Prince Cupid, the delegate, received round after round of cheers from

the passengers when a deep-mouthed siren called the parting moment; and

at the last, the native orchestra, descending the gangway, joined with

the wind instruments in Queen Liliuokalani’s own song, tenderest of

farewells and hopes for a returning, “Aloha Oe.” The human being did not

live whose heart was not conscious of a nameless longing for he knew not

what. One ached with burden of all the good-bys that ever were and ever

will be, of all the sailings of all the ships of all the world.

“O warp her out with garlands from the quays,”

went through my mind when the vessel glided slowly past the wharf, and

the ropes of living blossoms and network of wild-hued serpentine parted

and fell into the water. Flowers filled the air as they were tossed to

and from the gay decks of the ship, many falling into the stream, until

she moved upon a gorgeous tapestry that clung to her forefoot.

As the huge black transport cleared, suddenly her surface seemed flying

to pieces. A perfect fusillade of small dark objects in human form

sprang from her sides, rails, rigging, from every height of ringbolt and

sill, and disappeared in almost unrippling dives through the swirling

blossomy carpet of the harbor.

“Look—look at them!” Jack cried, incoherent with the excitement of his

joy in the kanaka imps who entered the water so perfectly and came up

shaking petals from their curly heads, white teeth flashing, their child

faces eloquent with expectation of a lucrative shower from the

passengers. A bountiful hour it was for them, and little their bright

eyes and brown hands lost of the copper and silver disks that slowly

angled through the bubbling flood. We wished we were down there with

them, for it is great fun to pick a coin from the deep as it filters

down with a short, tipping motion.

“Do you wish you were aboard, going back?” Jack asked, as we turned for

the last time to look at the diminishing bulk of the ship, bannered with

scarves and handkerchiefs and serpentine. I did not. I want to go home

only from east to west.

Such content is ours here at Waikiki, that it is a shame to press it all

into one life, for it could be spread over several incarnations. We

sleep like babies, in the salt night airs wafting through mosquito

canopies. Before breakfast, it is into the blissful warm tide, diving

through bubbling combers, coming up eyes level with tiny sails of

fishermen beyond the barrier reef. All hours one hears the steady,

gentle boom and splash of the surf—not the disturbing, ominous gnashing

and roaring of the Pacific Coast rollers, nor the carnivorous growlings

off the rock-jagged line of New England. And under sun or moon, it is

all a piece of beauty. Toward Diamond Head, when the south wind drives,

swift breakers, like endless charges of white cavalry, leap and surge

shoreward, flinging back long silver manes. The thrill of these landward

races never palls at Waikiki. One seems to vision Pharaoh’s Horses in

mighty contest with backwashing waters, arriving nowhere, dying and

melting impotent upon the sand.

Jack, to whom beauty is never marred by knowledge of its why and

wherefore, has explained to me the physics of a breaking wave.

“A wave is a communicated agitation,” he says. “The water that composes

a wave really does not move. If it moved, when you drop a stone in a

pool and the ripples widen in an increasing circle, there should be at

the center an increasing hole. So the water in the body of a wave is

stationary. If you observe a portion of the ocean’s surface, you will

see that the same water rises and falls endlessly to the agitation

communicated by endless successive waves. Then picture this communicated

agitation moving toward shore. As the land shoals, the bottom of the

wave hits first and is stopped. Water is fluid, and the upper part of

the wave not having been stopped, it keeps on communicating its

agitation, and moves on shoreward. Ergo,” says he, “something is bound

to be doing when the top of a wave keeps on after the bottom has

stopped, dropped out from under. Of course, the wave-top starts to fall,

forward, down, cresting, overcurling, and crashing. So, don’t you see?

don’t you see?” he warms to his illustration, “it is actually the bottom

of the wave striking against the rising land that causes the surf! And

where the land shoals gradually, as inside this barrier reef at Waikiki,

the rising of the undulating water is as gradual, and a ride of a

quarter of a mile or more can be made shoreward on the cascading face of

a wave.”

Alexander Hume Ford, true to promise, appeared to-day with an enormous

surf-board, made fun of the small ones that had been lent us, and we

went down to the sea to learn something of _hee-nalu_, sport of Hawaiian

kings. The only endeavor of fish, flesh, and fowl, which Mr. Ford seems

not to have partially compassed, is that of the feathered

tribe—undoubtedly from lack of time, for his energy and ambition seem

tireless enough even to grow feathers. Jack, who seldom stops short of

what he wants to accomplish, finds this man most stimulating in an

unselfish enthusiasm to revive neglected customs of elder islands days,

for the benefit of Hawaii and her advertisement to the world. Although

we have seen a number of natives riding the breakers, face downward, and

even standing upright, almost no white men appear to be expert. Mr.

Ford, born genius of pioneering and promoting, swears he is going to

make this islands pastime one of the most popular on earth, and judging

by his personal valor, he cannot fail.

The thick board, somewhat coffin-shaped, with rounded ends, should be

over six feet long. This plank is floated out to the breaking water,

which can be done either wading alongside or lying face-downward

paddling; and there you wait for the right wave. When you see it coming,

stand ready to launch the board on the gathering slope, spring upon it,

and—keep on going if you can. Lie flat on your chest, hands grasping

the sides of the large end of the heavy timber, and steer with your

feet. The expert, having gauged the right speed, rises cautiously to his

knees, to full stature, and then, erect with feet in the churning foam,

makes straight for the beach, rides up the sparkling incline, and steps

easily from his grounded sea-car.

A brisk breeze this afternoon, with a rising surf, brought out the best

men, and we saw some splendid natives at close range, who took our

breath away with their reckless, beautiful performance. One, George

Freeth, who is only one quarter Hawaiian, is accounted the best

surf-board rider and swimmer in Honolulu.

When a gloriously bodied Hawaiian, naked but for a loin-cloth carved

against his shining bronze, takes form like a miracle in the

down-rushing smother of a breaking wave, arms outstretched and heels

winged with backward-streaming spray, you watch, stricken of speech. It

is not the sheer physical splendor of the thing that so moves one, for,

lighting and informing this, is an all dominating spirit of joyful

fearlessness and freedom that manifests an almost visible soul, and

lends a slow thrilling of awe to one’s contemplation of the beauty and

wonder of the human. What was it an old Attic philosopher exclaimed?

“Things marvelous there are many, but among all naught moves more truly

marvelous than man.”

And our journalist friend, malihini, white-skinned, slim, duplicated the

act, and Jack murmured, “Gee! What a sport he is—and what a sport this

is for white men too!” His glowing eyes, and a well-known firm

expression about the jaw, told me he would be satisfied with nothing

less than hours a day in the deep-water smokers. As it was, in the small

surf, he came safely in several times. I accomplished one successful

landing, slipping up the beach precisely to the feet of some stranger

hotel guests, who were not half so surprised as myself. It took some

while to learn to mount the board without help, for it is a cumbrous and

unruly affair in the heaving water.

The rising tide was populous with Saturday afternoon bathers, but

comparatively few women, except close inshore. A fleet of young

surf-boarders hovered around Ford and his haole pupils, for he loves

children and is a great favorite with these. Often, timing our

propelling wave, we would find a brown and smiling cherub of ten or so,

all eyes and teeth, timing the same wave, watching with anxiety lest we

fail and tangle up with the pitching slice of hardwood. Not a word would

he utter—but in every gesture was “See! See! This way! It is easy!”

Several times, on my own vociferous way, I was spilled diagonally down

the face of a combing wave, the board whirling as it overturned, and

slithering up-ended, while I swam to bottom for very life, in fear of a

smash on the cranium. And once I got it, coming up wildly, stars

shooting through my brain. And once Jack’s board, on which he had lain

too far forward, dived, struck bottom, and flung him head over heels in

the most ludicrous somersault. His own head was struck in the ensuing

mix-up and we were able to compare size and number of stars. Of course,

his stars were the bigger—because my power of speech was not equal to

his. It seems to us both that never were we so _wet_ in all our lives,

as during those laughing, strenuous, half-drowned hours in the milk warm

surf.

Sometimes, just sometimes, when I want to play the game beyond my known

vitality, I almost wish I were a boy. I do my best, as to-day; but when

it comes to piloting an enormous weighty plank out where the high surf

smokes, above a depth of twelve to fifteen feet, I fear that no vigor of

spirit can lend my scant five-feet-two, short hundred-and-eleven, the

needful endurance. Mr. Ford pooh-poohs: “Yes, you can. It’s easier than

you think—but better let your husband try it out first.”

[Illustration: (1) Old Hawaiian. (2) The Sudden Vision. (3) The Mirrored

Mountains. (Painting by Hitchcock.)]

Waikiki, June 2.

An eventful day, this, especially for Jack, who is in bed thinking it

over between groans, eyes puffed shut with a strange malady, and

agonizing in a severe case of sunburn. I can sympathize to some extent,

for, in addition to a considerable roasting, my whole body is racked

with muscular quirkings and lameness from the natatorial gymnastics of

the past forty-eight hours. Our program to-day began at ten, with a

delirious hour of canoe riding in a pounding sea. While less individual

boldness is called upon, this game is even more exciting than

surf-boarding, for more can take part in the shoreward rush.

The great canoes are the very embodiment of royal barbaric sea

spirit—dubbed out of hard koa logs, long, narrow, over two feet deep,

with slightly curved perpendicular sides and rounded bottoms; furnished

with steadying outriggers on the left, known as the “i-á-ku”—two curved

timbers, of the light tough hardwood, their outer ends fastened to the

heavy horizontal spar, or float, of wili-wili, called the “a-ma,” nearly

the canoe’s length. The hulls are painted lusterless, dead black, and

trimmed by a slightly in-set, royal-yellow inch-rail, broadening upward

at each end of the boat, with a sharp tip. There is an elegance of

savage warlikeness about these long sable shapes; but the sole warfare

in this day and age is with Neptune, when, manned by shining bronze

crews, they breast or fight through the oncoming legions of rearing,

trampling, neighing sea cavalry.

It required several men on a side to launch our forty-foot canoe, and

altogether eight embarked, vaulting aboard as she took the water, each

into a seat only just wide enough. Jack wielded a paddle, but I was

placed in the very bow, where, both outward and back, the sharpest

thrills are to be had. As we worked reefward in the high breaking flood,

more than once breath was knocked out of me when the bow lunged straight

into a stiff wall of green water just beginning to crest. Again, the

canoe poised horizontally on the springing knife-edge of a tall wave on

the imminence of overcurling, and then, forward-half in midair, plunged

head-into the oily abyss, with a prodigious slap that bounced us into

space, deafened with the grind of the shore-going leviathan at our

backs. I could hear Jack laughing in the abating tumult of sound, as he

watched me trimming my lines so as to present the least possible surface

to the next deluge. He knew, despite my desperate clutches at the canary

streak on either hand, that I was having the time of my life, as, from

his own past experience, he had told me I would have.

It was more than usually rough, so that our brown crew would not venture

out as far as we had hoped, shaking their curly heads like serious

children at the big white water on the barrier reef. Then they selected

a likely wave for the slide home, shouting strange cries to one another

that brought about the turning of the stern seaward to a low green

mounting hill that looked half a mile long and ridged higher and higher

to the burst.

“‘A hill, a gentle hill, Green and of mild declivity,’... It is not!”

some one quoted and commented on his Byron and the threatening young

mountain, with firm hands grasping his paddle, when, at exactly the

right instant, he joined the frantic shrill “_Hoe! Hoe!_” (_Paddle!

paddle like—everything!_) that sent all the blades madly flying to

maintain equal speed with the abrupt, emerald slope. Almost on end,

_wiki-wiki, faster—faster, and yet faster_, we shot, ever the curl of

white water behind, above, overhanging, menacing any laggard crew. Once

I dared to look back. Head above head I marked them all; but never can

fade the picture of the last of all, a magnificent Hawaiian sitting

stark in the stern, hardly breathing, curls straight back in the wind,

his biceps bulging to the weight of canoe and water against the steering

paddle, his wide brown eyes reflecting all the responsibility of

bringing right-side-up to shore his haole freight.

And then the stern settles a little at a time, as the seething bulk of

water dissipates upon the gentle up-slope of the land before the Moana,

while dripping crew and passengers swing around in the backwash and work

out to repeat the maneuver.

Few other canoes were tempted out to-day, but we saw one capsize by

coasting crookedly down a wave. The yellow outrigger rose in air, then

disappeared in white chaos. Everything emerged on the sleek back of the

comber, but the men were unable in the ensuing rough water to right the

swamped boat. We lost sight of them as the next breaker set us zipping

inshore, but later saw them swimming slowly in, towing the canoe

bottom-upward, like a black dead sea monster, and making a picnic of

their plight.

An hour of this tense and tingling recreation left us surprisingly

tired, as well as chilled from the strong breeze on wet suits. Mr. Ford,

with a paternal “I-told-you-so” smile at our enthusiasm over the

canoeing, was prompt for the next event on our program, a further lesson

in surf-boarding. After assisting me for a time I noticed he and Jack

were sending desireful glances toward the leaping backs of Pharaoh’s

Horses, and I knew they wanted to be quit of the pony breakers

inshore—the _wahine_ (woman) surf, as the native swimmers have it, and

manfulwise ride the big water. Our friend had a thorough pupil in Jack,

who with characteristic abandon never touched foot to sand in four

broiling hours.

Nursing my own reddened skin in the cool tent-house, I saw a weary

figure dragging its feet across the lawns, which it was hard to

recognize for Jack until he came quite near. Face and body, he was

covered with large swollen blotches, like hives, and his mouth and

throat were closing painfully. Rather against his wish, I sent Tochigi

to summon a doctor. He had not given a thought during those four hours,

face-downward on the board, to the fact that under the vertical rays of

a tropic sun a part of him never before so exposed was being cooked

through and through. Shoulders and back of neck were cruelly grilled;

but the really frightful damage was to the backs of his legs, especially

the tender hind-side of the knee joints, which were actually warping so

rapidly that in a few moments he could not stand erect because the limbs

refused to straighten. Between us we managed to get him into bed, and

later on, restless with the intolerable pain of his ruined surfaces, and

thinking my room might be cooler, he could progress there only on _heels

and palms, face upward_. “Don’t let me laugh—it hurts too much,” he

moaned through swollen lips, realizing the preposterous spectacle.

Little aid could be rendered, either of diagnosis or practice, by the

physician, Dr. Charles B. Cooper. From his six-foot-odd of height he

bent wide, black eyes upon the piteous mass on my bed, that indisputably

required all known sun-burn remedies; but the swollen blotches were

plainly beyond him. He had observed cases of mouth and throat swelling

from fruit poisoning in the tropics; but this patient had eaten nothing

that he had not been living on for weeks. And also there was the

blotched body.

“Just my luck!” this from the sufferer. “I’m always running into

something no one ever saw or heard of! Although this is something like

the shingles I had on the _Sophie Sutherland_.”

Dr. Cooper left some medicine, and later his filled prescription came

from a druggist, to relieve the torturing burn. Meantime I kept up a

steady changing of cool, wet cloths on the warped legs, while Jack’s “It

can’t last forever!” was the best cheer under the circumstances, until

the blotches began to subside and the throat could swallow grateful

drafts of cold water, and a supper of long, iced poi-cocktail—“Such

beneficent stuff,” he dwelt upon it.

You! All whiteskins who would learn Ford’s rejuvenescent royal sport,

take warning that the “particular star” which illumes our world, despite

its insidiousness, is particularly ardent in Hawaiian skies.

Pearl Lochs, June 6.

Home in our Dream Harbor, after a full week away. The burning hours at

Waikiki were beguiled with cool cloths and reading aloud, Jack taking

his turn when I grew nervous with my own distressed cuticle and an

aching ear from diving. Out of his grip of varied reading matter, he had

selected Lilian Bell’s “The Under Side of Things”—I wonder if with

reference to his fried-and-turned-over condition! A Bulletin reporter

lightened a half hour in an interview upon our unplotted future around

the globe, and told us that our erstwhile sailing master, leaving

yesterday for the Coast on the _Sierra_, had given the impression that

he considered the _Snark_ unsafe.

“He built her!” was Jack’s only comment.

“And sailed over two thousand miles in her,” the newspaper man grinned.

On Tuesday, waiving all discussion, Jack got into his clothing, the

operation (not an unappropriate word) accompanied by running commentary

on things as they were, which would be both interesting and instructive

in a biographical sense, did one dare the editorial censor. Neither of

us was this day “admirin’ how the world was made,” and my widest

sympathy was with his fevered sentiments concerning astronomy, geology,

the starry hereafter, mid-Pacific watering places—and

Alexander-Hume-Fords.

“But I warned you, and warned you!” fended poor Ford, suppressing a

snicker as the fervid cripple, now on his feet, essayed a step or two.

“And you’re luckier than I was the first time I got burned—worse than

you are—and by mistake used capsicum vaseline!—And anyway, I really

did think you had become toughened a bit on your month at sea.”

With stiff-crooked legs, for he could neither unbend nor further bend

the knees, and feet pitched some twenty inches apart, Jack’s action was

perforce unlike that of any known biped. So enamored did he become of

the wonder of it that he insisted upon employing it to progress to the

lanai for luncheon, where his most pitying acquaintances failed to keep

back their mirth. Be assured he enjoyed it all as much as they, for the

lessening hurt made him very happy. An hour face-downward on the beach

that fateful afternoon had not improved my own carriage, but I was not

unwilling to risk it on a short trip along Kalakaua Avenue to the

Aquarium, which Jack, from his memories, had pronounced a world-wonder.

In the cool many-roomed grotto, built of quarried lava, we forgot all

earthly dole, spellbound before the incredible forms and colors of the

sentient rainbows.

It is impossible to communicate an adequate idea of these color

organisms. If an object could be laughably lovely, any one of these fish

would serve; Striped Roman scarf effects showed behind the glass as if

in a shop window display; polka-dot patterns in color schemes beyond

imagining; against the crystal lay figured designs that manufacturers

would make no mistake in copying. And all were possessed of an

iridescent quality that made one expect them to melt into the shifting

greens of their element, as they faded into the farther spaces of the

tanks. But presently they would intensify, coming on larger and brighter

like marine headlights in Elfland.

One fish was an aquatic bird-of-paradise for hues, with a long spine

like an aigrette springing from midway of a body almost as round as a

coin and not much larger, with golden-brown beak and bold black eye. His

name was the kihi-kihi. The hinaleanukuiwi was a turquoise-blue,

five-inch shuttle, terminating in a peacock-blue wisp of tail, with fins

like ruffles tipped with stripes of yellow and black, and a long blue

needle for beak. The fins back of and below its beaded eyes were tiny

azure butterflies striped two ways with purple and gold; and on each

side the turquoise body a splotch of opaque gold rested like a sunbeam.

Around this bright blue marvel slowly wove one of magenta as vivid, and

half as long, of familiar shape but with the bulging eye of a frog

shaded by a thick ruby lid, two pale-pink fins shaped like

center-boards, and a dorsal fin carrying five smartly raked masts.

The kikakapu did not look his bristly name, being a mere shapeless

handful of pigments—green as a parrot, with birdlike head of harlequin

opal and parrot eye of black and yellow. Half of the dorsal was a

black-velvet spot rimmed with gold, his tail two shades of gray with a

root of scarlet. I have not patience to spell the name of an almost

perfect oval of blue black, with a flaming autumn leaf on each side, a

narrow dorsal of shaded rose and salmon-yellow bearing a dotted line of

red, and a gray and red flag for tail, while two sapphire-blue feathers

trailed underneath. Next him flaunted a bright yellow fish that had

patently been scissored midlength and grown a stiff mauve tail in the

middle of its vertical rear, to match a mauve-velvet, long-beaked face.

A canary-wing formed this one’s dorsal fin, and two absurd back-slanted

spikes and a ribby trailer decorated its horizontal base.

The opule and the luahine were both meant to be normally formed,—the

first, speckled on top like a mountain trout, its frills red and black

and blue, jaw crimson spotted, with grass-green gills and tiny gilt

fins, and on its dark sides three parallel rows of larger dots, and one

dropped below, of startling blue, each with an electric light behind!

The second, all brown save for a scarlet headlight on the tall dorsal,

was similarly lit up, all over, fins as well, the head zigzagged with

lightning streaks of the same electric blue. The akilolo wore cold blue

jewels on plum satin, with electric-green stripes on its head, crimson

and green fins and sharply demarked rudder of yellow.

One lovely thing would have been a little heart of gold, if its

white-and-gilt tail had not transformed it into a prefect ace of spades.

Another, modestly fashioned, bore pink fins socketed in emerald like the

head and tail, a yellow stomach, seal-brown back, with three broad

downward bands of the emerald joining a wide lateral band of the same,

decorated in hollow squares of indigo! There were also dainty

mother-of-pearl forms, and gorgeous autumnal petals of the ocean

drifting among the jeweled swimming creatures, with little rainbow crabs

lying on the bottom of sand and shells, and other crannied creatures.

An imaginative child could spin unending day dreams about these living

pictures in the Honolulu Aquarium; and for nightmares, there be

excellent specimens of the octopus family. These squid we have on the

Pacific Coast, but there is no way of observing them. Mr. Potter, the

superintendent, said his were unusually active to-day, and we saw them

displaying all their paces—a very useful spectacle for those who may

venture among the more unfrequented coral hummocks at Waikiki. A wader

can be made very uncomfortable by their ugly ability to attach to a rock

and a victim at one and the same time. They showed their fighting colors

through the glass, coming straight at us, their little devil’s-heads set

with narrow serpent-eyes glinting maliciously, and sharp turtle-beaks;

all their tentacles—awful constricting arms covered with awful

suckers—cast behind in the lightning dart.

When attacked, the squid opens an “ink bag,” fouling the water to the

confusion of its enemy. A native in trouble with one bites its head, and

to such mortal wound the pediculate marine dragon gives up the ghost.

The only thing about the squid that is not unpleasant is its color—in

action a rosy tan; but when curled in the rock crevices, protective

tinting makes it hard to find. Mr. Potter dropped some tiny crabs into

the tank from behind the scenes which caused an exhibition not soon to

be forgotten. The almost invisible squid, watching with one bright eye,

unwreathed its eight flexile, trailing limbs, rose swiftly, swooped, and

enfolded the prey as with a swirl of grey net or veiling. When the

monster presently unwound, the mites of crabs had been absorbed.

“And the Creator sat up nights inventing that,” Jack observed with

sacrilegious gravity. The superintendent looked appropriately startled,

but not unappreciative.

This Honolulu Aquarium, though small, is said to surpass in the beauty

of its exhibit anything in the world, not excepting the Italian; and

fancy our surprise to learn that it is not maintained by the Territory,

nor yet by the city, existing solely by the enterprise of the electric

railway company. The “colored” fish are recruited from the chance catch

of fishermen and from adjacent reefs by the Aquarium attendants. It is

not easy to understand why Honolulu remains luke-warm with regard to

this, one of her greatest attractions. Mr. Ford should be spoken to

about it!

Hawaii is a paradise for the visiting fisherman, where can be hooked

anything from a shark to small fry of various sorts, whether “painted”

or otherwise. Among the many game fish may be named black sea bass,

barracuda in schools, albacore, dolphin, swordfish, yellow-tail, amber

fish, leaping tuna and several other kinds of tuna—these of unthinkable

weight and size. And flying fish may be picked off with rifle or

shotgun—or netted, as by the old Hawaiians.[4]

Ever keen on the trail of Why and Wherefore, Jack has left no stone of

research unturned as to the cause of the violent swelling that succeeded

his sunburning, and has finally diagnosed it as urticaria.

Glad are we to rest once more in our Sweet Home, in sight of that bright

reminder of the long voyage yet to be, the _Snark_ and her unwonted

clatter of active repairs. For a Captain Rosehill has accepted the

commission, and “dry bones are rattling,” as Jack chuckled a moment ago

from the hammock. The sad old sea-dog has taken hold with a vengeance,

but professes little respect for all the modern “fol-de-rol of gewgaws”

that he found lying around, costly labor-saving gear, unavailing only

because of the ruinous mishandling it received in the post-earthquake

days of building. But standing with huge, limp-hanging arms, he _almost_

half-smiled at our big sea anchor—an article he has always yearned to

possess. Clearly it is the one thing aboard with which he is satisfied.

Jack finds endless source of amusement in his skipper and the

irrepressible Schwank, who, it seems, once sailed together. The

experience evidently has not endeared one to the other, and all our

gravity is taxed when the pair display their divergent ways of showing

dislike and contempt. Rosehill is a man of few words; but words are not

needed when Schwank’s name is mentioned. The sound of that raucous

proper noun curdles the old sailor’s sober and asymmetrical features. On

the other hand, Schwank is voluble and expressive. Never in his wildest

tales of that ill-starred voyage with Rosehill has he hinted that he was

ship’s cook under Rosehill. When he recounts how the vessel was wrecked,

one would conclude that Schwank had been in command instead of the

other, and, in giving this intentional twist, he loses sight of the fact

that it looks much as if he, Schwank, must be responsible for the loss.

“I told Rosehill to brace up,” he will roar pompously, throwing a mighty

chest. He always appears about to rise triumphant from the solid earth.

Nor has he lost all of his piratical tendencies. From his acre of

fruitful soil, he sells produce at extortionate prices, and is clever

enough to vend the same through his most beautiful offspring. When

Maria-of-the-Seraph-Smile or Ysabel-of-the-Divine-Gaze stands before me

in the very artistry of colorful and revealing tatters, proffering a

scraggly pineapple or an abortive tomato, valued at Israelitic sums,

they are not to be gainsaid. The pleasure is mine to be robbed.

Pearl Lochs, June 7.

When you come to Hawaii, do not fail to visit one of the big sugar

plantations, to see the working of this foremost industry of the

Territory, for nowhere in the world has it been brought to such

perfection. Mr. Ford had arranged a trip to the Ewa Plantation, a short

distance by rail southwest of the Lochs. With him came a young South

African millionaire, who was much more bent upon discussing socialism

with Jack London than inspecting sugar mills—although in the varied

nationalities among the laborers he might find a rare mine of

sociological data.

The railroad traverses a level of country dotted with pretty villages

peopled by imported human breeds. In my mind’s eye lingers one wee

hamlet like a jewel in the sun—a cluster of little Portuguese shacks

covered with brilliant flowering vines and hedged with scarlet hibiscus,

all imaged in an unrippled stream that brimmed even with its green

banks. Not for nothing were these sunny-blooded children of Portugal

blessed with wide and beautiful eyes; for they can see no virtue in a

dwelling that is not surrounded and entwined with living color. No

matter how squalid their circumstance, they do not rest until growing

things begin to weave a covering of beauty. The tourist could not please

himself more than by hunting out these adoptive spots of color in

Hawaii.

Our station was in the center of the Plantation, which embraces about

5,000 acres. It was the far-sighted sire of Princess Kawananakoa, Mr.

Campbell, who only ten years ago bought this property for one dollar an

acre. Last year its output of sugar was over 29,000 tons. One alone of

the underground pumping plants which we wandered through, cost $180,000;

and every day 70,000,000 gallons of water are pumped on this Plantation.

The manager devoted his day to our party. It must be more or less of a

satisfaction, however, to a man of his patent capabilities, lord over

the complicated affairs of such a project and its horde of workers, to

display his achievement to men who can comprehend its enormousness and

possibilities.

In comfortable chairs on a flat car drawn by a small locomotive, over a

network of tracks that intersect the property, we rode from point to

point, meanwhile simmering gently in the moist hot air thick with odor

of growing cane, or, near the huge mill, of sugar in the making. The

land reminded us of Southern California in springtime, with tree-arbored

roads and flower-drifted banks and fine irrigating ditches. We want to

spend a day on horseback at Ewa, in the lanes and byways with their

lovely vistas. Judging from Mr. Renton’s own leisurely enjoyment of the

occasion and frequent halting of the car that we might gather

wildflowers and wild red tomatoes the size of cranberries, one would not

have dreamed how busy a man he is.

It is hard, in the peaceful heart of this agricultural prospect, to

realize that not long ago it was a place dark with pain and blood and

terror. For here, a hundred and eleven years ago, Kamehameha the Great

dedicated a temple, _heiau_, with human sacrifices, preparatory to

sailing for Kauai on conquest bent.

Sugar cane is classified as a “giant perennial grass,” but, unlike most

members of the grass family, has solid stems, and grows from eight to

twenty feet high. The origin of cane in these islands is unknown though

it is thought to have been introduced from the South Sea Islands by

early native navigators in their exploring canoes. It was used as an

article of diet at the time white men first set foot in Hawaii, but not

made into sugar until about 1828; and less than a decade afterward the

first exportation of sugar was shipped. Primitive stone or wooden

rollers pressed out the sweet juice, which was boiled in crude iron

vessels. Present-day processes have been brought to a high state of

scientific excellence, and probably no plant in the world has been so

exhaustively exploited. The red lava soil, decomposed through the ages,

has been found through experimentation to be the most productive, and

the irrigation scheme of one of these large plantations, with its

artesian wells and mountain reservoirs whence water is carried great

distances, is a colossal feat of engineering.

A man once wrote that agriculture in the tropics consisted of not

hindering the growth of things. But the raising and converting into

sugar of these vast areas of rustling sugar-in-the-stem is not such

smooth luck, for either employer or employed. He who would manufacture

sugar has many formidable if infinitesimal foes to success, among which

are named the nimble leaf hopper, the cane borer, the leaf roller, the

mole cricket, the mealy bug, the cypress girdler, and Fisher’s rose

beetle, known locally as the Olinda bug. To discover the natural enemies

of these pests requires an able corps of entomologists seeking over the

face of the globe, as well as working sedulously in the Experiment

Station in Honolulu.

The mill, with its enormous processes, I shall not attempt to describe

further than to assure that it is a place of breathless interest and

wonder. One sees and tastes the sugar in its successive phases of

manufacture, up to the point where it is shipped to the States for the

last stage of refining.

And more absorbing than these technicalities of the Plantation were the

human races represented among the workers who live and labor, are born,

married, and die within its confines. Through a bewilder of foreign

villages we wandered on foot—Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Norwegian,

Spanish, Swedish, Korean, Porto Rican; even the Russians were here but

lately. One cannot fail to note the scarcity of Hawaiian laborers—and

rejoice in it, for they are proud and free creatures, and it would seem

pity to bind them on their own soil. On the other hand, there is no

gainsaying that they are capable toilers when they will. Indeed, it is

said that they accomplish twice the work that a Japanese is willing to

do in a day; but following pay day the Hawaiian is likely not to appear

again until all his money is gloriously squandered. He is strong and

trustworthy, and makes an excellent overseer, or _luna_, as well as

teacher; for he is not merely imitative, but intelligent in applying

what he has learned.

We were led into schools and kindergartens maintained for the scores of

children, and presided over for the most part by white women. In one

room there was a Japanese-Hawaiian teacher—a sweet and maidenly young

thing, her Nipponese strain lending an elusive delicacy to the round

warm native features. In faultless English she explained the duties of

her schoolroom, showing great pride in a sewing class then in session,

and pointing through the window to where the boys of her class could be

seen putting the yard to rights.

I thought we could never leave the kindergartens, with their engaging

babies of endless colors and variety of lineaments, pure types and

crossbred. Most beautiful of all were the Portuguese, with only one

drawback to their childish charm—the grave maturity of their faces.

Bella, however, two-years-tiny, golden-eyed and gold-tawny of skin,

forgot her temperamental soberness and coquetted shamelessly from an

absurd chair in the circle on the bright floor, when she should have

been attending to Teacher. But even Bella came to grief. Like some other

coquettes she was winningly familiar at a distance; but when I tried to

cultivate a closer acquaintance with the young pomegranate blossom, and

take a picture of her loveliness, she fell victim to a panic of

embarrassment and terror that ended in violent weeping in Teacher’s lap.

Homeward bound, it seemed as if we had been transported to and from a

foreign land for the day, though what land was the problem, in view of

the manifold types we had walked among.

In the soft black evening, some of our neighbors drifted across the

yielding turf beneath the ancient trees, the women taking form in the

velvet dark like tall spirit vestals trailing dim draperies and swirling

incense. We lay in the cool grass, the lighted ends of our scented punks

flitting and darting like fireflies, and listened to Peer Gynt from the

Victor indoors, and Mascagni’s orchestral paradises of sound, Patti’s

rippling treble, and Emma Eames’s clear fluting of “Still as the Night,”

floating upward to the sighing obligato of a rising wind from across the

rustling reef-waters.

Sweet land of palms and peace, love and song—and yet, those who knew

her in days gone by would walk sadly now in remembered haunts. Old faces

are missing, and faces resembling them are few. The Hawaii of yesterday

passes, and it makes even the stranger pensive to see the changing. To

one who views her from the height of his heart, a bright commercial

future is cold compensation for the irreplaceable loss of the old

Hawaii.

Pearl Lochs, June 11.

A bit of real Hawaii was ours last night—Hawaii as she is, with more

than a trace of what she has been. It came about through an invitation

from one of our neighbors, who owns the cemetery near Pearl City, to

accompany his wife and himself to a native _luau_ (loo-ah-oo—quickly,

loo-ow), meaning feast. And a luau becomes a _hookupu_ when the guests

bring the food. We four were the only white guests, for in these latter

days the natives are chary of including foreigners in their more

intimate entertainments. But for our friend’s confidential and

sympathetic relation toward them, nothing would have induced them to

consent to our intrusion.

The feast was a sort of “benefit,” given at the christening of the baby

of one “Willie,” this being a familiar custom among the people. Mr.

Willie and his pretty, giggly wife were in a small frenzy of hospitality

and diffidence at receiving a man who writes books, and ran out to the

gate calling “Come in! Come in! Come in!” in rapid sweet staccato.

We should have preferred to remain in the garden of palms and flowers.

But we were ushered to the cottage, where one glance into the hot little

parlor, fainting with heavy-scented bouquets, every window sealed tight

as if in a New England winter, taught us that this was the pride of

their simple, generous lives, with its neat furniture and immaculate

“tidies” on chair, sofa, and exact center-table. Head and neck and

shoulders, we were garlanded with ropes of buff ginger blossoms twined

with mailé, and sat around straight-backed in delighted discomfort,

praying for fans. Admiring the handsome slumbering infant who was the

object and beneficiary of the festival, we strove the while to express

to our host and hostess how glad and honored we felt to be with them.

From the cool twilight lanai floated in the most bewitching, sleepy,

sensuous music, rippled through with gurgles of lazy laughter.

Presently, left to wander at will, whom should we discover in the happy

huddle of musicians but Madame Alapai herself, not at all the grand

prima of her Prince’s park, but a benevolent, smiling wahine, robed

simply like all the rest in spotless white holoku, and unaffectedly

ready, once her sudden, laughing bashfulness was conquered, to warble

anything and everything she knew.

The coyness of these winsome brown women is only skin deep, for to

smiles and sincerity they warm and unfold like their own tropic blossoms

to the morning sun. Deliciously they laugh at everything or nothing,

with an abandon that does not tire, but draws the becharmed malihini

fervently to wish he were one of them for the nonce—a product of

sunshine and dew and affection, without painful responsibility, with no

care but the living, loving present.

Madame Alapai accompanied the first American tour of the Royal Hawaiian

Band. The story runs that she was prepared to go on the second, but her

husband, jealous of her successes and advantages, decided he needed a

change of air and scene, and made the manager of his song-bird a

proposition the prompt rejection of which cost the band its prima donna.

His amiable suggestion was that he travel with the troupe and be paid a

salary for the honor of his mere company, since he possessed no

marketable talent. It seemed enough to his limited vision that he should

allow his wife to earn _her_ salary. Be it credited the lady that the

facts were made public without her assistance, for she remains guiltless

of shaming her life-companion by ridicule or criticism. When asked why

she did not go to the Coast the second time, she replies, with a

slightly lofty air that is without offense, what of its childlikeness:

“Oh, they wanted me to go, but I refused.”

She sang for us without reserve, out of her very good repertory. Her

voice is remarkable, and I never heard another of its kind, for it is

more like a stringed instrument than anything I can think of—metallic,

but sweetly so, pure and true as a lark’s, with falls and slurs that are

indescribably musical and human. The love-eyed men and women lounging

about her with their guitars and ukuleles, garlanded with drooping roses

and carnations and ginger, were commendably vain of showing off their

first singer in the land, and thrummed their loveliest to her every

song. None can waken strings as do these people. Their fingers bestow

caresses to which wood and steel and cord become sentient and

tremulously responsive.

The ukulele, with its petite guitar-shape, and four slender strings,

seems a part of the Hawaiian at every merrymaking. It hailed originally

from Portugal, but one seldom remembers this, so native has it become to

the Islands. Primitive Hawaiians played on a crude little affair that

was a mere stick from the wood of the _ulei_, a flowering indigenous

shrub. The tuneful stick was cut eighteen or twenty inches long and

three or four wide, strung across with gut, and was held in the teeth

like a Jew’s harp, while the strings were swept with a fine grass-straw.

Lovers thus whispered through their teeth an understood language of

longing and trysting, the light wood vibrating the voice to some

distance in the still night.

From temporary arbors broke the clatter of busy wahines making ready the

feast, and new guests laughed their way into the garden. Our nostrils

twitched to unknown but appetizing odors. We expected as a matter of

course that we should be invited to sit cross-legged on grass-mats, and

were disappointed to find a table prepared for the more distinguished of

the company.

At every place was a heap of food so attractive that one did not know

which mysterious packet to open first. Each diner had at least a quart

of poi, of the approved royal-pink tint, in a big shiny goblet carved

from a coconut thinned and polished and scalloped around the brim, and

this substance as usual formed the pièce de résistance. There are

varying consistencies of poi. The “one-finger” poi is thick enough to

admit of a mouthful being twirled at one twirl upon the forefinger;

two-fingered poi is thinner, requiring two digits to carry the required

portion. I do not know whether or not three-fingered poi is ever

exceeded; but if it is, I am sure no true Hawaiian or kamaaina would

hesitate to apply his whole fist to it.

It is etiquette to sample every delicacy forthwith, rather than to

finish any one or two until all have been tasted. And we depended solely

upon our fingers in place of forks and spoons. A twist of poi on the

forefinger is conveyed neatly to the lips, followed by a pinch of salt

salmon, for seasoning, or of hot roast fish or beef or fowl steaming in

freshly opened leaf-wrappings; for this is the incomparable way roast

foods are prepared, then laid in the ground among heated stones, and

covered with earth. Thus none of the essential flavor is liberated until

the clean hot leaves of the ti-plant, or the canna in absence of the ti,

are removed at table.

There was also chicken stewed in coconut milk, sweet and tasty; for

relishes, outlandish forms of sea-life, particularly the _opihis_

(o-pe-hees), salt and savory, which we may come to prefer to raw

oysters. Mullet is eaten raw, cut in tempting little gray cubes and

dusted with coarse red salt. Jack pronounced it one of his favorite

articles of diet henceforth. I may in time acquire a liking for

well-seasoned raw fish, which in all logic is less offensive than live

raw oysters and squirming razor-back clams; but fairly certain am I that

never shall I assimilate _ake_ (ah-kay)—which is raw liver and chile

peppers.

Small crabs, _alemihi_, were very good, and pinkish round tidbits from

squid tentacles; to say nothing of some little parboiled lobsters.

[Illustration: (1) Diamond Head. (2) A Pair of Jacks—Atkinson and

London. (3) Ahuimanu.]

One toothsome accompaniment to a Hawaiian meal is the _kukui_, or

candlenut (_Aleurites Moluccana_). Its meat is baked and crushed, then

mixed with native salt. Pinches of this relish, called _i-na-mo-na_, are

taken with poi and other viands, and it is sometimes stirred in to

season a mess of raw mullet. The kukui tree, a comparatively recent

introduction from the South Seas, has nearly as many uses as the coconut

palm, for aside from the gustatory excellence of its nut, a gum from the

bark is valuable, and a dye found in the nut shell was formerly used to

paint the intricate patterns of the tapa that served for clothing. This

dye also formed a waterproofing for tapa cloaks, and with it tattoo

artists drew fashionable designs into the flesh of their patrons, who

also rubbed their bodies with oil pressed from the nut, especially in

making them slippery for wrestling and fighting. The nuts strung on the

midrib of a coconut leaf formed the Hawaiians’ only torch. The oil of

the nut, expressed under pressure, is a valuable paint oil.

For the drinking we were given choice of a mild beer and “pop”

(soda-water of various colors), and coconut water in the shell; and for

dessert, the not unpleasant anti-climax of good old vanilla ice cream to

remind us that Hawaii has long been in the grasp of Jack’s “inevitable

white man.”

Next came the dancing. Mr. Moore had promised us a hula; but a hula,

except by professional dancers, is more easily promised than delivered.

The native must be in the precise right humor before any performance is

forthcoming for the malihini. Our pleasant task was to overcome the

shyness that whelmed both Kanakas and wahines when we coaxed them to

show their paces. Few, very likely, had ever danced before strangers.

Indeed, for the most part, the hula is frowned upon by haole residents.

And the majority of these were simple rural folk with a terror of

wrong-doing. I think the Hawaiians are quick to detect a meretricious

gayety or any patronizing, overdone familiarity; and to make them feel

one’s genuine interest in their customs is the only means by which to

establish a basis of confidence. Left to themselves, they will dance

anywhere at any time. Tochigi witnessed his first hula on Toby’s train!

He did not comment upon it; but after seeing Americans dance, each

couple following its own method, he had respectfully observed that he

thought we danced more for our own pleasure than for that of onlookers.

At length a bolder or more persuadable spirit, yearning to express the

real general desire to please, broke through the crust of reserve and

began a series of convolutions to the endless two-step measure of

guitars and ukuleles that during the luau had throbbed in a leafy corner

of the grass shelter.

Arch faces lighted, hands clapped and feet beat time, eyes and teeth

flashed in the dim light of lanterns and lamps, and flower-burdened

shoulders swung involuntarily to the rhythm. One after another added the

music of his throat to an old hula that has never seen printer’s ink,

while the violin threnody of the Alapai raised the plaintive, savage

lilt to something incommunicably high and haunting.

Jack seemed in a trance, his eyes like stars, while his broad shoulders

swayed to the measure. Discovering my regard, caught in his emotion of

delight in this pregnant folk dance and song, he did not smile, but

half-veiled his eyes as he laid a hand on mine in token of

acknowledgment of my comprehension of his deep mood. For in every

manifestation of human life, he goes down into the tie ribs of racial

development, as if in eternal quest to connect up the abysmal past with

the palpable present.

A pause, full of murmurs and low laughter, then a strapping young wahine

with the profile of Diana seized an old guitar. With a shout to another

girl to get on her feet, she leaned over and swept the strings

masterfully with the backs of her fingers, at the same time setting up a

wanton, thrilling hula song that was a love cry in the starlight, each

repeated phrase ending in a fainting, crooning, tremulous falsetto which

trailed into a vanishing wisp of sound. She could not sit quietly, but

swung her body and lissom limbs in rhythm like a wild thing possessed,

seeming to galvanize the dancers by sheer force of will, for one by one

they sprang to the bidding of her voice and magnetic fingers, into the

flickering light where they swayed and bent and undulated like mad sweet

nymphs and fauns. Now and again a brown sprite separated from the moving

group, and came to dance before the haole guests, the dance a

provocation to join the revelry. Sometimes the love appeal was

unmistakable, accompanied by singing words we wotted not of, but which

were the cause of good-natured merriment from the others. Then abruptly

the performer would become impersonal in face and gesture, and melt back

into the weaving group.

After a while the dancing lagged, and we sensed it was time to relieve

these kind people of our more or less restraining presence. They had

done so much, and to wear out such welcome would have been a crime

against good heart and manners.

Having neglected to ask the obliging Tony to wait his dummy, down the

track we footed, listening to small noises of the night, among which was

the sighing of water buffalo, those grotesque gray shapes that patiently

toil by day in the rice fields.

Pearl Lochs, June 14.

At luncheon to-day Miss Johnson introduced us to a girl from Maine, and

it was a unique experience to sit in the hot-house air, gazing out upon

the hot-house vegetation, the while we conversed in “down-east”

colloquialisms. “Did you see her jump at the sound of that falling

leaf!” Jack laughed on the way home, for the young stranger had been not

the only one startled when a twenty-foot frond let go its parent palm

and crashed to earth.

Our captain of the roseate name is painting the _Snark_, and she floats,

a boat of white enamel, in the still blue and silver of the morning

flood; while for frame to the fair picture a painted double-rainbow

overarches, flinging the misty fringes of its ends in our enraptured

faces. From the shell-pink dawn, through the green and golden day, to

sunset and purple twilight and starshine, we move in beauty. “What a lot

of people must have been shanghaied here by their own desire!” Jack

ruminates. And truly, Hawaii is sufficient excuse for never going home.

One of our pleasures, of a Sunday, is watching the yachts from Honolulu

sail into Pearl Harbor and slant about on the crisping water, for a look

at the _Snark_. Last Sunday came a corps of young engineers from the

Iron Works, who had offered to give their holiday for the fellow who

wrote “The Game” and “The Sea Wolf.” Jack was much touched; and

especially pleased at the tribute to “The Game,” which novel is a

favorite of his own.

Last evening we had opportunity again to come in contact with the

Hawaiians, receiving a party in our sylvan drawing- and music-room. Miss

Johnson had told us that Judge Hookano (Ho-o-kah-no), the native

district judge at Pearl City, wished to bring his wife to call. To our

prompt invitation they responded with the large immediate family as well

as more distant relatives. One of these, who dislikes Americans, during

a conversation with Miss Johnson concerning the Londons, remarked: “Oh,

yes, the English are always very nice.” “But the Londons are

American—very American!” Miss Johnson straightened her out. However,

the dusky lady was cordial enough when our meeting took place, as were

all the party. The Judge proved an intelligent and kindly soul, and Mrs.

Hookano whom we had long admired at a distance, is a magnificently

proportioned woman with the port of a queen, always attired in stately

lines of black lawn or silk.

None of our visitors had heard Hawaiian music on the phonograph and

clapped their shapely hands over the hulas like joyous children. But

those merry hands folded devoutly when the Trinity Choir voices rose on

the night air, and all joined in singing the harmonies of “Lead, Kindly

Light” and the several other beautiful hymns. The spirit of these folk

is so sweet, so guileless; I know I shall love them forever. Manners

among them are gentle and considerate, so courteous in every

conventional observance, prompted by their simple, affectionate hearts.

Hookano means _proud_, and these who bear the name demonstrate a

blending of pride and gentlehood that is altogether aristocratic.

While Jack manipulated the talking-machine, I lay happily with head in a

friendly lap, while satin-brown fingers caressed face and hair; looking

high through the lacy foliage to where big stars hung like bright fruit

in the branches. Jack ended the machine-made concert with the Hawaiian

National Anthem, and the Judge removed his hat and stood, the others

rising about him. Then we cajoled them into contributing their own

music, and after some hesitation, untinged by the faintest

unwillingness, they settled dreamily to singing their melodies—brown

velvet maids with laughing, shining eyes, who warbled in voices thin and

penetrating as sweet zither-strings, softly, as if afraid to vex the

calm night with greater volume.

At parting we walked to the gate, arms around the shoulders of our new

friends, their own Aloha nui on our lips. And every aloha spoken or sung

in Hawaii is the tender tone-fall of a dying bell, tolling for the olden

Hawaii Nei.

Then, arms-around, we two paced back across the grass, and stood for a

moment on the edge of our bewitching garden, looking at the slender

sliver of a new moon of good omen dipping low above the shadowy hills.

Waikiki, June 25.

Once more in the tent-cottage at Waikiki, as the hub for many spokes of

exploration in the Islands. I mistrust we shall never again pursue the

idyllic life of the peninsula. Unfortunately, no way has been devised to

live in two or more places simultaneously—except in the imagination,

and that we can richly do. Artemus Ward is responsible for the delicious

paradox: “No man can be in two places at once unless he is a bird.”

Many jaunts are in prospect: an automobile journey around Oahu; a yacht

race girdling the same island, on which “Wahine Kapu,” no woman, is writ

large upon the visages of the yachtsmen; a torchlight fishing expedition

fifty miles distant with Prince Cupid, under the same no-petticoat

mandate; a wonderful trip to Maui, to camp through the greatest extinct

crater in the world, Haleakala, said to surpass Ætna in extent and

elevation; and Jack has been deftly pulling wires to bring about a visit

for us both to the famous Leper Settlement on Molokai, which is said to

occupy one of the most beautiful sites in the Islands. Lucius E.

Pinkham, president of the Board of Health, has been our guest to dinner,

and not only has he put no obstacles in our way, but appears anxious for

us to see Molokai. There has been considerable misrepresentation of the

Settlement, and he evidently believes that Jack will paint a just

picture. Mr. Pinkham seems to have the welfare of the lepers close at

heart; and I have heard that when he fails to obtain from the Government

certain appropriations for improvements, he draws on his own funds.

Thus, the air is brimful of glamour and interest, which helps to offset

a tender regret for the lovely Lochs and for our neighbors who have been

so lavish in neighborliness. One night before we departed, the Hookano

young folk arranged a crabbing party, and sang the hours away under the

light of a half-moon; another time, at sunset, we fished off the lee

shore of the peninsula, where we landed a mess of “colored fish” like a

flock of wet butterflies.

Here at the Beach life is so gay there is hardly chance to sleep and

work, what with arrivals of transports and the ensuing frivolities in

the hotel lanai, varied by swimming and surf-boarding under sun and

moon. One fine day we essayed to ride the breakers in a Canadian canoe,

and capsized in a wild smoker exactly as we had been warned. I stayed

under water such a time that Jack, alarmed, came hunting for me; but I

was safe beneath the overturned canoe, which I was holding from bumping

my head. He was so relieved to find me unhurt and capable of staying

submerged so long that promptly he read me a lecture upon swimming as

fast as possible from a capsized boat, to avoid being struck in event of

succeeding rollers flinging it about.

One night we attended a moonlight swimming party at a seaside home and

became acquainted with more of the white Islands’ kamaainas. A lovely

custom prevails here among the owners, who, in absences abroad, allow

friends the use of their suburban places for occasions of this kind.

Across the hedges we peeped into the next garden where, in the smother

of scented foliage, there still lurks the house Robert Louis Stevenson

once occupied.

After a military dance at the hotel last evening, tables were carried

out on the lawn to the sands-edge, where supper was served by silent,

swift Japanese in white. It was like a dream, there among the trees hung

with soft rosy lights, our eyes sweeping the horizon touched by a low

gold disk of moon, and on across the effervescing foam of an ebbing tide

at our feet, and the white sea horses charging the crescent beach, to

Diamond Head purple black against the star-dusted southern sky. “Do you

know where you are?” And there was but one answer to Jack’s

whisper—“Just Waikiki,” which tells it all. The charm of Waikiki—it is

the charm of Hawaii Nei, “All Hawaii.”

June 28.

To Mr. Ford we owe a new debt of gratitude. And so does Hawaii, for such

another promoter never existed. All he does is for Hawaii, desiring

nothing for himself except the pleasure of sharing the attractions of

his adopted land. The past two days have been spent encircling Oahu, or

partly so, since only the railroad continues around the entire

shore-line, the automobile drive cutting across a tableland midway of

the island. Oahu comprises an area of 598 square miles, is trapezoidal

in shape, its coast the most regular of any in the group. Another

notable feature is that it possesses two distinct mountain chains,

Koolau and Waianae, whereas the other islands have isolated peaks and no

distinct ranges. Waianae is much the older of the two. The geology of

this volcanic isle is a continual temptation to diverge.

Two machines carried ten of us, including the drivers. The party was

composed of men whom Mr. Ford wanted Jack to know, representing the best

of Hawaii’s white citizenship. There was Mr. Joseph P. Cooke, dominating

figure of Alexander & Baldwin, which firm is the leading financial force

of the Islands (it was Mr. Cooke’s missionary grandparents, the Amos P.

Cookes, who founded and for many years conducted what was known as the

“Chiefs’ School,” afterward called the “Royal School,” which was

patronized by all of the higher chiefs and their families); Mr. Lorrin

A. Thurston, also descended from the first missionaries, and associated

conspicuously with the affairs of Hawaii, both monarchical and

republican—and incidentally owner of the morning paper; and Senor A. de

Souza Canavarro, Portuguese Consul, an able man who has lived here

twenty years and whose brain is shelved with Islands lore.

The world was all dewy cool and the air redolent with flowers when,

after an early dip in the surf, we glided down Kalakaua Avenue between

the awakening duck ponds with their lily pads and grassy partitions.

Leaving the center of town by way of Nuuanu Avenue, along which an

electric car runs for two miles, we headed for the storied heights of

the Pali (precipice), and presently began climbing between converging

mountains to the pass through the Koolau Range. This Nuuanu Valley is a

wondrous residence section, of old-fashioned white mansions of by-gone

styles of architecture, still wearing their stateliness like a page in

history. The dwellers therein are cooled by every breeze—not to mention

frequent rains. It is a humorous custom for a resident to say, “I live

at the first shower,” or the second shower, or even the third, according

to his distance from moister elevations in the city limits. The rainfall

in upper Nuuanu, and Manoa, the next valley to the southeast, is from

140 inches to 150 inches annually. In lower Nuuanu—only three or four

miles distant—it averages around 30-35 inches. Many of these old houses

stand amidst expansive lawns, the driveways columned with royal

palms—the first brought to the Islands. One white New England house was

pointed out as having been the country home of Queen Emma, bought with

its adjoining acres by the Government and turned into a public park. The

building contains some of the Queen’s furniture, and other antiques of

the period. “The Daughters of Hawaii,” an organization of Hawaii-born

women of all nationalities, has the care of the premises.

I promised myself an afternoon in the cemetery, where quaint tombs show

through beautiful trees and shrubbery, and where, in the Mausoleum, are

laid the bones of the Kamehameha and Kalakaua dynasties. King Lunalilo,

who was the last of the Kamehamehas and preceded Kalakaua, rests in a

mausoleum at Kawaiahao Church in town.

Up we swung on a smooth road graded along the hillsides, the flanks of

the valley drawing together, the violet-shadowed walls of the mountains

growing more sheer until they seemed almost to overtop with their

clouded heads breaking into morning gold—Lanihuli and Konahuanui rising

three thousand feet to left and right. From a keen curve, we looked back

and down the green miles we had come, to a fairy white city suffused in

blue mist beside a fairy blue sea.

Four miles from the end of the car-track, quite unexpectedly to me,

suddenly the car emerged from a narrow defile upon a platform hewn out

of the rocky earth, and my senses were momentarily stunned, for the high

island had broken off, fallen away beneath our feet to the east and

north. Alighting, we pressed against a wall of wind that eternally

drafts through the gap, and threading among a score of small pack-mules

resting on the way to Honolulu, gained the railed brink of the Pali. In

the center of a scene that had haunted me for years, since I beheld it

in a painting at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, I looked a

thousand feet into an emerald abyss. Over its awful pitch Kamehameha a

century ago forced the warriors of the King of Oahu, Kalanikupule—a

“legion of the lost ones” whose shining skulls became souvenirs for

strong climbers in succeeding generations. Some one pointed to a ferny,

bowery spot far below, where Prince Cupid once kept a hunting cabin; but

there was now neither trace of it nor of any trail penetrating the dense

jungle.

To the left, lying northwest, stretch the perpendicular, inaccessible

ramparts of the Koolau Range, which extends the length of the island,

bastioned by erosions, and based in rich green slopes of forest and

pasture that fall away to alluvial plains fertile with rice and cane,

and rippled with green hillocks. Where we stood, a spur of the range

bent in a right-angle to the eastward at our back; and off to the right,

the great valley is bounded by desultory low hills, amid which an

alluring red road winds to Kailua and Waimanalo by the sapphire sea,

where we are told the bathing beaches and surf are unsurpassed.

A reef-embraced bay on the white-fringed shore caused me to inquire why

Honolulu had not been builded upon this cool windward coast of Oahu,

with its opulent and ready-made soil. “Any navigator could tell you

that,” Jack chided. “Honolulu was begun when there was no steam, and the

lee side of the island was the only safe anchorage for sailing vessels.”

The sun was now burning up the moving mists below, and through

opalescent rents and thinning spaces we could trace the ruddy ribbon of

road we were to travel. If I had dreamed of the majestic grandeur of

these mountains, of the wondrous painted valley to the east, how feebly

I should have anticipated other islands until first exploring this one.

Jack keeps repeating that he cannot understand why it is not thronged

with tourists, and calls it the garden of the world. We have seen

nothing like it in America or Europe. And yet Oahu is not generally

spoken of as by any means the most beautiful of the Hawaiian Islands.

Instead, both residents and visitors rave over the “Garden Isle,” Kauai,

the Kona coast of Hawaii and that Big Island’s gulches, the wonders of

Maui with its Iao Valley and Haleakala, “The House of the Sun.” What

must they all be, say we, if these persons have not been stirred by

Windward Oahu!

After clinging spellbound to our windy vantage for half an hour

(meanwhile speculating how many times Kalanikupule’s unfortunate army

bumped in its headlong fall), we coasted the serpentine road that is

railed and reënforced with masonry, fairly hanging to a stark wall for

the best part of two miles. I noticed that Mr. Cooke preferred himself

to negotiate his car on this blood-tingling descent, until we rounded

into the undulating floor of the plain whence we stared abruptly up at

the astonishing way we had come, with its retaining walls of cement,

some of them four hundred feet in length.

One stands at the base of an uncompromising two-thousand-foot crag, an

outjut of the range, and it appears but a few hundred feet to its head.

For there is an elusiveness about the atmosphere that makes unreal the

sternest palisades, the ruggedest gorges. Everything is as if seen in a

mirror that has been dulled by a silver breath. That is it—it is all a

reflection—these are mirrored mountains and shall always remain to me

like something envisioned in a glass.

I for one was commencing to realize how early I had breakfasted, when

the machines turned aside from the road on which we had been running

through miles of the Kahuku sugar plantation into a private driveway

that led to Mrs. James B. Castle’s sea-rim retreat, The Dunes. Having

been called unexpectedly to Honolulu, she had left the manager of the

plantation to do the honors, together with a note of apology embodying

the wish that we make ourselves at home, and a request that we write in

her guest book. After luncheon the men insisted that I inscribe

something fitting for them to witness. Warm and tired, I wrote the

following uninspired if grateful sentiment:

“With appreciation of the perfect hospitality—and deep regret

that the giver was absent.”

The others followed with their signatures; and when Mr. Ford’s turn

came, his eye read what I had written, but his unresting mind must have

been wool-gathering, for he scribbled:

“Hoping that every passer-by may be as fortunate.”

A chorus of derision caused him to bend an alarmed eye upon the page,

which he carefully scanned, especially my latter phrase. And then out

came the page.

We were shown over the labor barracks, neat settlements of Japanese and

Portuguese, in which we saw swarms of beautiful children rolling in the

grass. The Portuguese flocked around the Consul, who was apparently an

old and loved friend.

Several miles farther, we came to the Reform School, where the erring

youth of Oahu, largely of native stock, are guided in the way they

should go. There was not a criminal face among them, and probably the

majority are detained for temperamental laxness of one sort or another.

Emotional they are, easily led, and inordinately fond of games of

chance—but dishonest never. A small sugar plantation is carried on in

connection with the school, which is worked by the boys.

Our last lap was from the Reform School to Haleiwa Hotel, at Waialua,

which lies at the sea edge of the Waialua Plantation. Haleiwa means

“House Beautiful,” and is pronounced Hah-lay-e-vah. There is so much

dissension as to how the “v” sound crept into the “w,” that I am going

to retire with the statement that Alexander, in his splendid “History of

the Hawaiian People,” remarks that “The letter ‘w’ generally sounds like

‘v’ between the penult and final syllable of a word.”

House and grounds are very attractive, broad lawns sloping to an estuary

just inside the beach; and in this river-like bit of water picturesque

fishing boats and canoes lie at anchor. A span of rustic Japanese bridge

leads to the bath-houses, and thither we went for a swim before dinner.

I would not advise beginners to choose this beach for their first

swimming lessons. It shelves with startling abruptness, while the

undertow is more noticeable than at Waikiki. But for those who can take

care of themselves, this lively water is good sport and more bracing

than on the leeward coast.

We strolled through the gardens and along green little dams between duck

ponds spotted with lily pads, and the men renewed their boyhood by

“chucking” rocks into a sumptuous mango tree, bringing down the

russet-gold, luscious fruit for an appetizer. I may some day be rash

enough to describe the flavor of a mango, or try to; but not yet—though

I seem to resent some author’s statement that it bears more than a trace

of turpentine.

Leaving Haleiwa next morning, we deserted the seashore for very

different country. The motor ascended steadily toward the southwest, on

a fine red road—so red that on ahead the very atmosphere was tinged.

Looking back as we climbed, many a lovely surf-picture rewarded the

quest of our eyes, white breakers ruffling the creamy beaches, with a

sea bluer than the deep blue sky.

At an elevation of about eight hundred feet one strikes the rolling

green prairieland of the “Plains,” where the ocean is visible northwest

and southeast, on two sides of the island. It is a wonderful plateau,

between mountain-walls, swept by the freshening northeast trade—miles

upon miles of rich grazing, and hill upon hill ruled with blue-green

lines of pineapple growth. At one plantation we stopped to look around

at the fabulously promising industry. Mr. Kellogg, the manager, gave an

interesting demonstration of how simple is the cultivation of the

luscious “pines,” and held stoutly that a woman, unaided, could earn a

good living out of a moderate patch. The first “pine” plantation in

Hawaii was established in Manoa valley, back of Honolulu, by a

Devonshire man, Captain John Kidwell. He started in the early ‘80’s with

native shoots from the Kona Coast, later importing old stumps from

Florida. In 1892 a hundred thousand plants were growing, and the

Hawaiian Fruit and Packing Company was established, the second canning

industry in Hawaii—fish-canning having been the only other.

Although like prairie seen from a distance, we discovered that this

section of Oahu is serrated by enormous gullies, in character resembling

our California barrancas, but of vastly greater proportions. A huge dam

has been constructed for the purpose of conserving the water for

irrigation.

Something went wrong with one of our machines and we were obliged to

telephone from Wahiawa to Honolulu for some parts. Think of this old

savage isle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where, from its high

interior, one may talk over a wire to a modern city, for modern parts of

a “horseless carriage,” to be sent by steam over a steel track! It is

stimulating once in a day to ponder the age in which we live.

And on one of these ridges near Wahiawa, not so long ago, there preyed a

regular ogre, a robber-chief whose habit it was to lie in wait in a

narrow pass, and pounce upon his victims, whom he slew on a large, flat

rock, and ate them—the only sure-enough cannibal in Hawaiian history.

June 29.

“Have you been in the Cleghorn Gardens?” is a frequent question to the

malihini, and only another way of asking if one has seen the gardens of

the late Princess Victoria Kaiulani, lovely hybrid flower of Scottish

and Polynesian parentage, daughter of a princess of Hawaii, Miriam

Likelike (sister of Liliuokalani and Kalakaua) and the Honorable

Archibald Scott Cleghorn. We are too late by twenty years to be welcomed

by Likelike, and eight years behind time to hear the merriment of

Kaiulani in her father’s house—Kaiulani, who would now be of the same

age as Jack London. King Kalakaua died at the Palace Hotel in San

Francisco on January 20, 1891, and when his remains arrived in Honolulu

from the U. S. S. _Charleston_ nine days later, and his sister

Liliuokalani was proclaimed his successor, the little Princess Kaiulani,

their niece, was appointed heir apparent.

The house, Ainahau, is not visible from the Avenue. Here the bereft

consort of Likelike lives in solitary state with his servants, amid the

relics of unforgotten days. He receives few visitors, and we felt as if

breaking his privacy were an intrusion, even though by invitation. But

the commandingly tall, courtly Scot, wide brown eyes smiling

benevolently under white hair and beetling brows, paced halfway down his

palm-pillared driveway in greeting, and led our little party about the

green-shady ways of the wonderland of flowers and vines, lily ponds and

arbors, “Where Kaiulani sat,” or sewed, or read, or entertained—all in

a forest of high interlacing trees of many varieties, both native and

foreign. I was most fascinated by a splendid banyan, a tree which from

childhood I had wanted to see. This pleased the owner, whose especial

pride it is—“Kaiulani’s banyan”; although he is obliged to trim it

unmercifully lest its predatory tentacles capture the entire park.

Into nurseries and vegetable gardens we followed him, and real grass

huts that have stood untouched for years. Another pride of Mr.

Cleghorn’s is his sixteen varieties of hibiscus, of sizes and shapes and

tints that we would hardly have believed possible—magic puffs of

exquisite color springing like miracles from slender green stems that

are often too slight, and snap under the full blossom-weight. Honolulu

holds an annual hibiscus exhibition, in which many leading citizens

compete.

The portion of the house once occupied by the vanished Princess is never

opened to strangers, nor used in any way. Only her father wanders there,

investing the pretty suite of rooms with recollection of her tuneful

young presence. For she was little over twenty when she died.

But we were made welcome in the great drawing-room, reached by three

broad descending steps, walled with rare books, and containing works of

art and curios from all the world: old furniture from European palaces

that would be the despair of a repulsed collector; tables of lustrous

Hawaiian woods fashioned to order in Germany half a century ago; rare

oriental vases set upon flare-topped pedestals ingeniously made from

inverted tree stumps of native brown _kou_ wood, polished like marble; a

quaint and stately concert grand piano; old portraits of royalty, white

and dusky; and, most fascinating of all, treasures of Hawaiian courts,

among them some of the marvelous feather work. In dim corners, _kahilis_

stand as if on guard—barbaric royal insignia, plumed staffs of state,

some of them twice the height of a man. The feathers are fastened at

right angles to the pole of shining hardwood, forming a barrel-shaped

decoration, somewhat like our hearse-plumes of a past generation. But

the kahili is only sometimes of funereal hue, more often flaming in

scarlet, or some grade of the rich yellows loved of the Islanders.

Originally a fly-brush in savage courts, the kahili progressed in

dignity through the dynasties to an indispensable adjunct to official

occasions, sometimes exceeding thirty feet in height. To me, it and the

outrigger canoe are the most significantly impressive of royal barbaric

forms.

Mr. Cleghorn suggested that he could arrange a private audience with

Queen Liliuokalani at her residence in town, if we desired. Which

reminds me that Jack holds a letter of introduction to her from Charles

Warren Stoddard, who knew her in the days of her tempestuous reign. He

and Jack have called each other Dad and Son for years, though acquainted

only by correspondence. But we have little wish to intrude upon the

Queen, for it can be scant pleasure to her to meet Americans, no matter

how sympathetic they may be with her changed state.

Upon a carven desk lay open a guest book, an old ledger, in which we

were asked to leave our hand. The first name written in this thick tome

is that of “Oskar, of Sweden and Norway,” and, running over the yellowed

pages, among other notable autographs we read that of Agassiz.

Here, there, and everywhere, in photograph, in oil portraiture, on wall

and upon easel, we met the lovely, pale face of Kaiulani, in whose

memory her father seems to exist in a mood of adoration. Every event

dates from her untimely passing. “When Kaiulani died,” he would begin;

or “Since Kaiulani went away,” and “Before Kaiulani left me—” was the

burden of his thought and conversation concerning the past of which we

loved to hear. Pictures show her to have been a woman compounded of the

beauty of her dual races, proud, loving, sensitive, spirituelle, with

the characteristic curling mouth and luminous brown eyes of the

Hawaiian, looking out wistfully upon a world of pleasure and opportunity

that could not detain her frail body. Flower of romance she was—romance

that nothing in the old books of South Sea adventuring can rival; her

sire, a handsome roving boy ashore from an English ship back in the

’50’s; her mother a dusky princess of the blood royal, who loved the

handsome fair-skinned youth and constituted him governor of Oahu under

the Crown, that she might with honor espouse him.

And now, the boy, grown old—his Caucasian vitality having survived the

gentle Polynesian blood of the wife who brought him laurels in her own

land,—having watched the changing administrations of that land for

nearly threescore years, abides alone with the shadow of her and of the

daughter with the poet brow who did honor to them both by coming into

being. To this beloved child-woman, previous to her voyage to England’s

Court, Robert Louis Stevenson, living where we peeped into the garden

but a few nights gone, sent the following:

[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at

Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani’s banyan! When she comes

to my land and her father’s, and the rain beats upon the window

(as I fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like

a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her

own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will

hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in

the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there

alone.—R. L. S.]

“Forth from her land to mine she goes,

The island maid, the island rose,

Light of heart and bright of face:

The daughter of a double race.

“Her islands here, in Southern sun,

Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone;

And I in her dear banyan shade.

Look vainly for my little maid.

“But our Scots islands far away

Shall glitter with unwonted day,

And cast for once their tempests by

To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.”

Aboard the _Noeau_, bound for Molokai, Monday Evening, July 1.

_Noeau_ (No-a-ah-oo—quickly No-a-ow)—the very name has a mournful,

ominous sound; _Noeau_, ship of despair, ferry of human freight

condemned. We are not merry, Jack and I, for what we have witnessed

during the past two hours would wring emotion from a graven image. And

just when we would cheer a trifle, it not being our mutual temperament

long to remain downcast, our eyes are again compelled by the huddle of

doomed fellow-creatures amidst their pathetic bundles of belongings on

the open after-deck of the plunging interisland steamer bound for

Molokai.

None of it did we miss—the parting and the embarkation of the banished;

and never, should I live a thousand fair years, shall I forget the

memory of that strange, rending wailing, escaping bestiality by its very

deliberateness; for, no matter how deep and true may be the grief, this

wailing expression of it constitutes a ceremonial in this as in other

countries where it survives as a set form of lamentation. Shrill,

piercing, it curdled the primitive life-current in us, every tone in the

gamut of sorrow being played upon the plaintive word _auwe_

(ah-oo-way’—quickly ow-way’), _alas_, in recurrent chorusing when each

parting took place and the loved one stepped upon the gangplank,

untouched by officers and crew of the small steamer.

“Clean” passengers were taken aboard first, the vessel picking up at

another wharf those who bore no return ticket to the land of the clean.

As the _Noeau_ ranged alongside, the crowd ashore appeared like any

other dock-gathering of natives, even to the flowers; but suddenly Jack

at my elbow jerked out, “_Look_—look at that boy’s face!” It was a lad

of twelve or so, and one of his cheeks was so swollen that the bursting

eye seemed as if extended on a fleshy horn. Beside him a woman hovered,

her face dark with sorrow. We were soon quick to detect the marks and

roved from face to face, selecting more or less accurately those who

proved later to be passengers for the dark fifty-odd miles across Kaiwi

Channel and along the north coast of Molokai to the village of

Kalaupapa, is their final destination and home on this earth.

But one can only see what one can see, and there were men and women who

bore no apparent blemish; and yet these are now among the disfigured

company on the lurching after-deck.

The ultimate wrench of hearts and hands, the supreme acme of ruth, came

when, separated by the widening breach between steamer and dock, the

lost and the deserted gazed upon one another, and the last offerings of

leis fell short into the water. No normal malihini could stand by

unwrung; it was utterly, hopelessly sad—a funeral in which the dead

themselves walked.

Toward one white child, a blonde-haired little German maid, we felt

especial solicitude. Her bronze companions all had dear ones to wail for

them and for whom to “keen.” She stood quite apart, with dry eyes old

before their time, watching an alien race voice its woe in ways she had

not learned. Whose baby is she? To whom is she dear? Where is the mother

who bore her? And the answer was just now volunteered by the

Superintendent of the Leper colony, returning from a vacation, Mr. J. D.

McVeigh. The child’s mother is already in Kalaupapa, far gone with a

rapid form of leprosy; and this little daughter, who had been left with

a drunken father who treated her ill, has been found with the same

manifestation, and will live but a few years. So she is going to her

own, and her own is waiting for her, and it is well. But think of the

whole distorted face of the dream of life...

[Illustration: (1) Princess Likelike (Mrs. Cleghorn). (2) Princess

Victoria Kaiulani. (3) Kaiulani at Ainahau. (4) “Kaiulani’s Banyan.”]

...Now the white child has fallen asleep in a dull red sunset glow, her

flaxen head in the lap of a beautiful hapa haole girl who carries no

apparent spot of corrosion. She looks down right motherly upon the tired

face of the small Saxon maid. Hawaiian women eternally “rock cradles in

their hearts,” which are so expansive that it is said to matter little

whose child they cradle—bringing up one another’s offspring with

impartial loving-kindness. This practice extended even into highest

circles, as Liliuokalani attests in her entertaining book, “Hawaii’s

Story by Hawaii’s Queen.” She herself was “given away” at birth, wrapped

in the finest tapa cloth, to Konia, a granddaughter of Kamehameha the

Great, wedded to a high chief, Paki. Their own daughter, Bernice Pauahi.

Liliuokalani’s foster-sister, was afterward married to C. R. Bishop,

Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1893 under King Lunallio, Kalakaua’s

predecessor. The Queen writes that in using the term foster-sister she

merely adopts one customary in the English language, there being no such

modification recognized in her own tongue. As a matter of fact, in

childhood she knew no other parents than Paki and Konia, no other sister

than Pauahi. Her own father and mother were no more than interesting

acquaintances. For this custom she offers only the reason that the

alliance by adoption cemented ties of friendship between chiefs, which,

spreading to the common people, doubtless encouraged harmony—a harmony

that would have delighted King Solomon, to say nothing of white men’s

courts of law!

They forget quickly, these Hawaiians, one hears; and one must believe, I

suppose—and, believing, thank whatever gods may be; for this blissful

latitude never was created for the harboring of grief. But the ability

or tendency to forget pain has little to do with its momentary

poignancy. The passionate Hawaiian suffers with all the abandon of the

blood that keeps him always young. The sorrow is real, and the weeping.

If these people could not recover speedily from despair, they would die

off faster than they are already perishing from their arcadian isles.

On our deck, observing the dolorous scene aft, is a young native girl,

round and ripe and more lovely than any we have yet seen. Clean and

wholesome, unsullied by any blight, a happy body, she stands beside her

father, a stalwart gray-haired Hawaiian with lofty mien. One wonders

what are the young girl’s thoughts as she gazes upon these wrecks of her

kind. And yet, she herself might have to be sought in Molokai another

year. As well seek her under-ground, is the next thought. Poor human

flesh and blood!

Kalaupapa, Molokai, July 2.

We are trying to reconstruct whatever mind-picture we have hitherto

entertained of that grave of living death, Molokai. But it is no use,

and we would best give it up. Eye and brain are possessed of the

bewildering actuality, and having expected Heaven knows what lugubrious

prospect, we are all at sea. Certain it is that our preconceptions were

far removed from the joyous sunny scene now before us, as I rock in a

hammock on the Superintendent’s lanai, shaded from the late sunshine by

a starry screen of white jasmine. Jack stretches at length on a rattan

lounge, cigarette in one hand and long cool glass in the other; and what

we see is a serene pasture of many acres, a sort of bulging village

green, in the center a white bandstand breathing of festivity. Around

the verdant semi-hemisphere, widely straggling as if space and real

estate values were the least consideration of mankind, are dotted the

flower-bedecked homes of the leprous inhabitants. Breaking gaily into

this vision of repose, a cowboy on a black horse dashes across the field

and out of sight. A leper. Two comely wahines in ruffly white holokus,

starched to a nicety, stroll chatting by the house, looking up brightly

to smile Aloha with eyes and lips. Lepers. Jack looks at me. I look at

Jack. And this is Molokai the dread; Molokai, isle of despair, where

Father Damien spent his martyrdom.

The Settlement lies on a low triangle, a sort of wide-based peninsula,

selected by Dr. Hutchinson in 1865, shut effectively off as it is from

the rest of the island to the south by a formidable wall rising over two

thousand feet against the deep-blue sky—a wall of mystery, for it is

well-nigh unscalable except by the bands of wild goats that we can

discover only by aid of Mr. McVeigh’s telescope. Every little while, as

a sailor sweeps the horizon, he steps to the glass, hidden from the

community by the jasmine screen, and studies the land of his charge,

keeping track of the doings of the village.

The only trail out of or into this isolated lowland zigzags the bare

face of the pali near its northern end, at the seagirt extremity of the

Settlement reserve. A silvery-green cluster of kukui trees marks the

beginning of the trail not far up from the water’s edge. Thus far and no

farther may the residents of the peninsula stray; and the telescope is

most often trained to this point of the compass. That trail does not

look over-inviting; but we have set our hearts upon leaving Kalaupapa by

this route, albeit Mr. McVeigh, who knows what is in our thought, warns

that it is undergoing repairs and is unsafe. Indeed, he has gone so far

as to hint that it is out of the question for us to ascend now.

In view of the pleasant reality of the island, yesternight’s racking

experience seems a nightmare. Over and above pity for the stricken

exiles, we were none too comfortable ourselves. In the tiny stuffy

staterooms it was impossible to sleep, and except for coolness the

populous deck was scarcely less disturbing. Besides the Superintendent,

the other passengers were hapa haoles and a white Catholic father with

his Bishop, bound for the Settlement to inspect their institutions.

We turned in early on deck-mattresses, after listening to some thrilling

yarns from the captain and mate of the sorry little steamer, to say

nothing of those of Mr. McVeigh, who sparkles with Hibernian wit. As the

miles and time increased between the lepers and the harbor of farewells,

they searched out their ubiquitous ukeleles and guitars, and rendered us

happier for their presence. All would have been well, and the music and

murmuring voices soon have had us drowsing, but for a tipsy native

sailor who chipped in noisily with ribald song and speech that was

loudly profane.

At intervals the captain and mates issued from their unrestful cubbies

on to the short strip of plunging deck (these interisland channels have

a reputation equal to the passage between Dover and Calais), and

conversed at length in unmuffled accents. To cap my sleepless

discomfort, Jack, who had been fighting all night, he avers

unconsciously, to wrest away the soft pillow he had insisted upon my

using, finally appropriated the same with a determined “pounding of the

ear” in hobo parlance. And poor I, lacking the meanness to reclaim it at

price of rousing him from his troubled slumber, languished upon a

neck-wrenching bolster stuffed, I swear, with scrap-iron. It has since

occurred to us that it may have been a life-preserver.

At the chill hour of four, all passengers for Kalaupapa were landed in a

rough-and-ready life-boat through breakers which, to our regret, were

the reverse of boisterous. We had looked forward to making through a

breach of surf like that shown in photographs of Kalaupapa Landing. But

it was novel enough, this being let down the lurching black flank of the

ship where she rolled in the unseen swell, into an uncertain boat where

muscular arms eased us into invisible seats. The merest fitful whisper

of air was stirring, and there was something solemn in our progress,

deep-dipping oars sending the heavy boat in large, slow rhythm over a

broad swell and under the frown of a wall of darker darkness against the

jeweled southern sky.

The landing is a small concrete breakwater, into the crooked arm of

which we slipped, trusting in the lantern gleam to hands of natives that

reached to help. We wondered, entirely without alarm, if they were

leprous fingers we grasped, but rested upon fate and climbed our

spryest.

The wall was rimmed with sitting figures, and when our twenty-five leper

passengers set foot on the cement, some were greeted in low, hesitant

Hawaiian speech as if by acquaintances. In the flicker of the swinging

lanterns we saw a white woman’s anxious face and two pale hands

stretched out. And tears were in my eyes to see the German mother and

child united, even in their awful plight.

A silent Japanese took charge of me and my suitcase, and I was carried

in a cart up a gentle rise to this cottage smothered in trees, the door

of which is reached by way of a fragrant, vine-clasped arbor. The night

was almost grewsomely still, and I tried to pierce the gloom to judge

how near was that oppressive wall in the velvet black to the south.

The Japanese turned me over to his wife, a small motherly thing who

fluttered me into a bright white room with canopied bed, into which she

indicated I was to plump forthwith; that the bath was just across the

lanai; breakfast at eight; and could she do anything for me?

After breakfast the official “clean” members of the colony dropped in,

Doctors Goodhue and Hollmann, the pioneer resident surgeon and his

assistant, with their wives, as well as the German-Hawaiian parents of

Mrs. Goodhue, who had tramped down the pali the previous day from their

ranch in the highlands “beyond the pale,” to visit their daughter. Jack

and I promptly registered the thought that if they could negotiate that

trail, why not we?

Never have we spent a day of such strange interest. Before luncheon, Mr.

McVeigh drove us to within two or three hundred yards of the foot of the

pali, to see the Kalaupapa Rifle Club at practice. Quite as a matter of

course we sat on benches side by side with the lepers, and when our

turns came, stood in their shooting boxes, and with rifles warm from

their hands hit the target at two hundred yards. Oh, I did not quite

make the bull’s-eye, but there were certain drawbacks to my best

marksmanship—the heavy and unfamiliar gun that I had not the strength

to hold perfectly steady, and the audience of curious men whose personal

characteristics were far from quieting to malihini wahine nerves. We

were duly decorated with the proud red badge of the Club, bearing

“Kalaupapa Rifle Club, 1907,” in gilt letters.

But fancy watching these blasted remnants of humanity, lost in the

delight of scoring, their knotted hands holding the guns, on the

triggers the stumps of what had once been fingers, while their poor

ruined eyes strove to run along the sights...

It took all our steel, at first, to avoid shrinking from their

hideousness; but, assured as we were of the safety of mingling, our

concern was to let them know we were unafraid. And it made such a

touching difference. From out their watchful silence and bashful

loneliness they emerged into their natural care-free Hawaiian spirits.

For, you must know, all leprosy is not painful. There is what is termed

the anæsthetic variety, which twists and deforms but which ceases from

twinging as the disease progresses or is arrested, and the nerves go to

sleep. Another and loathsome form manifests itself in running sores; but

Dr. Goodhue now takes prompt action with such cases, his brave, deft

surgery producing marvelous results. Tubercular leprosy makes swift

inroads and quick disposal of the sufferer. But it should make the

public happier to know that here the majority of the patients come and

go about the business of their lives as in other villages the world

over, if with less beauty of face and form.

In the afternoon Dr. Hollmann took us in charge and showed us first the

Bishop (Catholic) Home for Girls, presided over by Mother Marianne, the

plucky, aged Mother Superior of Hawaii Nei. Here she spends most of her

life, two sisters living with her. Like a tall spirit she guided us

across the playground and through schoolrooms and dormitories. In one of

the latter we recognized a young girl who came on the _Noeau_ last

night. Standing in a corner talking with two old friends whose faces

were almost obliterated, this latest comer neither looked nor acted as

if there was anything unusual about them. She has a rare sense of

adjustment, that girl—or else is mercifully wanting in imagination.

Women seem more susceptible to the ruin of disease, mental or physical,

than their brothers—at least they show it more ruinously. I have

noticed in feeble-minded and insanity institutions that the eclipse of

personality is more complete among the females. Perhaps it is because we

are used to especial comeliness in women; and to see a vacant or

disfigured countenance above feminine habiliments instead of the sweet

flower of woman’s face, is dreadful beyond the dreadfulness of man’s

features under similar misfortune.

“Would you like to hear the girls sing?”

_Like_ was hardly the word; I would have fled weeping from what could

only be an ordeal to every one. But we could not refuse good Mother

Marianne the opportunity to display the talents of her pupils, and a

Sister was dispatched to summon them.

Draggingly enough they came, unsmiling, their bloated or contracted

features emerging grotesquely from the clean holokus. Every gesture and

averted head bespoke a piteous shame over lost fairness—a sensitive

pridefulness that does not appear to trouble the male patients.

Clustered round a piano, one played with hands that were not hands—for

where were the fingers? But play she did, and weep I did, in a corner,

in sheer uncontrol of heartache at the girlish voices gone shrill and

sexless and tinny like the old French piano, and the writhen mouths that

tried to frame words carolled in happier days. They gazed dumbly at the

white wahine who grieved for them—indeed, it would have been difficult

to say who was sorrier for the other. Out of their horrible eye-pits

they watched us go, and I wonder if Jack’s sad face and my wet cheek

were any solace to them. But they called Aloha bravely as we went down

the steps, as did a group of girls under a hau tree—one of whom, a

beautiful thing, crossing the inclosure with the high-breasted,

processional carriage of Hawaiian, showed no mark of the curse upon her

swart skin where the blood surged in response to our greeting.

The Bay View Home was our next objective, in which are kept the most

advanced cases of the men. Nothing would do but Jack would see

everything to be seen—and where he goes and can take me, there does he

wish me to go to learn the face, fair and foul, of the world in which we

live. Here we found several of our own race who appeared quite

cheerful—let us say philosophical. One in particular, a ghastly white

old man whose eyes hung impossibly upon his cheeks, spoke with the

gentlest Christian fortitude, trying to smile with a lip that fanned his

chest—I do not exaggerate. Only one there was who seemed not in the

slightest resigned—he who led us among his brother sufferers in this

house of tardy dissolution.

“Do any of them ever become used to their condition?”

His terrible eyes came down to my face with a look of utter

hopelessness.

“I have been here twenty-five years, Mrs. London, and I am not used to

it yet.”

Glancing back from the gate, we saw him still standing on the lanai,

straight and tall, gazing out over the sea; a man once wealthy and

honored in his world—a senator, in fact. And now there remains nothing,

after his two and a half disintegrating decades of exile, but long years

of the same to follow; at the end of which he sees himself, an unsightly

object, laid in the ground out of the light of heaven.

There is one hope, always, for those of the lepers who think—the

shining hope that blessed science, now aroused, may discover at any

illuminated moment the natural enemy of the _bacillus lepræ_ which has

been isolated and become thoroughly familiar to the germ specialists.

Jack, visiting the Kalihi Detention Home and Experiment Station, in

Honolulu, was shown the _bacillus lepræ_ under the microscope. Plans are

under way for a federal experiment laboratory and hospital on Molokai

for the study of the evil germ. The Settlement itself is a territorial

care, managed by the Board of Health.

In still another building we inspected the little dispensary, and here

met Annie Kekoa, a half-white telephone operator from Hilo, on Hawaii,

daughter of a native minister. One of her small hands is very slightly

warped; otherwise she is without blemish, and very charming—educated

and refined, with the loveliest brown eyes and heart-shaped face. Being

a deft typewriter, she is employed in the dispensary to fill her days,

for she is unreconciled to her changed condition. Little she spoke of

herself, but was eager for news of Honolulu and our own travels. We told

her of a resemblance she bears to a friend at home, and she said in a

shaken voice: “When you see your friend again, tell her she has a little

sister on Molokai.” At the moment of parting, a sudden impulse caused us

both to forget the rules, and we reached for each other’s hands. I know

I shall never be sorry.

“Major” Lee, one-time American engineer in the Inter-Island Steamship

Company, demonstrated the workings of a newly installed steam poi

factory. He was in the gayest of humors, and ever so proud of his

spick-and-span machinery. “We’re not so badly off here as the Outside

chooses to think,” he announced, patting a rotund boiler. And then, with

explosive earnestness: “I say, Mr. London—give ’em a breeze about us,

will you? Tell ’em how we really live. Nobody knows—nobody has told

half the truth about Molokai and the splendid way things are run. Why,

they give the impression that you can go around with a basket and pick

up fingers and toes and hands and feet. They don’t take the trouble to

find out the truth, and nobody seems to put ’em straight. Why, leprosy

doesn’t work that way, anyhow. Things don’t _fall off_: they _take

up_—they absorb. We’ve got our pride, you know and we don’t like the

wrong thing believed on the Outside, naturally. So you give the public a

breeze about us, Mr. London, and you’ll have the gratitude of the

fellows on Molokai.”

And I thought I saw, in Jack’s active eye, a hint of the fair breeze to

a gale that he would set a-blowing on the subject of “the fellows on

Molokai.”

When “Major” Lee sailed his last trip on the old Line, the luckier

engineers of the _Noeau_, taking him to Kalaupapa, said: “Come on down

to our rooms, and be comfortable.” Lee protested—No, it would not be

right; it wouldn’t be playing the game; he was a leper now, a leper, do

you hear?—and things were different, old fellows.... “Different, your

granny!” and with friendly oaths and suspicious movements of

shirtsleeves across eyes, the chief and his men had their old comrade

into their quarters and gave him the best they had, even to a

stirrup-cup—an infringement of orders, as alcohol is the best

accomplice of leprosy.

Leaving Kalaupapa, we drove to the elder village, Kalawao, across the

mile of the rolling peninsula, a pathway of beauty from the iron-bound,

surf-fountained sea line, to the grandeurs of the persistent pali to the

south, which is beyond word-painting, unfolding like a giant panorama

even along that scant mile. Such crannied canyons, crowded with ferns;

such shelves for waterfalls that banner out in the searching wind; such

green of tree and purple of shadow. Midway of the trip, Dr. Hollmann

turned to the left up a short, steep knoll, from the top of which our

eyes dropped into a tiny crater—deep, emerald cup jeweled with red

stones, a deeper emerald pool in the bottom, fringed with clashing sisal

swords. We came near having a more intimate view of the inverted cone,

for a sudden powerful gust of the strong trade that sweeps the peninsula

caught us off guard and obliged us to lean sharply back against the

blast. Descending the outer slopes of the miniature extinct volcano, we

poked around amidst some nameless graves, the old cement mounds and

decorations crumbling to dust. The place was provocative of much

speculation upon human destiny.

In Kalawao we called at the Catholic Home for Boys, presided over by

Father Emmerau and the Brothers, and met up with Brother Dutton, veteran

of the Civil War, Thirteenth Wisconsin, who later entered the

priesthood, and has immolated himself for years among the leper youth.

We found him very entertaining, as he found Jack, with whose career he

proved himself well acquainted.

Across the road in a little churchyard, we stood beside the tombstone of

Father Damien—name revered by every one who knows how this simple

Belgian priest came to no sanitary, law-abiding, well-ordered community

such as to-day adorns this shunned region. He realized his destination

before he leaped from the boat; and, once ashore, did not shrink nor

turn back from the duty he had imposed upon himself. A life of toil and

a fearful lingering death were the forfeit of this true martyr of modern

times. We have seen photographs of him in the progressing stages of his

torment, and nothing more frightful can be conjured.

Never had we thought to stand beside his grave. Just a little oblong

plot of tended green, inclosed in iron railing, with a white marble

cross and a footstone—that is all; fittingly simple for the simple

worker, as is the Damien Chapel alongside, into which we stepped with

the Bishop, our fellow passenger on the _Noeau_, and Fathers Emmerau and

Maxime, to see the modest altar. Standing before the shrine in the

subdued light, it seemed as if there could have been no death for the

devoted young priest who came so far to lay down his life for his

friends.

* * * * *

After dinner, cooked by the pretty Japanese Masa and her husband, the

other household came over to our lanai. And while we talked, in through

the twilight stole vibrations of swept strings, and the sob of a violin,

and voices of the men’s “Glee Club” that wove in perfect

harmonies—voices thrilling as the metal wires but sharpened and thinned

by corroded throats. There we sat in plenitude of health and

circumstance, while at the gate, through which none but the clean may

ever stray, outside the pale of ordinary human association, these poor

pariahs, these shapes that once were men in a world of men, sang to us,

the whole, the fortunate, who possess return passage for that free

world, the Outside—lost world to them.

On and on they sang, the melting Hawaiian airs, charming “Ua Like No a

Like,” and “Dargie Hula,” “Mauna Kea” beloved of Jack, and his more than

favorite, Kalakaua’s “Sweet Lei Lehua,” with tripping, ripping hula

harmonies unnumbered. At the end of an hour bewitched, to Mr. McVeigh’s

low “Good night, boys,” their last Queen’s “Aloha Oe,” with its fadeless

“Love to You,” that has helped to make Hawaii the Heart-Home of

countless lovers the world over, laid the uttermost touch of eloquence

upon the strange occasion. The sweet-souled musicians, who in their

extremity could offer pleasure of sound if not of sight to us happy

ones, melted away in the blue starlight, the hulaing of their voices

that could not cease abruptly, drifting faint and fainter on the wind.

Kalaupapa, Wednesday, July 3, 1907.

“Quick! First thought! _Where are you?_” Jack quizzed, as through the

jasmine we peered at a score of vociferous lepers running impromptu

horse races on the rounding face of the green. Remote, fearsome Molokai,

where the wretched victims of an Asiatic blight try out their own fine

animals for the prize events of the Glorious Fourth! And all forenoon we

listened to no less than four separate and distinct brass bands

practicing in regardless fervor for the great day. Laughing, chattering

wahines bustled about the sunny landscape, carrying rolls of calico and

bunting; for they, too, will turn out in force on the morrow to show how

the women of Hawaii once rode throughout the kingdom, following upon

that gift of the first horse by Captain Cook to Kamehameha, astride in

long, flowing skirts of bright colors—the _pa’u_ riders of familiar

illustrations.

Mr. McVeigh, satisfaction limned upon his Gaelic countenance at all this

gay preparation, is much occupied, together with his _kokuas_ (helpers),

in an effort to forestall another brand of conviviality that is sought

by the lepers on their feast days; and, denied all forms of alcohol,

they slyly distil “swipes” from anything and everything that will

ferment—even potatoes.

But the lusty Superintendent was not too busy to plan for us a ride to

the little valleys of the pali. There was an odd assortment of

mounts—every one of which, despite the appearance of two I could name,

was excellent in its way. Jack’s allotment was a stout, small-footed

beastie little larger than a Shetland, and to me fell an undersized,

gentle-seeming white palfrey. To my observant eye, Jack _looked_ more

than courtesy would allow him to express, for his appearance was highly

ridiculous. Although of medium height, his feet hung absurdly near the

ground, and his small Australian saddle nearly covered the pony.

We ambled along for a short distance, when our host’s huge gray suddenly

bolted, followed by the others, and I as suddenly became aware that my

husband was no longer by my side. The next instant I was in the thick of

a small stampede across country, the meekness of the milk-white palfrey

a patent delusion and snare, while Jack’s inadequate scrap, leaping like

a jackrabbit, had outdistanced the larger horses. Every one was

laughing, and Jack, now enjoying the practical joke, waved an arm and

disappeared down Damien Road in a cloud of red dust.

Pulling up to a decorous gait through Kalawao, we left the peninsula and

held on around the base of the pali till the spent breakers washed our

trail, where a tremendous wall of volcanic rock rose abruptly on the

right. The trail for the most part was over bowlders covered with

seaweed, and we two came to appreciate these pig-headed little horses

whose faultless bare hoofs carried us unslipping.

Skirting the outleaning black wall, we looked ahead to a coast line of

lordly promontories that rise beachless from out the peacock-blue ocean,

and between which are grand valleys inaccessible except by boat and then

only in calm weather. Two of these valleys, Pelekunu and Wailau, contain

settlements of non-leprous Hawaiians, who are said to live much as they

did before the discovery of the Islands, although they now sell their

produce to the Leper Settlement.

Turning into the broad entrance of a swiftly narrowing cleft called

Waikolu, we rode as far as the horses could go, and some nice problems

were set them on the sliding, crumbling trail. We overheard the

Superintendent’s undertone to Dr. Goodhue: “No malihini riders with us

to-day!” which is encouragement that we may be permitted to travel the

coveted zigzag out of the Settlement. Then tethering the animals in the

kukui shade, we proceeded on foot up a muddy steep where the vegetation,

drenched overnight with rain, in turn drenched us and cooled our

perspiring skins. Except for the trail—and for all we knew that might

have been a wild-pig run—the valley appeared innocent of man; but

presently we gained to where orderly patches of water taro with its

heart-shaped leaves terraced the steep, like a nursery of lilies, and

glimpsed idyllic pictures of grass-houses clinging to ferny ledges of

the mountain side, shaded by large banana and breadfruit trees, and

learned that in these upland vales live certain of the lepers who,

preferring an agricultural life, furnish the Settlement with vegetables

and fruit. And we tried some “mountain apples,” the _ohia ai_, as

distinguished from the _ohia lehua_ which furnishes a beautiful dark

hardwood. This fruit is pear-shaped, red and varnished as cherries, and

sweet and pulpy like marshmallows.

Here were also many pandanus trees (_pandanus ordoratissimus_), called

_lauhala_ or _hala_ by the natives. Lest one fall into the misconception

that the Hawaiian tongue is a simple one, or depreciate the manifold

importance of the pandanus, it is interesting to note that the tree

itself is known more strictly as _puuhala_; the flat, pointed knives of

leaves, _lauhala_; the edible nut growing at the base, _ahuihala_; the

flower from which leis are strung, _hinana_. _Aakala_ are the many

stilted aerial roots which uphold the tree and even branch downward from

some of the limbs. These gradually lift the trunk, at the same time

anchoring it to the ground in all directions. They bear a very slight

resemblance to the mangrove, but are straight, while the other writhes

into an inextricable tangle. The pandanus is also familiarly spoken of

as the screw-pine, from the manner in which its sheaves of blades twist

in a perfect spiral upon the hole.

The number of its benefits to mankind is rivaled only by the coconut.

The _puuhala_, besides furnishing food in the shape of nuts and esthetic

pleasure by its orange leis and its tropical beauty, is the staple for

mat-, hat-, fan-, and cushion-weaving. Of old, strands of its fiber went

to make deadly slings for warfare. The fibrous wood of the mature trees

is hard and takes so high a polish that it is used in making the

handsome turned bowls that have come to be known as calabashes.

Jack’s imagination went a-roving over the possibilities of the

peninsula: “Why, look here, Mate Woman,” he planned, “we could, if ever

we contracted leprosy, live here according to our means. I could go on

writing and earning money, and we could have a mountain place, a town

house down in the village, a bungalow anywhere on the seashore that

suited us, set up our own dairy with imported Jerseys, and ride our own

horses, as well as sail our own yacht—within the prescribed radius, of

course—and let Dr. Goodhue experiment on our cure!—Isn’t it all

practical enough?” this to the grinning “Jack” McVeigh, who was

regarding him with unconcealed delight, and who assured us he wished us

no harm, but for the pleasure of our company he could almost hope the

plan might come to pass!

Hours Jack London spends “cramming” on leprosy from every book the

doctors have in their libraries. And literally it is one of the themes

about which what is not known fills many volumes. The only point upon

which all agree is that they are sure of nothing as regards the means by

which the disease is communicated. The nearest they can hazard is that

it is _feebly_ contagious, and that a person to contract it must have a

predisposition. Thus, one might enter the warm blankets of a leper just

risen, and, by hours of contact with the effluvia therein, “catch” the

disease. The same if one slept long in touch with a victim—and then

only if one had the predisposition. But who is to know if the

predisposition be his? Certain theories as to the mode of contagion were

given us as settled facts by the authorities of the Lazar Hospital in

Havana, where we first became interested in leprosy; but that there is

little dependence to be placed on these opinions is borne out by at

least two known cases on Molokai; one, a native who has remained “clean”

though living with a wife so far gone that she attends to her yearly

babies with her deft feet; and the other, a wahine who has buried five

successive leprous husbands, and has failed to contract their malady.

We recall that in Havana we were assured that no attendant, no Caucasian

living for years within the confines of the institution, had ever become

afflicted; and the same is held on Molokai—which reports make us, as

visitors, feel secure. On the other hand, several of the few white men

here assert that they are absolutely ignorant as to the means of their

own contagion, not having, to their knowledge, been exposed. One of

these is the village storekeeper, a hearty soul whom we have seen riding

about in smart togs on a good horse. He possesses but a spot—on one

foot—which to date has neither increased nor diminished. When he

discovered the “damned spot,” promptly he reported himself to the Board

of Health; and here he makes the courageous best of his situation.

No positive cure of leprosy has yet been discovered. But occasionally

some patient is found upon bacteriological examination to have no

leprosy in him—never having had leprosy. Such are discharged from the

Settlement. Nine times out of ten, they do not want to go, and will

practice any innocent fraud to retain residence in the place that has

become a congenial home.

In some ways the inhabitants of this peninsula are the happiest in the

world. Food and shelter are automatic; pocket-money may be earned.

Several private individuals conduct stores. The helpers, kokuas, are in

the main lepers, and earn salaries. The Board of Health carries on

agriculture, dairying, stock-raising, and the members of the colony are

paid for their labor, and themselves own many heads of cattle and horses

which run pasture-free over some 5,000 acres. The men possess their

fishing boats and launches, and sell fish to the Board of Health for

Settlement consumption. Sometimes a catch of 4,000 pounds is made in a

night. It is not an unhappy community—quite the reverse. And their

religions are not interfered with, which is amply shown by the six

different churches that flourish here. Also there is a Young Men’s

Christian Association.

Long we rested on the Goodhue lanai to-night, and long the shadowy leper

orchestra serenaded beyond the hibiscus hedges, while some one recalled

a story of Charles Warren Stoddard’s “Joe of Lahaina,” in which a

Hawaiian boy, bright companion of other days, crept to the gateway in

the dusk, and there from the dust called to his old friend. Forever

separated, they talked of old times when they had walked arm in arm, and

arms about shoulders, in Sweet Lahaina.

July 4.

This morning we were shocked from dreams by noises so outlandish as to

make us wonder if we were not struggling in nightmare—unearthly

cackling mirth and guttural shoutings and half-animal cries that hurried

us into kimonos and sandals to join our household at the gate where they

were watching a scene as weird as the ghastly din. Only a little after

five o’clock, the atmosphere was vague, and overhead we heard the

rasping cry of a bosun bird, _koae_. In the eery whispering dawn there

gamboled a score or so “horribles,” men and women already horrible

enough, God wot, and but thinly disguised in all manner of extravagant

costumings. They wore masks of home manufacture, in which the makers had

unwittingly imitated the lamentable grotesquerie of the features of

their companions—the lopping mouth, knobby or almost effaced nose,

flapping ear; while, equally correct in similitude, the hue of these

false-true visages was invariably an unpleasant, pestilent yellow. Great

heaven!—do our normal countenances appear abnormal to them?

Some of the actors in this serio-comic performance were astride

cavorting horses, some on foot; and one, an agile clown in dots and

frills, seemed neither afoot nor horseback, in a way of speaking, for he

traveled in company with a trained donkey that lay down peaceably

whenever it was mounted. One motley harlequin, whose ghostly white mask

did not conceal a huge bulbous ear, exhibited with dramatic gesture and

native elocution a dancing bear personified by a man in a brown shag to

represent fur.