap it. It was a

distinct relief to meet the prankish eye of Acting Governor “Jack”

Atkinson, my Jack’s old friend (who stood next the Queen’s chair,

murmuring in her ear the names of strangers), and surrender my timorous

hand to his hearty clasp.

Thence on, down one side of the long lanai, and off to the lawn, we ran

the gantlet of a bowing, embarrassed, amused string of Congressmen with

their wives and daughters, all smiling uncomfortably in the absence of

introductions, since they formed the Reception Committee in this

stranger city. We undoubtedly looked quite as foolish, when the tension

was immeasurably let down by a jolly young Congressman who blurted out:

“_That_ Jack London! Why didn’t somebody tell us? Great Scott!”

A subdued titter went up, and I said to the grinning Jack:

“That’s how you pay for your ‘Dream Harbor’ seclusion!”

Now we were free to mingle with the charming throng, and it was “Aloha”

here and “Aloha” there, that all-loving salutation, employed alike by

white and native. We happened upon old acquaintances from the States,

and were introduced to many Honolulans. Some of these were Hawaiian or

part-Hawaiian, who met us with a half-bashful, affectionate

child-sweetness that was altogether irresistible. There is that in their

beautiful eyes which is a golden trumpet call for a like honesty and

good will.

Every one shakes hands—men, women, children—at every friendly excuse

of meeting and parting. Smiles are one with the language, and there is a

pretty custom of ending a remark, or even a direction, or command, with

a pleasant “eh!”—the _e_ pronounced _a_, with an upward inflection.

Jack is especially taken with this gentle snapper, and goes about

practicing on it with great glee.

You might have thought yourself at a social fair at home, what of the

canopies, refreshments, and faces of countrymen—but for the

interspersing of brown Hawaiians, so soft and so velvet in face and

body, voice and movement, “the friendliest and kindest people in the

world.” A learned New Englander over forty years ago eulogized: “When

the instinct of hospitality which is native to these islands gets

informed and enriched and graced by foreign wealth, intelligence, and

culture, it certainly furnishes the perfection of social entertainment.

Of course there are in other lands special circles of choice spirits who

secure a brilliant intercourse all to themselves of a rare and high

kind, but I question if anywhere in the whole world general society is

more attractive than in Honolulu. Certainly nowhere else do so many

nationalities blend in harmonious social intercourse. Natives of every

well-known country reside there, and trading vessels or warships from

America and the leading countries of Europe are frequently in port. A

remarkable trait of these foreign-born or naturalized Hawaiians is that

interest in their native land seems only intensified by their distant

residence. The better Hawaiians they are, the better Americans, English,

French, or Germans they are. And thus it happens that you meet people

fully alive to the great questions and issues of the day all the world

over. Their distance from the scene of these conflicts seems to clear

their view, and I have heard some of the wisest possible comments upon

American affairs, methods, and policies from residents of the islands.

Besides, they have in small the same problems to solve in their little

kingdom which engage us. All the projected reforms social, moral, civil,

or religious, have their place and agitators here.”

The residence of the Prince was open to the public, and through a

labyrinth of handsome apartments we roamed, now up a step into a big

drawing-room furnished in magnificent native woods and enormous pots of

showering ferns, the walls hung with old portraits of the rulers of

Hawaii; now down three steps into a pillared recess where, in a huge

iron safe, unlocked for the evening, we were shown trophies of the

monarchies. Near by were several priceless old royal capes woven of tiny

bird-feathers, some red, some of a rich deep yellow, and others of the

two colors combined in a glowing orange. Farther on, a glass-front

cabinet displayed shelf above shelf of medals and trinkets pertaining to

the past regime, including the endless decorations received by King

David Kalakaua in the lands visited in his progress around the world in

the early ’80s. Some one remarked that he had possessed more of these

royal decorations than any known monarch. But this is not so surprising

as the fact that he was the only known reigning monarch who ever

circumnavigated the globe.

A space in the cabinet was devoted to the Crown of the Realm, a piece of

workmanship at once formal and barbaric, with its big bright gems, most

conspicuous of which, to me, were the huge pearls. One diamond had been

stolen, and the large gaping socket was a pathetic reminder of the empty

throne in the old Palace now used as the Executive Building.

Many and barbaric were the objects in this modern home, mere “curios”

should the uncaring gaze upon them in a museum; but here in Hawaii they

breathed of the vanishing race whose very hands we were pressing and

whose singers’ voices caressed the heavy, fragrant air; the while across

a lawn that had been carpet for Hawaii Nei festivities of many years sat

the deprived sovereign under the eaves of a grass house.

When, we wonder, in our westward traverse, shall we see another queen,

or a prince, or a princess—even shadows of such as are these of Hawaii?

Not soon enough, I swear, to fade the memory of this remarkable trio;

for nothing can ever dim the picture that is ours. And the Princess

Elizabeth Kalanianole has set an example, a pattern, that will make us

full critical of royal women of any blood.

Seaside Hotel, Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, May 31.

“Waikiki! there is something in the very name that smacks of the sea!”

caroled a visitor in the late ’70s. Waikiki—the seaside resort of the

world, for there is nothing comparable to it, not only in the

temperature of its effervescent water, which averages 78° the year

round, but in the surroundings, as well as the unusual variety of sports

connected with it, surf-canoeing in the impressively savage

black-and-yellow dug-outs; surf-boarding, the ancient game of kings;

fishing, sailing; and all on a variously shallow reef, where one may

swim and romp forgetful hours without necessarily going out of depth on

the sandy bottom. The cream-white curve of beach is for miles plumed

with coconut palms, and Diamond Head, “Leahi,” which rounds in the

southeastern end of the graceful crescent, is painted by every shifting

color, light, and shade, the day long, on its rose-tawny, serrated

steeps. And many’s the sail comes whitening around the point, yacht or

schooner or full-rigged ship, a human mote that catches the eye and sets

one a-dreaming of lately hailed home harbors and beckoning foreign ports

with enchanting names.

And one must not forget the earlier mariners who fixed these island

havens in the eye of the world. There was Captain Broughton, who

anchored off Waikiki in the British discovery-ship _Providence_,

bristling with her sixteen guns. In lazy, inviting mood, floating upon

the rocking swell, I like to picture Kamehameha the Great, gorgeous in

his orange and crimson feather-cape, stepping aboard from his hardly

less gorgeous black and yellow canoe of state, manned by warriors; his

mission to request arms and ammunition. But it seems that Broughton was

more peacefully bent than his predecessors of two years before, Brown

and Gordon; for he firmly declined to lend any part of his armament.

When he went ashore, it was for the purpose of making the first survey

of Honolulu harbor, and his men were kept at this work for three days.

Broughton was much concerned over the poor estate of the common people,

and noted a rapid decline in their numbers since his former visit with

Vancouver. Both on Oahu and later on Kauai, he did his best to dissuade

those in power from their internecine warfare. Nor did he relax his

refusal to allow any part of his sea-arsenal to leave the _Providence_.

_Waikiki! Waikiki!_ We keep repeating the word; for already it spells a

new phase of existence. Here but a scant twenty-four hours, the rest of

the world slips into a mild and pleasant, not imperative memory, for the

spirit of storied Waikiki has entered ours. The air seems full of wings.

I am so happy making home, this time a tent. We two can pitch home

anywhere we happen to alight: a handful of clothes-hangers, a supply of

writing materials—and other details are mere incidentals. The art of

living, greatest of arts, may be partially summed up in this wise:

“... to inhabit the earth is to love that which is; to catch the

savor of things.”

This brown canvas domicile, comprising three rooms separated by thin

portieres, with an accessory bath-house and servant room, also of

tenting, is the last of a scattered row of detached accommodations

belonging to the Seaside Hotel, some of them weathered old cottages of

the palmy days when Hawaiian royalty spent most of its time on the

beach. A short distance _mauka_ (mountainward) or away from _makai_

(toward the sea), on a lawn pillared with sky-brushing coconut palms,

still stands a true old grass house of romantic association. It was

created for the seaside retreat of King Lot, Kamehameha V, during his

reign in the decade commencing 1863, and each Wednesday was devoted to

the fashioning of it, from _Lama_ wood inside and pandanus (screw-pine)

leaves outside. It was named Lama House, for the wood was sacred to the

construction of temples and idols in the older days. The King left no

issue, and upon his death the estate went to the Princess Ruta (Ruth)

Keelikolani, and at her demise to Mrs. Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last

known descendant of Kamehameha the Great.

To the south we are separated from the big Moana Hotel with its tiers of

green roofs, by a sand-banked stream fed from the mountains, with,

beyond, a lavender field of lilies. Kalakaua Avenue is so far away

across the hotel gardens that the only sound from that quarter is an

occasional rumble of electric trams over a bridge that spans the stream,

fitting into our bright solitude like distant thunder from the black

range that is visible through a grove of palms and algaroba.

Not twenty feet in front, where grass grows to the water’s edge at

highest tide, the sands, sparkling under blazing sunrays, are frilled by

the lazy edges of the surf; and the flawed tourmaline of the

reef-waters, pale green, or dull pink from underlying coral patches,

stretches to the low white line of breakers on the barrier reef some

half-mile seaward, while farthest beyond lies the peacock-blue ribbon of

the deep-sea horizon.

In the cool of morning, we skipped across the prickly grasses for a dip,

accompanied by a frisking collie neighbor. The water was even more

wonderful than at the Lochs, invigorating enough at this early hour,

full of life and movement. Jack gave me lessons in diving through the

mild breakers, and it was hard to tear ourselves away, even for the

tempting breakfast tray that a white-suited Filipino was bearing to the

tent-house.

Besides our cottage row, the Seaside Hotel includes one large frame

house of many rooms, half over the water, reached by a winding driveway

from the main avenue through a grove of lofty coconut palms, under which

stray large cottages belonging to the hotel. In a rambling one-storied

building are the kitchen, the bar, an oriental private dining room, and

a reception hall, also furnished in Chinese carved woods and splendid

fittings, that belong to the estate. This hall opens into a circular

lanai with frescoed ceiling—a round dining and ballroom open half its

disk. Beyond the curving steps, on the lawn toward the sea, grow two

huge gnarled _hau_ trees, each in the center of a round platform where

drinks are served. The hau is a native of the Islands, and is related to

the hibiscus. The limbs snarl into an impenetrable shape, and are hung

with light yellow bells formed of five to ten lobes, which turn to mauve

and then to ruddy brown when they fall.

Mr. and Mrs. Fred Church (he is manager, and an old Klondike

acquaintance of Jack) gave us a dinner before the “Transport Night

Dance.” While the first word is appropriate for the bewitchment of

dancing in a Hawaiian night to the music of Hawaii, it is here used to

designate the entertainment on arrival of a United States Army

transport, when the officers and their ladies come ashore midway in the

long passage to or from the Coast and the Philippines.

The immense half-open circle of the lanai was cleared of dining

equipment, and the shining floor dusted with shavings of wax. Many-hued

Chinese lanterns were the only lighting here and out among the trees,

where dancers rested in the pauses of the music.

And the music. It was made entirely by an Hawaiian orchestra of guitars

and ukuleles, with a piano for accent, and all I had heard and dreamed

of the glamour of “steamer night in Honolulu” came to pass. It seemed

hardly more real than the dream, gliding over the glassy floor to lilt

of hulas played and sung by these brown musicians whose mellow, slurring

voices sang to the ukuleles and guitars because they could not refrain

from singing.

Between two dances I found Jack talking with Princess David Kawananakoa

and her husband, who is brother to Prince Cupid, and whom he resembles.

Both Princes are nephews of King Kalakaua’s queen, Kapiolani. Princess

David, Abigail, was a Campbell, and is only about an eighth Hawaiian.

She is a beauty; no more splendid in carriage than her sister-in-law,

but much more European in coloring and feature. Doubtless she could be

quite as regal upon occasion; but this evening she was charmingly

vivacious, and I caught myself looking with affection born of the

instant into her beautiful eyes that smiled irresistibly with her

beautiful mouth—“a smile of pearls.”

The lovely ball closed with “Aloha Oe,” Love to You, in waltz measure,

while the dancers joined in singing. The last, dying cadence left one

with a reposeful sense of fulfillment, and none broke this dreamy repose

by clapping for an encore.

Waikiki, June 1.

Yesterday, after a luncheon that included our first _yam_ (little

different from a fried potato-patty), we rode to Diamond Head, where at

last I gazed into a real crater. The way led through Kapiolani Park,

where the little sleeping volcano formed a painted background for the

scattered trees and blossoming lotus ponds. Once out of the shady

driveways, we sweltered in a windless glare upon the rising white road.

It was a mud volcano, this Leahi, and upon its oblong steep sides remain

the gutterings of age-ago eruptions. While less than eight hundred feet

high, at a distance it appears much higher. We had had a

never-to-be-forgotten view of it on our first ride to Honolulu, when,

through a gap, we looked across the tree-embowered city, and the low red

crater of Punchbowl—Puowaina; and far Diamond Head rose too ethereal in

the shimmering atmosphere to be of solid earth thrown up by ancient

convulsions.

Skirting the south side of the Head, we tethered our dripping horses,

and on foot climbed the limy wall, seething hot under the midday sun. I

arrived at the edge of the crater sans heart and lungs, muscles

quivering, and eyes dim. But what I there saw brought me back in short

order to my normal state of joy at being alive. Compared with other

wonders of Hawaii Nei, probably this small hollow mountain should be

sung without trumpets. But I have not seen Haleakala and Kilauea, Mauna

Kea or Hualalai, and lacked no thrills over my first volcano, albeit a

dead one. The bowl is a symmetrical oval, and may be half a mile

long—we could not judge, for the eye measures all awry these incurving

walls of tender green, cradling, far beneath, the still, green oval

mirror of a lakelet.

We rested our burned eyes on the soft green shell of earth before

retracing the scorching way to the horses, and decided that small-boat

travel is ill training for mountain scaling anywhere near the Southern

Cross. Around Diamond Head we continued, gazing off across blue bays and

white beaches to Koko Head, very innocent seen from the land by light of

day, but full of omen by night when winds blow hot and small _Snarks_

drift near wicked reefs. To-day the road led close by Diamond Head

lighthouse and the signal station that telephoned our approach to

Honolulu; and we learned that it was wirelessed from the city to the

island of Maui, where the Congressional party hung 10,000 feet, on the

lip of Haleakala’s twenty-three-mile crater. How different from times

when the only way of messages was by the watery miles separating the

islands, in sloops and schooners or outrigger canoes, and telephones had

never been dreamed of.

On the way to return the mares, Jack took me aside to the transport

wharf that I might see the departure of a vessel from Honolulu, for

never, since his own experiences, has he spoken without emotion of this

beautiful ceremonial. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the

world.

The steamer decks were bowers of fragrant color, as was the wharf, for

the shoulders of the departing congressmen and their womenfolk were

high-piled with wreaths, of ilima, of roses, of heliotrope, carnations,

lilies, and scented green things; while the dense throng ashore was

hardly less garlanded, and streams of flowers flowed back and forth on

the gangways. A great humming of voices blent with the quivering strains

of an Hawaiian orchestra on the upper deck, and now and again all

tuneful din drowned in a patriotic burst from Berger’s Royal Hawaiian

Band ashore. An impressive scene it was, not alone for beauty, but in a

human way, for the myriad faces of the concourse shaded from white

through all the browns to yellow skins, mingling in good fellowship and

oneness of spirit in this hour of farewell to the lawmakers of their

common cause. And none of these wishing godspeed were more imposing nor

charming than the Hawaiians, from the two Princes and their splendid

consorts to the humblest commoners of their people. _Humblest_ is

wrong—there is no humility in the breed. Their eyes look only an

innocent equality of sweet frankness, and their feet step without fear

the soil they can but still regard as their dearest own.