“Why can we three not go around Hawaii together? I will take you to some
Hawaiian homes, and you will love them and they you,” urged Mary Low,
perhaps the third time we met.
“Why not?” Jack brightly took her up. “I’m ready as soon as I finish
‘Michael, Brother of Jerry,’ When shall it be? Set the date. Any time
you say—_eh?_ Mate?”
So it came to pass that on the Big Island we spent six weeks going from
house to house of the Hawaiians, some strangers to us, some old
acquaintances, in a round of entertainment and hospitality that set us
on tiptoe with the unstudied human beauty and wonder of it all.
“I question—_do_ you really get what this means to you and me, in our
present and future relation to Hawaii?” Jack would reiterate with that
adorable eagerness that I share in his vision. “I have read more,
listened to more, than have you, of the ways of the people in the past
generations—of the royal progresses of their princes, their kings, and
their queens. This way of ours, led by Mary Low, is of the nature of a
royal progress, but with the difference that, not being born into the
honor, it is up to us to be worthy of its being thrust upon us. Do you
_get_ me?—Oh, pardon my insistence,” he would relax his high, sparkling
tension, “but I do so want you, my sharer, to enjoy with me the
knowledge of what all this means for you and me.”
Ah, I did, I did. And I do. My own heart and intelligence, further
quickened by his still more sensitive divination, lent to the otherwise
vastly interesting experience an appreciation that will abide for all my
days. The imperishable charm of what it meant and means has come back a
thousandfold, pressed down and overflowing, his share and mine
together, to me in my singleness.
“Mary Low is a wonder, I tell you!” Thus Jack, elate. “She is a mine of
interest and information. Her mind a kingdom is. I haven’t talked with a
woman in Hawaii, of whatever nationality or blend of nationalities,
whose brain can eclipse Sister Mary’s for vision of the enormous
dramatic connotations of the race as it has been and is being lived out
right here on this soil which you and I love. Listen here,” breaking off
to read me his scribbled notes, “think of the story this will make—why,
I want to write a dozen yarns all at once. I become desperate with my
inability to do so, when, any hour of the day, Mary chats about say the
Parker Ranch history, or, for that matter, almost any big holding on
this isle of ranches. She might, with her memory and adjustment of
values and her imagination, have been a great writer of fiction.”
In such company, we disembarked one morning before daylight on the wharf
at Kailua, Hawaii, where, far cry to the old time Goodhue surrey, in the
thick darkness we made our way toward an electric-lighted 1916 motor
that had cost its owner, Robert Hind, Mary’s brother-in-law, some eight
thousand dollars to land here from the East.
Effortlessly we surmounted the familiar road, to a point where our way
turned to the left. In a gray car in a gray-and-silver dawn we passed
the home of the Maguires, and with Mauna Kea’s icy peak flushing in our
eyes, pursued the drive toward Parker Ranch. Bending off to the right
for a remembered sugar-loaf hill, Puuwaawaa, we came to the home of the
Hinds, and there spent a fortnight with Robert Hind and his wife,
Hannah, whose eyes and smile Jack more than once preserved, for what
time may be, in written romances. Their sons and daughters were absent
in eastern colleges. Here in terraced gardens of lawns and every flower
and plant that will grow at this 2700-foot elevation, we worked and
played; and each morning, before breakfast, Jack and I made it a point
to attend the toilette of a kingly peacock, whose absorption in the
preening of his black-opal plumage was little disturbed by our admiring
scrutiny and conversation. And there were horseback rides, and long
motoring trips. One of these picnics was to the great heiau of Honaunau,
south of Kealakekua Bay.
To reach this Temple of Refuge,—which also served as a court of
Justice—one was obliged to leave a vehicle and take to the saddle.
There has since been made a good automobile road.
We descended upon horses lent by Miss Ethel Paris, an energetic young
woman capable of running her cattle ranch unaided should need arise. She
entertained us with the unobtrusive, faultless hospitality of her
Hawaiian strain, combined with the Caucasian blood that attains, in this
gentle tropic, to something nearly equal in warmth and generousness.
Honaunau is one of the most imposing of Hawaii’s relics, and covers
nearly seven acres. Its walls, still intact, measure a dozen feet in
height and eighteen in thickness, and in olden times protected uncounted
fugitives from the wrath of their fellows. Those of the Tower of London
dwindle into comparative insignificance before this savage architectural
triumph.
The heiau forms a lordly man-made promontory upon a low cape of lava,
relieved by towering coconut palms that wave their plumage at entrancing
angles for one who would sketch. It is a mammoth pile of mystery, every
stone, small and great, a secret laid by the hands of men who were born
of woman and who loved, and fought, and worked, and now are cosmic dust.
The Bishop Museum is conducting further investigations into this broken
edifice that piques the imagination far beyond its available legend.
Umbilical cords were placed in interstices of the stones and sealed with
small rocks. To this day, many a modest Hawaiian maiden of Christian
beliefs could admit, if she would, that her parents had dedicated to the
huge altar of their forefathers such souvenir of their pride and
lingering sense of romance and reverence for hereditary custom. I
wonder, left to themselves in this lotus land, how long it would take
the Hawaiians to revert. I wonder, equally, how long we dominant
white-faces, given that same dreamy environment, would need to attain
the same retrogression. Jack London played with this theme in “The
Scarlet Plague,” but in California climate. He gave them about a
generation.
A racy episode in the pre-Christian stage of Kaahumanu’s career, when
she fled the consequences of Kamehameha’s rage following an amorous
escapade, is still whispered half-laughingly by hapa-haoles. They point
out, in the great inclosure, the tilted, roof-like stone under which the
fascinating and capricious lady took sanctuary.
That night we slept at the Tommy Whites’, after a luau at their house.
Here, to our joy, we found Mother Shipman, carrying on a little
“progress” of her own; and her greeting was: “My own son and daughter!”
Next day there was still another luau, mauka at the old Roy place,
Wahou, where again we met the Walls. Mrs. Roy, mother of both Mrs.
Shipman and Mrs. White, had passed away several years earlier. Her
garden remained, more beautiful than ever in its fragrant riot of roses
and blumeria and heliotrope, and the begonias had surpassed all
promising.
Kiholo, seaside retreat of the Hinds, was enjoyed for a night and a
day—miles down-slope over the lava. And again we drove to Parker Ranch,
guests of Mary and Hannah’s Aunt Kalili, Mrs. Martin Campbell. The great
holding, nearly doubled in acreage, is now the fortune of one
part-Hawaiian lad, Richard Smart. For Thelma Parker had sacrificed
herself for love in a tragic marriage, and died untimely, survived by
but one of her children, who, the father shortly following his
child-wife to the grave, became sole heir to the estate. On the side of
Mauna Kea, in the family burial ground walled with sepulchral cypresses,
rest the ashes of beautiful Thelma, taken there with all fitting pomp,
mourned by every Hawaiian heart born on her lands. Standing beside her
grave, we tried to vision that long funeral cortège winding up the
grassy leagues she had so often galloped wild in her childhood. Poor
little maid—one is thankful that at least she had that wonderful
maidenhood.
Near the cemetery is Mana, old deserted home of Parkers, rambling in a
great courtyard. The main body of the building is called _Kapuaikahi_;
the right wing, _Waialeale_; the left, _Evahale_. Mary wept amidst the
ruined fountains, for here her early years had been spent with her
sisters and cousins, and Princess Kaiulani had been a familiar visitor.
An Hawaiian caretaker let us in, and through the koa rooms we wandered,
touching almost reverently the treasures of generations—furniture,
pianos, china, and moldy albums of photographs. One curio especially
appealed to Jack, who uses a similar incident in “Michael, Brother of
Jerry”—a whale-tooth, sailor-carven, with an inscription referring to
the sinking of the Essex by a cow-whale. Coincidentally, a man, claiming
to be a survivor of the _Essex_, died in Honolulu about this time of our
visit to Mana.
It was a distinct pleasure to learn that Frank Woods, of Kohala, had
lately bought the old place for his wife, Eva, who is a daughter of the
famous Colonel Sam Parker, Minister of Foreign Affairs during the reign
of Liliuokalani, _bon vivant_ and familiar of King Kalakaua. Mr. Woods
later acquired the house at Waikiki, Honolulu, in which Robert Louis
Stevenson once lived and wrote. The early home of the original Parker,
Mana Hale, built with his own hands, stands in a corner of the
inclosure. One aches with the romance of it all, and would like to write
an entire volume upon the history of the Ranch that started on this
spot.
At the historic old port, Kawaihae, where the Ranch does its shipping,
we were shown Queen Emma’s home, eloquent with decay, still dignified in
the age-wreck of its palm gardens. It was off Kawaihae, in a gale, that
Captain Cook’s _Resolution_ sprung her foremast, which caused him to put
in at Kealakekua Bay for repairs, to his doom. Only the heat prevented
us from making an effort to walk to the ruins of the important heiau of
Puukohala, erected upon advice of the priests, to secure to Kamehameha
the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Upon our final leave-taking of Puuwaawaa, the Hinds’ open-handed
hospitality sent us in one of their cars to Hilo. On the way, Mrs. Tommy
White ran out with an addition to our lunch—a marvelous cold red fish,
the _ulaula_, baked in ti-leaves, and a huge cake, compounded of
fresh-grated, newly plucked coconut and other delicious things we could
not guess. Of course we visited the Maguires, as well as the Goodhues
down their lovely winding lane. And we must slip in for a moment to the
wide unglassed window-ledge, to gaze once more, from that vantage
through the needled branches of imported ironwood trees, across the long
void of lava, upon the divine Blue Flush.
South we passed beyond the Blue Flush of Kona, and sped over the road
traveled by the Congressional party the year before, through the
tranquil village of Pahala, and on up Mauna Loa for an all-too-short
stopover, which included a sumptuous luau, with Mr. and Mrs. Julian
Monsarrat, on Kapapala Ranch in the Kau District, before pushing on to
the Volcano.
Different again from other volcanic deserts of the island is this of
Kau, made up of flow upon succeeding flow from Mauna Loa, in color black
and bluish-gray. Vast fields of cane alternate with arid stretches, and
west of Pahala is a sisal plantation and mill, the most extensive on the
Island. Mauka of the road one sees a fertile swath of cane growing on a
mud-flow of Mauna Loa at an elevation of 1200 feet. This mud-flow was
originally a section of clay marshland which, in 1868, was jarred loose
by an earthquake from the bluff at the head of a valley. In but a few
moments it had swept down three miles in a wet landslide half a mile
wide and thirty feet deep. Immediately afterward a tidal wave inundated
the entire coast of Kau, while Kilauea, joining the general celebration,
disgorged lava through underground fissures toward the southwest.
Full majestic lies Kau under the deep-blue sky, and as majestic moves
the deep-blue, white-crested ocean that washes its lava-bound feet. From
the Monsarrats’ roof we made a side-trip to the coast, where in the
black sands of Ninole beach we gathered the “breeding-stones,” believed
by old inhabitants to be reproductive, and which were sought after as
small idols. Being full of holes, these large pebbles secrete smaller
pebbles, which roll out at odd times, thus furnishing grist for the
fancy of simple folk. Jack, immensely taken with the conceit, in no time
had several brown urchins earning nickels collecting a supply which, he
declared, he was going to turn loose on the Ranch at home to raise stone
walls. Another curiosity in the neighborhood is a fresh-water pool just
inside the high beach where the Pacific swell breaks. But to the hunter,
Kau’s prime attraction is its wide opportunity for plover shooting.
A pretty legend is told of a small fishing place, Manilo, near Honuapo
on the coast. A trick of the current eternally brought flotsam of
various sorts from the direction of Puna into the little indentation at
Manilo. Over and above the driftage of bodies of warriors who had been
slain and thrown over the cliffs along the coast, the inlet became
famous as a sort of post office for the lovers of Puna, whose messages,
in the form of hala or mailé leis, inclosed in calabashes, could
dependably be sent to their sweethearts in Kau.
Near Punaluu, the landing place for East Kau, are the remains of a
couple of heiaus—Punaluunui and Kaneeleele, said to have been connected
in their workings with the great Wahaula heiau, of Puna. Scientists are
continually on the hunt for old temples and sites, and in 1921 the total
for all of the Islands reached five hundred and seventeen. Dr. T. A.
Jaggar, Jr., recently stumbled upon a most interesting discovery—an old
heiau in the Pahala section of the Kau district, of which the
neighborhood professed to have no knowledge. The ruins differ from all
others known, in that the stones bear many rude carvings, or
petroglyphs, in crescents and circles, with and without dots. These may
be similar to the petroglyphs that may be seen on the rocks of the Kona
shore.
And thus we merely glanced through a District rife with treasures for
the explorer into the past, making mental notes for a return. That day
we were to see evidence of the high attainment of the Hawaiians in the
science of massage. An old woman, still handsome, with an antic humor in
her black eyes from which the fire was yet to be quenched, noticed that
I had a severe headache. Enticing me, with benevolent gestures and
moans, to an ancient sofa, she laid rude but shrewd hands upon the
tendons of the inner side of the legs below the knees. Nothing availed
my shrieks of agony. Those powerful fingers, relentless as the bronze
they looked, kneaded and _twanged_ those cords until, lo! in a mere ten
minutes or so the headache, accumulated in hours of motoring under the
brassy sky, was charmed away—charmed not by any means being the best
word for such drastic method. In this manner we thenceforth did away
with headaches in our family of two.
The Monsarrats’, on Kapapala Ranch, is another of the homes that
quaintly combine the lines and traditions of prim New England
architecture with a lavish charm of subtropic treatment of interior and
garden compound. In the latter, high-edged aloofly with cypress and
eucalyptus from the winds of the surrounding amplitude of far-flung,
treeless mountain areas, one feels bewilderingly lifted apart and set
aside, amidst an abandon of flowers, from the rest of the kingly island.
Julian Monsarrat, with keen appreciation of Hawaii’s turbulent history,
filled Jack with valuable material for fiction.
From this Ranch, one may ride to the summit of Mauna Loa, which is
overtopped by its sister peak only by 150 feet height of small cones in
Mauna Kea’s immense crater. But Mary Low’s time was limited, and there
was still so much ahead of us, that this venture, too, was set forward
into the ever receding allure of future returnings.
Still another sumptuous luau, at which we came in contact with some of
the Pahala neighbors, and we set out for Kilauea. There, in broad
daylight, at last we beheld the bursting, beating wonder of her heart of
lava quite as blood-red as all its painted or sculptured imagings. Thus
it must have been when a churchman half a century ago wrote:
“Wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture
into the cup of His indignation.”
We amused ourselves trying to believe that this manifestation was the
reward of certain offerings, of flowers and tid-bits brought purposely
from the Monsarrat abundance, which Mary and ourselves cast into the
burning lake.
From Hilo, where our Shipman family once more enfolded us, even to Uncle
Alec, we made another flying trip down the Puna Coast, leaving Pahoa
behind on our second quest into idyllic Kalapana by the turquoise sea.
Here the natives are still “natives” in simple mode of life and attitude
toward the same; and here one finds, at the village of Kaimu, what is
said to be the largest grove of coconut palms in the Islands. On the
high-piled crescent of sand, overrun by a blossoming vine, under the
angled plume-tossing pillars of the grove lolled a scattered group of
Hawaiians. From the noble silvered head of one of the benevolent old men
Jack bought me a coral-red lei, one of a sort seldom seen these latter
days in Hawaii—a solid cable full an inch in diameter, made by
laboriously perforating, below the center, hard red berries or seeds,
resembling the black-eyed Susan, but smaller, and sewing these close
together around a cord.
The village of Kalapana, farther south, supports quite a large
population, and is very lovely with its fine growth of coconut, puuhala,
and monkey-pod trees. Near by are to be seen the _niu moe_, or
sleeping-coconuts—palms such as are bent, when young, by visiting
chiefs, and thereafter called by the names of the chiefs. These in
Kalapana were bent by Queen Emma, wife of Kamehameha IV. The day has now
gone by when Hawaiian travelers observed their telic and beautiful
custom of planting a coconut wherever they chanced to rest. I call to
mind an exquisite cluster of five green coco-palms beside a spring, on
the Peninsula, near Pearl Harbor, Oahu. They were planted by John F.
Colburn on his own estate, in the stormy days of Liliuokalani’s
accession to the tottering throne, to commemorate her appointment of
himself and four other ministers to serve in her cabinet. Every mile in
the Territory of Hawaii is fraught with keen human interest, if one
could only recognize the signs.
Kalapana landing has become so rough that it is used only for canoes,
and not far off rises a cliff from out the ocean. From an inshore dell
we labored up a gigantic litter of bowlders to the plateau of this
bluff, and looking down from the top could detect shoals of large fish
directly below in deep water. Jack, bargaining for raw fish at a native
hut, missed this side-diversion, which included the exploring of a
century-old tunnel beginning midway of the plateau, its mouth surrounded
by broken old stone fences. Reached by this eerie passage is a large
chamber once used as a place of refuge. The tunnel, made winding so that
spears might not be cast after the fleeing, snakes out from the main
chamber to a place on the cliff, high above the deep water. There is
also, in this neighborhood, the remnant of the Niukukahi heiau. From
Kalapana runs a native trail to the Volcano, but no road farther than
the village itself. Also near Kalapana lies the heiau of Wahaula, “Red
Mouth,” that being a feature of the idols it contained. Here idolatry
was most extensively, and last, practiced. It is the largest and best
preserved of the heiaus, supposed to have been built by Paao, a powerful
priest, in the eleventh century. Wahaula, by the way, is the original of
that restored model in the Bishop Museum, at Honolulu. The natives still
tell the story of the temple’s destruction. The tradition runs that a
wrestler lived near by, whose habit it was to slay pilgrims to the
sacred grove of pandanus and coconut. On guard in a cave in the bluff
where the trail strikes mauka toward Kau, lived a blood-thirsty maiden
whose pleasure it was to signal the wrestler when wayfarers approached.
The inference is that she ate the flesh of those he slew; but this,
unlike the incident of the Wahiawa, Oahu, ogre, is not authentic.
A Kona chief had a friend who had been sacrificed in the heiau. This
friend’s spirit appeared and bade his friend go and recover his bones
from the temple inclosure. But first he must anoint his body with
kukuinut oil; and by this slippery strategy he withstood the attack of
the wrestler, whom he killed. He entered the heiau by daylight, the
spirits, _akuas_, being then off duty, and hid beneath the picked bones
of his friend. When the akuas returned at dusk, they suspicioned the
presence of a human, but were reassured by the spirit of the Kona man’s
friend, who, at midnight, crowed like a cock, and the akuas departed,
thinking it was dawn. Before the rescuer of his friend’s bones made his
own escape, he destroyed the great grass temple by fire. The tabu
(_kapu_) of Wahaula was fire, and any person upon whom rested the shadow
of smoke from the ghastly rites, was sacrificed.
Farther along the trail, on the makai side, is shown the footprint of a
demigod of old, Niheu, as well as the mark of an arrow which he sent at
another demigod who came to fight him. Following west, makai of where
the trail turns mauka, is Kamoamoa, and there one may see a natural
arch, of which there are several in the islands. A few interesting
rock-carvings have been found here.
That night we slept in Kapoho, to the north, the beautiful old home of
Henry K. Lyman, whom we had known for some time, Road Supervisor of the
Puna District, and part-Hawaiian, descended from the old missionary
stock, and a most interesting personality. At the Chicago Convention of
Delegates, he was affectionately known as Prince of Kapoho. And right
princely does the tall, suave-mannered gentleman live in the lovely
house of his childhood.
Not far away is a famous spring in the lava-rock, always at blood heat,
which forms a bath sixty feet long by thirty wide, and twenty-five deep.
Also near Kapoho is Green Lake, a “bottomless” pond in a volcanic
emerald cup, in which it is said the bodies of swimmers under water show
brilliant in shades of blue and green.
Many lava trees are to be seen in the Puna District—trees once
surrounded and preserved by upstanding lava—great vases sprouting from
their tops with living growths of fern or parasite. Certain deep-green
hills seen from the lanai showed as if sculptured by the hand of man;
and it is not considered unlikely that they were fortifications in their
day. This Puna coast is packed with beauty and historical interest.
Sitting on the fragrant lanai at dusk, listening to a serenade by the
plantation boys after their day in the canefields, Jack assured me we
should come back to explore Puna to heart’s content.
In the morning we drove to Hilo, in a steady downpour that almost made a
motorboat of the automobile. The loops of that old road that wound over
the aged lava through the magnificent jungle into Hilo’s suburbs, are
now cut across by a perfect highway, carved through stone and solid
tropical forest that does its best to encroach upon the asphalt. Rolling
along, one who remembers the old leisurely way cannot help casting
regretful glances upon the rambling lane that now and again comes into
view, fast falling into decay.
At the same time, let no malihini think that the straight-away
engineering of the modern motor track is an innovation in the old
Kingdom of Hawaii. I have traveled, horseback, many miles on the Shipman
holdings along Puna’s ironbound coast, from their beach retreat Keaau,
to Papae, a sheep camp, upon a road straight as a moonbeam, that was
built by hands dust this hundred years and more. It was Kamehameha’s
edict that it be laid in a direct line across the turbulent surface of
rotting a-a lava, so his fleet runners might lose no dispatch in
carrying his commands and news. Where caverns from cooled bubbles were
encountered, masonry of the same lavish material was reared from the
depths to support that unswerving, level pave which was to bear the feet
of him who did the great monarch’s bidding.
At Hilo we boarded the train for Paauilo, the end of the railroad, and
were confirmed in our belief that it is one of the world’s wonder
routes. An observation-car, carrying a buffet, has since been added for
the convenience of tourists.
From Paauilo, the young manager of two big sugar plantations took us to
Honokaa above the sea, whence we had ascended to Louissons eight years
before. Next day we journeyed on to the second plantation home at
Kukuihaele, an enormous house, sedately paneled the height of its walls,
and set in a terraced park of lawns and umbrageous trees. We wondered at
such an inappropriate structure in this sub-tropic land, and were told
that the original happy bungalow, built by a Scotch architect, had been
demolished by a later German manager, who preferred the present stately
pile. But the gravest architecture could not dampen our spirits, and a
contented time we had in the sober interior playing cards by a large
fireplace of an evening, and working by day, meanwhile delaying for the
unobliging weather to clear, that we might visit Waipio and Waimanu
valleys near at hand.
From the deck of the _Kilauea_ the previous spring, I had been pointed
out these grand clefts, which by old travelers have been called the Eden
of the Hawaiian Islands; and I was urged, rather than enter by trail, to
surf in from seaward in canoes. This we had hoped to do; but the natives
reported too great a swell from the continued rough weather. Moreover,
the trail up the pali out of Waipio into Waimanu was little safer than
the beach. But one day, riding in a drizzle, Jack and I happened upon
the broad, steep trail of the 2500-foot eastern scarp, into Waipio, and
mushed through its mud down into a sunnier level, meeting strings of
ascending mules laden with garden produce. An old chronicler referred to
the condition of the “roads” hereabout as “embarrassing.” Our horses
tried very fractiously to refuse the descent.
This was one of the prettiest little adventures we two ever had
together, dropping into the sequestered vale that opened wondrously as
we progressed to the lovely banks of a wooded river that wound to the
sea, widening to meet the surf that thundered upon a two-mile shingle.
On the banks of the stream we could see wahines at their washing, and
hear the ringing sweet voices of children at play—survivors of a once
thick population, as evidenced by remains that are to be found of
fish-ponds, taro-patches, and the like. Here the last Hawaiian _tapa_
cloth was made. That same chronicler says: “There was something about
that valley so lovely, so undisturbed ... it seemed to belong to another
world, or to be a portion of this into which sorrow and death had never
entered.”
At the head of this great break in the coast nestles the half-deserted,
half-ruined village of Waipio, and behind it there wedges into the floor
of the valley a tremendous rock bastion veiled in waterfalls to its
mid-hidden summit. A second river curved from beyond its feet, and
joined the one that flowed into the sea. We rode on across reedy
shallows to a pathway once sacred to the sorcerers, kahunas, the which
no layman then dared to profane with his step. Only approaching twilight
held us back from the beach trail that leads to a clump of tall
coconuts, marking the site of a one-time important temple of refuge in
this section of Hawaii, Puuhonua, built as long ago as the thirteenth
century by a Kauai king. There is reason to believe that there were
several lesser temples in the neighborhood. They do say that Kamehameha
the Great was born here in Waipio. One would like to think that first
seeing the light of day in so superlatively grand and beautiful a vale
might make for greatness!
That day, moving along the bases of the cloud-shadowed precipices, we
planned happily how we should some day come here, restore one of the
abandoned cottages and its garden, and live for a while without thought
of time. What a place for quietude and work! For once Jack seemed to
welcome the idea of such seclusion and repose. Little as he ever
inclined toward folding his pinions for long, Hawaii stayed them more
than any other land. “You can’t beat the Ranch in California—it’s a
sweet land,” he would stanchly defend, “but I’d like to spend a great
deal of my time down here.”
We bemoaned the weather that prevented us from climbing the zig-zag
stark above our heads into Waimanu.
An accession of the storm began tearing out the road to Honokaa, and
even a section of the plantation railway along the seaward bluffs. That
repaired, we heeded the warning of the manager, aware of our schedule,
that we might not be able to leave for weeks if we did not avail
ourselves of this route. In a heavy downpour and wind that turned our
futile umbrellas inside-out, we made the several miles in an open
roadster on the track, and the spanning of rain-washed gulches recalled
the flume-coasting of 1907.
After an automobile passage over the roads of our journey of years
earlier, we arrived once more at Waimea, on the Parker Ranch. Here,
turning off into North Kohala, the machine emerged into better weather
and dryer roads along the flanks of the Kohala Mountains, which are over
5000 feet in elevation. Carelessly enough, we had somehow pictured the
North Kohala District as in the main a wilderness of impassable gulches.
And to be sure this feature is not lacking, for the district embraces
some splendid country that is a continuation of the gulch and valley
scenery of which Waipio and Waimanu form part.
Imagine our surprise to find ourselves, at the Frank Woods’ home, Kahua,
on a gigantic green-terraced sweep from mountain top to sea rim, in the
midst of a ranch or conglomeration of ranches covering many thousands of
acres, whose volcanic rack had been rounded by the ages and clothed with
pasture. The laying out of the grounds had been guided by the natural
lines of the incline. From the house, where the living-room extended
full width overlooking the vast panorama, it was hard to discern, except
by the finer grass of the lawns, where garden and wild ended and began.
Never have I seen Jack so pleased over any gardening as with the
undulating spaces of Kahua. And in this house of valuable antiques we
slept in a high koa bedstead, crested with the royal arms, that had
belonged to Queen Emma.
Motoring across to the northwest coast, our surprise grew. A perfect
road traversed an ordered landscape that was unescapably English in its
general trimness as well as in the architecture of its buildings. Of
course, there was everywhere a waving expanse of the fair green cane,
and near the oceanside were ranged the sugar mills of Kohala. At the
town of Kohala, where Kamehameha began his conquesting career, one
happens suddenly upon the original Kamehameha statue, spear in hand,
helmet and cape gilded to simulate yellow feathers. This figure, by T.
R. Gould of Boston, cast in Italy, was lost coming around Cape Horn. The
exact duplicate, which stands before Honolulu’s Court House, was made
and set up previous to the salving of the original from the wreck, which
was sold to the Hawaiian Government.
The rich plantations formerly depended upon rainfall for irrigation; but
in 1905 and 1906 they became independent of this more or less sporadic
source by constructing the Kohala Ditch on the order of those of Maui
and Kauai. The indefatigable M. M. O’Shaughnessy was chief engineer of
this nine miles of tunnel-building and fourteen of open waterway, that
supplies five plantations. He was assisted by Jorgen Jorgensen, whose
own remarkable Waiahole Tunnel and ditch on Oahu, aggregating nearly
19,000 feet, we had seen; and P. W. P. Bluett, whom we visited at Puuhue
following our stay at Kahua.
Mr. Bluett took us horseback up the mountain to show us this Kohala
Ditch, and also the second great engineering feat, of his own designing
and supervision, the Kehena Ditch, consisting of fourteen miles of
tunnel and ditch line, some of it through rank jungly swampland. This
ditch supplements the Kohala viaduct by conserving storm-waters which
had heretofore been wasted. Along the Kehena we rode at an elevation of
thousands of feet, through some of the most gorgeous country of the
whole Territory of Hawaii, culminating in that of the valley Honokane
Nui, into which we peered while our host described the perilous building
of a trail we could see scratched oh the almost perpendicular wooded
side of the great gulch, this being the line of communication for the
O’Shaughnessy system.
Jack, with his unquestionable love of natural beauty, was ever impressed
with man’s lordly harnessing of the outlaw, Nature, leading her by the
mouth to perform his work upon earth.
“Do you get the splendid romance of it?” he would say. “Look what these
engineers have done—reaching out their hands and gathering and
diverting the storm wastage of streams over the edge of this valley
thousands of feet here in the clouds.
“Look what man has accomplished, and he isn’t shouting very loud about
it, either. Do you remember Jorgensen, what a modest, unassuming fellow
he was?—and Peter Bluett here—look at him: Anglo-Saxon, big, strong,
efficient—you have to draw out such men to learn what they’ve done in
making the world a better place to live in.... And yet,” he would lapse
sadly, “just such men are devoting their brains to producing destructive
machinery for making anarchical chaos out of Europe, where there should
be only constructive work ... all because a crazy kaiser and his lot
want a place in the sun, and the whole earth to boot, and the rest of
the earth objects.”
The story of this Ranch alone, and the old headquarters, Puuhue, of its
original owner, James Woods, an Englishman who married a sister of
Colonel Sam Parker, is inextricably woven with the golden age of the
Parker Ranch. Puuhue is a house of connected as well as detached houses,
strung over a terraced green court high-hedged from the Trades and
shaded by fine trees. The whole premises are a-whisper with gentle
ghosts of the past.
Again is the compulsion strong within me to expatiate upon the place of
our blissful tarrying; but my book would needs start a yard-shelf of
books—none too long to do the subject justice—were I to let pen stray
among the unwritten stories that Mary Low’s active memory, impelled by
her untrained sense of artistry, spun for us on the way to and from
charming social functions given by the hospitable dwellers of the
English countryside, from Kahua and Puuhue to Kohala and beyond.
There was an afternoon in an entrancing British garden on a Hawaiian
hillside. And once, after tea in a quaint garden lanai past Kohala, on
the beautiful Niulii Plantation, its little gulches choked with ferns
and blossoming ginger, we were taken to inspect a less modern ditch,
tunnel and all, that still irrigates a large tract of taro—another
striking ebullition of the constructive genius of Kamehameha.
There is a prehistoric chart, eloquent of long-forgotten affairs of men,
laid upon the long incline of the Woods Ranch. It resembles the map of a
vast scheme of town-lots, the rocks, overgrown with green, windrowed
into age-leveled partitions. An explanation which has been offered is
that this was not a continuously inhabited district, but the chance
halting place of chiefs, who, ever migrating with their retainers, were
wont to settle down for months and even years, raising their produce as
well as depending upon the commoners of the invaded soil. These
miles-broad checkerboards of windrowed stones are also to be seen in
Kona and Waianea, both sections being, like this portion of Kohala, more
or less dry in certain seasons, where sweet potatoes were of old the
principal crops, growing abundantly in the wetter months.
This location was the point at which Kamehameha I from time to time
converged his great armies, for the invasion of Maui, Molokai, and Oahu.
Several years, for example, were consumed in assembling his legion of
18,000 fighting men and a fleet of war canoes to transport them to the
conquest of Oahu alone. It is likely that many of these troops
practically supported themselves in and around this area, which would
account for the large operations in rock-gathering that fenced and
divided their myriad plots.
“And they, too, whispered to their loves that life was sweet—and
passed,” Jack would muse upon their disappearance from the face of the
earth; “and we, too, shall pass, as they passed, from the land they
loved.”
Mr. Woods lent me a chestnut horse that had been in training for his
wife, absent in Honolulu. She had not yet seen her husband’s surprise
gift, and I was the first woman to ride the splendid creature, while the
Hawaiian cowboys who had broken him stood about waiting for whatever
might happen. For be it known that Eva and Frank Woods are notable
specimens of Polynesian “physical aristocracy,” despite their slight
Hawaiian blood; and this animal, his dam a cow-pony and his sire a
thoroughbred race-horse belonging to Prince Cupid, had been chosen for
size and power to carry his Amazonian mistress about the mountain ranch,
and trained by heavy men. Little was he held down to the springy earth
by my light weight, and we spent much time in mid-air, for he touched
ground as seldom as possible in his leaping uphill or down, over the
high lush grasses, as if conquering a never ending succession of
hurdles. This is a paradise for one who rides.
It was from Mahukona, after a luau, that our truly royal progress around
the royal island came to its end. Laden with the leis of our friends, we
embarked in boats for the _Mauna Kea_ anchored outside the bight. And
while the steamer edged along the southerly coast before squaring for
Oahu, stopping off several familiar landings, over again we lived what
Jack vowed were six of the happiest weeks he had ever spent in the
Islands.
Back at Waikiki, the spreading bungalow seemed home indeed, with our own
servants, always adoring of Jack, smiling welcome from the wide lanai.
“Almost do we feel ourselves _kamaaina_, Mate Woman,” he would say, arm
about my shoulders, while we greeted or sped Honolulu guests, or
watched, beyond the Tyrian dyes of the reef, smoke of liners that
brought to us visitors from the Coast. “Only, never forget—it is not
for _us_ to say.”
One thing that earned Jack London his kamaainaship was his activity for
the Pan-Pacific Club, with its “Hands Around the Pacific” movement.
Under the algarobas at Pearl Harbor, in 1907, one day he and Alexander
Hume Ford had discussed socialism—upon Ford’s initiative. “Well,” the
latter concluded, “I can’t ‘see’ your socialism. _My_ idea is, to find
out what people want, help them to it, then make them do what you wish
them to do; and if it is right, they _will_ do it—if you keep right
after them!... Now, I’m soon leaving for Australia and around the
Pacific at my own expense, to see if there is a way to get the peoples
to work together for one another and for the Pacific.”
“That’s socialism—look out!” Jack contentedly blew rings into the still
air.
“I don’t care if it is,” retorted his friend. “That won’t stop me.
Walter Frear has just been appointed Governor of Hawaii, and I’ve
interested him, and carry an official letter with me. Hawaii, with her
mixture of Pacific races, yet with no race problems, should be the
country to take the lead. I’m going to call a Pan-Pacific Convention
here.”
“Go to it, Ford, and I’ll help all I can,” Jack approved.
“All right, then,” the other snapped him up. “Address the University
Club next week!”
“Sure I will, and glad to, though you know how I despise public
speaking.” And Jack kept his pledge, while Mr. Ford was presently off on
his mission to Australasia.
On the day of our return from California to Honolulu in 1915, while
helping us find a house at Waikiki, Ford recounted the expansion of his
venture, which he declared needed only Jack’s further co-operation to
carry it through to success. “It’s big, I tell you; it’s big!” Weekly
dinners were given by Ford in the lanai of the Outrigger Club, at which
occasion there were present a score of the leading Hawaiians, or
Chinese, or Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, or Portuguese, to exchange
ideas with the leading white men who were behind the movement. The
speeches and discussions were of vital interest, all bent toward
bringing about a working in unison for the mutual benefit of Pacific
nations.
Out of these affairs sprang up interesting friendships between ourselves
and these foreigners and their families, resulting in social functions
in our respective homes and at the foreign clubs, and also at the
Japanese theaters. Would that all the international differences of the
Union might be handled as harmoniously as they are in Hawaii. During
that sojourn in Honolulu, more than one Japanese father assured us: “My
sons were born under your flag. I should expect them to fight under your
flag if need arose.”
One evening, at the Outrigger Club, Jack spoke the Pan-Pacific doctrine
before the Congressional visitors and three hundred representatives of
the various nationalities in Hawaii, all of whom responded
enthusiastically through their orators. One of our friends, Mr. S.
Sheba, of the Japanese paper, _Hawaii Shimpo_, and an early director in
the Pan-Pacific Union, has since bought the _Japan Times_, an English
daily in Tokyo, and placed in charge a former American editor of
Honolulu. Another American editor of Hawaii is connected with the
_Transpacific Magazine_ in Tokyo, and is also on the staff of the _Japan
Advertiser_. An ex-Honolulu newspaperman owns a daily in Manila, while
in Shanghai several Hawaii-Americans do their bit for Pan-Pacific
sentiment by their editorial writings.
While the rest of the world writhes and struggles, Hawaii forges ahead,
using its best brains to further the means of international peace; and
the Pan-Pacific Union grows apace. It is incorporated as an
international body of trustees, the consuls in Honolulu from all Pacific
lands are on its board of management, and the heads of all Pacific
governments, from President Harding to the king of Siam, are among its
officers and active workers. Among its branches may be named those in
Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines; and the zeal
of its members is steadily creating new branches. Its first official
housing was in the University Club, in the room where Jack London first
spoke to its nucleus. And in this room, on Balboa Day, 1917, Finn Haakon
Frolich’s bust of Jack London, modeled from life in 1915, was unveiled;
while at Waikiki, beneath the date palm that marks the site of our brown
tent-cottage, a Jack London Memorial drinking-fountain is talked of.
Although Alexander Hume Ford was the discoverer of this new Pacific, and
founder of the movement whose name now rings from shore to shore around
the Western Ocean, humbly he insists that without his friend’s help and
moral support it would have been a longer, stronger pull to bring about
the present situation. Which is:
That Honolulu, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, at the very crossroads of the
Pacific, has become what might be called the racial experiment station
of the Western Hemisphere. In place of the weekly pan-race luncheons
established years ago by Mr. Ford and Mr. Thurston, to further
co-operation to the common weal of all countries represented, and that
of the adoptive one Hawaii, now monthly dinners are attended by leaders
of the Chinese, Japanese, and American races, twelve picked men from
each, comprising editors, consuls, and other officials of the Territory.
The discussions are understood not to be for publication, and therefore
are of a freedom and frankness, to quote Lorrin A. Thurston, never
before experienced. One triumphant consequence of this policy of
uninterrupted conference was a settling, by the Japanese themselves, of
the delicate and long-troublesome question of the Japanese
language-schools in Hawaii. After one of these Pan-Pacific Union
meetings, they drew up a bill which was introduced into the legislature
and has become a law.
Another burning topic touched upon has been the treatment of citizens of
Oriental parentage born under the Stars and Stripes, who are Americans.
Wise adjustment of the relations among the many peoples whose territory
margins the Pacific is a task for statesmen, nay, for seers. The
attitude of the Union is that recognition of reciprocal rights and
duties toward one’s alien neighbor, and a general desire on the part of
the rank and file of different nationalities to live in harmony, will
accomplish wonders. The Pan-Pacific Union and the Y. M. C. A. of Hawaii
are fostering a movement to make the passport of an American worth one
hundred per cent of its face value regardless of the slant of a man’s
eyes or the color of his skin; to devise methods, by amendments of laws,
regulations or instructions, as may be found expedient, and to make sure
of enactment, of securing to American citizens of Oriental descent the
same rights and privileges enjoyed by other citizens, and protect them,
when traveling, from unreasonable technical delays and annoyances from
officials, such as have been suffered by known characters, of proven
loyalty and good business and social standing; to become familiar with
our laws and those of other countries, for the purpose of enabling
naturalized citizens of the United States, and those of American birth
but foreign ancestry, to free themselves from the claims of the
governments to whom they or their fathers owed allegiance, and establish
their status as American citizens; to devise means to prevent the
language press from aggravating racial antipathy, but rather to promote
harmony and Americanization of aliens and citizens of alien descent; to
organize evening schools for adults, for education in English, in
Americanization, and general knowledge; to seek the remedying of living
conditions in tenement houses, and improving of the surroundings of the
rising generation in their individual homes; to create children’s
playgrounds.
Aside from the humanitarian aspect of these intentions, to quote from a
report of the Committee of Nine, of which Mr. Thurston is chairman,
“public policy demands that we bind these citizens to us and encourage
their loyalty and co-operation in the solution of the many puzzling
problems that face us, for which task they are peculiarly fitted. They
are not subjects for ‘Americanization,’ They are already American by
birth, by law, by inclination, by sentiment, by residence, by service,
by participation in the burdens and responsibilities incident to
American citizenship.... Our fellow citizens of Oriental descent proved
during the late war to be as loyal and patriotic in all respects as
those of other race origin in service in the army, participation in Red
Cross and other services and contributions. We then freely accepted
their services and contributions and voluntarily recognized their
loyalty to the government and their value to the community. To
discriminate now against them in any manner, upon the sole ground of
their race or their ancestors, is ungrateful, contrary to basic American
principles of justice and fair play; humiliating alike to the subjects
of the discrimination and to other American citizens who feel that
American honor is thereby being impugned.”
But the Union branches out from this direct drive to promote a mutually
beneficial inter-racial amity. There is, for instance, the Pan-Pacific
Scientific Council, an outgrowth of the first conference in Honolulu in
August, 1920. This was called by the Union, and made possible by Mr. A.
H. Ford, who secured a territorial appropriation of $10,000, then a
Congressional appropriation from Washington of $9,000, and, next,
appropriations from Australia, New Zealand, and China. The Pan-Pacific
conference headquarters, through the courtesy of Governor C. J.
McCarthy, are the throne room and senate chamber of the Executive
building, the Iolani Palace of the monarchy. Two or three times a year,
Pan-Pacific conferences of some sort are held there.
These conferences, the resolute dream of Mr. Ford, have been
materialized by the aid of Director Herbert E. Gregory, of the Bishop
Museum, who, with a few co-workers, organized the Conference body, and
sent out over a hundred invitations to prominent scientists and research
institutions, for delegates to consider the desirability, and ways and
means, for exploration of the Pacific area on lines of Anthropology,
Biology, Botany, Entomology, Geography, Meteorology, Seismology and
Volcanology, and allied subjects. Some of the main purposes of the
Scientific Research Council are: To organize, create and conduct an
institute of learning that will gather and disseminate information of a
scientific character; acting for and co-operating with the Pan-Pacific
Union in conducting its scientific conferences. To correspond with
scientific bodies throughout the world, but more particularly with those
interested in the solution of the scientific problems connected with the
Pacific region. To co-operate at all times with the Union in obtaining
from the legislature, and commercial bodies, as well as from
individuals, appropriations and funds necessary for carrying on the
scientific research approved by the Union.
The call to the first conference was responded to in person by
ninety-six delegates, scientists all, hailing from the United States,
British Columbia, Australia’s various provinces, China, Japan, England,
Philippines, Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, and other remote quarters. Such
scientific Conferences are to be followed by others. It is considered
that the next gathering should be on a far broader basis than the first,
which was but preliminary to the series the Pan-Pacific Union pledged
itself to call. Each class of scientific men now desires a section under
its direction—the agriculturists, the medical brothers, the
entomologists, and so through the roster.
That the activities of the Pan-Pacific Union have not been hid under a
bushel by her publicity agents, is seen by the fact that the state
department, represented by Dr. P. P. Claxton, U. S. Commissioner of
Education, awakening to the importance of Hawaii as the central
information outpost at the crossroads of the Pacific, has co-operated
with the Secretary of the Interior, Thomas Barton Payne, in preparing
the program for a great Pan-Pacific Educators’ Congress at Honolulu in
August, 1921, and issuing a summons thereto to more than a score of
countries encircling the globe. The scope of interests for the attention
of such a Pan-Pacific educational Congress are best indicated by certain
tentative questions suggested by the state department, such as:
What are the outstanding educational problems of each country?
What should be the ideals of education in each country?
(_a_) As to preparation for citizenship?
(_b_) As to preparation for the vocations?
(_c_) As to preparation for individual development, including health?
How are these ideals affected by forms of government and by the social
ideals of the respective countries? How affected by geographical
conditions, including natural resources?
What elements should be included in the education of these countries to
serve international relations?
(_a_) Commercial relations.
(_b_) Political relations.
What is taught in the schools of each country in regard to the other
countries of the group—as to resources, industries, commerce, people,
civilization, ideals, government, etc.?
(_a_) What does a child know about these matters at the end of the
elementary school period? At the end of the high school period? At the
end of the college period?
(_b_) What attitude of mind toward the other countries will the child
have as a result?
(_c_) To what extent is it desirable to teach the language and
literature of given countries in the others?
By what means may the schools and other educational agencies assure the
continuity and still further strengthen the cordial relations existing
among the countries of this group?
The adult element is taken account of with regard to the extension of
education through community activities and otherwise; also looking
toward research from the standpoint of practical results in agriculture,
home-making, industry, commerce, and so forth.
That the purely commercial consideration is not lacking in the schemes
of the Pan-Pacific leaders, is borne out by plans which enlisted the
interest of Franklin K. Lane, first honorary vice-president of the
Union, in a Commercial Conference at Honolulu. “Good fortune to you,
brave man of big visions,” he wrote, shortly before his death, to
Alexander Hume Ford, whose official status is that of
secretary-director. “What an interest there is now in the South Seas,”
Mr. Lane goes on. “Never before have I seen anything like it. Get people
to your islands—boat service—that’s all you need. Then they will
become the focus of Pacific progress.” And in furtherance of publicity
for the manifold ambitions of the Pan-Pacific Union, a mammoth Press
Conference has been called, as a department of the Press Congress of the
world. In fact, that World Congress, representing forty nations,
convened at Honolulu in the autumn of 1921.
One tangible result of the Scientific Conference has been that every
state bordering the vast bowl of the Pacific has been aroused to the
conserving and furthering of the world supply of sea-food. This means
the stimulation of the fishery scientists to resume a definite study of
the migrations and habits of fish, that they may in turn counsel the
various governments what laws should be enacted for the protection of
young food fish, looking toward supplying the world. The establishment
of fish universities has become a hope of the Pan-Pacific group; in
fact, there is already an institution in Seattle along these lines. And
a merchant prince of Osaka, Japan, Hirabayashi by name, has offered to
found and finance an extensive educational plant in a peninsula park on
the Inland Sea. It is to include an aquarium, a library on Pacific
Research, a laboratory for the observing of fish culture, a building to
house students, and all other departments consonant with the purpose of
such an establishment, from which will be sent out scientists to garner
knowledge of fish and their habits, as well as the methods of fishing,
canning, and distribution pursued by different lands.
It sometimes happens that government appropriations to the Pan-Pacific
Union are in blanket form, the Union to appropriate the funds to cover
expenses of either educational or commercial conferences, the scientific
coming under the latter head, though scientists may be invited to attend
the commercial councils. And at the Legislative Pan-Pacific conference,
those scientists who are familiar with the depredations in Pacific
waters by unscientific commercial fishermen, may be sure of warm
welcome; for the various conferences are fashioned to overlap and
co-operate as much as possible one with another. It is prophesied that
the sages of the Pan-Pacific Union will not rest until they have set in
operation international fishery laws for the whole Pacific area.
The Union was for a time at home in that white caravansary dear to many
a by-gone voyager to Honolulu and beyond, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, with
its shaded spaciousness and its flying balconies. But it has now come to
rest at the Alexander Young Hotel, while plans are in progress for the
erection of a great Pan-Pacific Palace that will house the commercial
and art exhibits that are now being collected from every Pacific land.
Here will convene the Conference; and the scope of the building includes
an open air Greek theatre to seat five thousand.
Professor Pitkin of Columbia University has urged the Union to summon a
conference of heads of Pacific governments, to consider the formation of
a Pan-Pacific League of Nations. President Warren G. Harding, in his
letter of acceptance as an Honorary President of the Pan-Pacific Union,
cautions a gentle approach to this subject. He writes:
“I feel the policy of the Union should be one of proceeding for the time
being in an unofficial fashion.... as a wise one. I should hope that in
due time such an organization might secure the co-operation and support
of the governments which have interests in the Pacific; for I can
realize that it has possibilities of very great usefulness.”
President Harding has been invited to attend one of the Conferences this
summer of 1921. “Why not make Honolulu the summer capital of the United
States?” the Pan-Pacific heads propose. Indeed, their boundless ambition
points out that it is the logical National Capital. For Honolulu in
truth lies halfway between Maine and Manila; half-way between Alaska and
Samoa. It is literally the central city of the United States of America,
as it is of the Pacific Ocean, tributary to which dwell two-thirds of
the population of the globe!
Why not?
Amongst the many social events we attended, that are the life of the
Island metropolis, there were days and nights when we met Prince Cupid
and our First Princess, at Sam Parker’s. The old Colonel’s devoted
girls, Eva Woods and Helen Widemann, entertained informally, and we saw
the gallant spendthrift host of other days failing, failing.... It was
the year before, one of the last days he ever left the house, that in
our Beach Walk cottage we had Colonel Parker for luncheon, together with
his life-long friend, that good Bohemian and gentleman, Frank Unger,
both old comrades, since dead. The two wore about their Panama hats
orange leis of ilima, now so rarely seen in these days of careless paper
imitations, which they presented to Jack and me. And it is these
cherished garlands of wilted flower-gold that now wreathe their friend’s
ashes in the Valley of the Moon.
A fine gentleman was Colonel Samuel (Kamuela) Parker, if ever I saw
one—courtly in manner yet bearing himself with that careless, debonair
sweetness we so rarely have the privilege of knowing. He combined all
the geniality and large-heartedness of his double heritage. He died on
March 19, 1920. Less than a week before, he had pressed my hand in
farewell.
The seven days in which the body lay in his house in Kapiolani Park,
where he had peacefully slipped into unconsciousness, was characteristic
of the stately observance attending Hawaii’s distinguished dead. The
spacious living-room was banked with orchids and roses, its walls
entirely covered with the floral tribute. Four-hour watches, by daylight
and dark, were kept by members of the Chiefs of Hawaii, who first sent
the Tabu Stick of deep yellow chrysanthemums to stand at the head of the
bier. At the foot hung the faithful replica of a feather cape, made of
the same royal-hued blossoms, with a pattern traced in blood-red
carnations.
For one night, in regal splendor of real yellow-feather mantle,
_Ahuala_, and feather-lei upon her blue-black hair, there sat Princess
David (Abigail) Kawananakoa, a picture of mourning, at the head of her
friend’s coffin. Behind her was a young Hawaiian maiden; and to right
and left two helmeted Warriors, each with upright spear in hand, stood
motionless. Between these and two similar impressive figures at the foot
of the dead chief, were ranged on either side in full regalia the
highest in rank of the Daughters of Warriors.
Certain ancient men and women, with rigid discipline in the matter of
chiefly precedence, maintained the ceremonial of that splendidly somber
week of honor to the alii. The music, chanted, or played upon ukulele
and guitar, that wove softly into the spirit of the occasion, was mostly
old meles of the days of the monarchy.
In high contrast to these traditional rites was one day of service by
the Church of Christ, Scientist, in whose faith this man had gone to
sleep. His Masonic Chapter also held its ceremony.
Colonel Parker’s body was taken “home” to Mana on the Parker Ranch.
There, beneath the cypresses of the quaint family graveyard, his casket,
swathed in the choicest blooms that grow, was laid in the vault with his
first wife, Panana, and their daughter, Hattie.
So ended one of the monarchy’s most picturesque careers—that of a man
once accounted remarkable by those of more than many countries, for his
extraordinary good fellowship, the gracious kindliness of his heart, and
his grandeur of physique and address.
A little story, and I am done. It is too gentle a thing, too simple and
illuminating of the past and present of Polynesia and all mankind, to
lay aside with the countless notes no book of reasonable length can
encompass. It comes to me through one who accompanied the funeral party,
composed of representatives from the different branches of the Parker
family, from Honolulu to Mahukona on Hawaii. There they disembarked with
the coffin, en route to Mana.
The passage through Oahu channel and Molokai channel was extremely
rough, and the _Mauna Kea_ “labored woundily.” The woman fell asleep,
and dreamed that she saw Kahaleahu, once valet to Sam Parker; a cultured
Hawaiian who had traveled about the world with the Colonel, and who,
when the young folk of Parker Ranch had their vacations from school in
Honolulu, would be dispatched to escort them home to Mana. The dreamer
addressed Kahaleahu:
“Ino maoli ke kai!” (The sea is so rough!)
Kahaleahu replied:
“It will be calm in a little while, for the guide of the night is the
mother of the Boy.”
Awakening, in Hawaiian she told her cabin-mate the dream. “But it was a
vision, a sign,” she believes. “Do you not see?—Kilia, a chieftess of
Hana, Maui, Sam Parker’s mother, was lost in the channel between Hawaii
and Maui. She had come from Hana in a canoe, to marry Sam’s father, Eben
Parker, at Kawaihae; and when she was old, in her was a great longing to
see again her old home in Hana, and her people. And she must go in a
canoe, as she had come forty years before. She set out in the canoe, and
was never heard from.... She was guide of that night, and sent Kahaleahu
to give me the sign that The Boy, _ka keiki_, her boy, should come
safely ashore at Mahukona.”
Now Sam Parker to his retainers had never been Sam (Kamuela), in the
usual native way, but was always referred to as _ka keiki_, The
Boy—even at forty years and over; that being, in their etiquette, a
mark of attention to superior birth.
To the prophecy of the vision: The _Mauna Kea’s_ pitching and rolling
began speedily to abate, and in due course she came to anchor off
Lahaina in an unrippled calm, to send ashore and take aboard passengers
and freight. This calm, under a cloudless sky, continued clear to
Mahukona, where the landing from ship’s boats is habitually made
difficult by a heavy swell, and passengers must watch their chance to
avoid a ducking when leaping from boat to jetty. Never, in all the
dreamer’s interisland voyaging, girl and woman, had she known the water
of this open roadstead so like a millpond. It was a sign.
Up the long acclivity, at Kahua, Frank Woods had a great fire burning,
and fine mats spread to receive the casket of his father-in-law; while
in another room an abundant feast of “funeral baked meats” was
spread—pig, and fowl, and fish, and all that goes therewith in this
goodly land. After partaking of it, the mourners sat out the night,
amongst the flowers, with their dead; and with the morning started upon
the day-long journey over Kohala’s mountains to Waimea, on up Mauna
Kea’s giant flank to Mana and the house of death.
“It was a vision, not a dream,” they believe. And why not? “Sam died,”
they say, “on the anniversary of the birth of Panana, his youth’s bride.
And was not that nineteenth day of March also the anniversary of the
death of their first daughter?”
What would you?
There were times when we twain were included in affairs that were solely
Hawaiian except for the few who had married into the families—as at
Charles W. Booth’s beautiful house, Halewa, one night in Pauoa Valley.
There a hundred sat down to a great banquet, with a dance to follow in
the vine-screened lanai to music from instruments invisible in the
fragrant shrubbery; from which one could see up the valley the hundreds
of tended acres that were as a back-garden of the estate. Mrs. Booth,
herself part Hawaiian, and daughter of a Maui chief, let us roam about
the absorbing apartments, each a veritable museum of treasure trove
inherited from her aunt, Malie Kahai, a celebrated beauty—feather leis,
tapas, calabashes, finest of mats, and, prize of all, a feather cape
that had belonged to her princely father. Some of the furniture had come
from the palace of the king and from Queen Emma’s residence. Here we met
Stella Keomailani, Mrs. Kea, “Stella” to her intimates, last living
descendant of the high chiefs of the Poohoolewaikala line—a sort of
royal Hawaiian clan descended from kings. Blue-blooded pure Hawaiian,
she is a remarkable type—tall, slender with brown hair and hazel eyes
and a skin as of ivory washed with pale gold. On her father’s side she
is cousin to Queen Emma, and one of the heirs mentioned in the Queen’s
will.
But there—to mention all who blessed us with their friendship would be
almost to quote our Honolulu telephone directory, which hangs now at my
elbow, with its markings desolately reminiscent of the roof under which
Jack London dwelt those seven months on Kalia Road.
Eager for the criticism of Honoluluans upon certain stories he Was
writing at this period, “On the Makaloa Mat,” “The Water Baby,” “When
Alice Told Her Soul,” “The Bones of Kahekili,” Jack often had me
telephoning for a party to come for luncheon or drop around for tea
under the hau, for the reading, with a swim to follow. Other new stories
he wrote and read aloud—“The Kanaka Surf,” “The Message,” “The
Princess,” and “Like Argus of the Ancient Times.” With the exception of
“The Kanaka Surf,” which was a haole tale placed in Honolulu, none of
these latter are Hawaiian fiction. The next novel he contemplated
settling down to was to bear the title of “Cherry”—a Japanese heroine
with an Islands setting and a potent racial motif. And this work,
“Cherry,” was the broken thing he left behind when he died on November
22.
One morning Jack was obliged to have me call in Doctors Herbert and
Walters, for he had been seized with the agonies of kidney stone.
Shortly before, he had been very ill all night, as if from ptomaine
poisoning. “Don’t worry,” he would usually brush aside attempts to
diagnose or to call in medical advice. “It will pass—look at me: I am
in good weight, and shall live many happy years, my dear.” But there was
that in his face which brought me white nights, and caused his friends
to ask, “What ails Jack? He looks well enough, but there’s something
about him... his eyes...”
And so the gay wheel turned in Honolulu, as the golden days and
star-blue nights came and went. And yet, for all Jack courted more or
less excitement—I quote from my pocket diary, and the date is June 14,
1916: “Mate said to-night that this has been the happiest day he ever
spent in the Islands. And what did he do? Write, read me what he had
composed; and we lunched and dined conjugally alone together, with a
little swim in between whiles; and in the evening he read to me from
George Sterling’s latest book of poems, ‘The Caged Eagle,’ just received
from George, and broke down in the reading before the deathless beauty
of the poem called ‘In Autumn.’”
Before we sailed for home, which was on July 26, that Jack might attend
the Bohemian Jinks, we put our heads together with Mary Low’s for the
planning of a luau, just before our departure, under our own roof and
hau tree for our own Hawaiian friends, with a night of dancing and music
and cards to follow. The only haoles to be bidden were their close
connections. Forty they sat at the great board that was entirely covered
with deep layers first of ti-leaves and then ferns, strewn with flowers
and fruit of every description, native and imported. It was a feast
served by Hawaiian women whose business it was to see that every detail
was in the most approved native fashion.
To Mary Low must be given the praise for the success of this occasion,
for under her superintendence it was produced. And upon her unerring
wisdom and tact the place-cards, bearing embossed the royal coat-of-arms
of Hawaii, were laid. The ends of the enormous table were seated in this
wise: Jack center, with Princess Cupid to his right, and Mrs. Stella Kea
left. Myself at opposite end, with Prince Cupid on my right, and Mayor
Lane at my other side, while his wife, Alice, sat at the Prince’s
right—she of the beautiful hands that are her husband’s pride,
exquisitely modeled by a mother’s early manipulation, lomilomi, after
the charming Hawaiian practise. A characteristic of many well-born
Hawaiians is the straight, high back-head; and the mothers here, as with
the hands, have exercised their patient modeling. Full thighs were also
deemed a mark of superior beauty, and much attention was given to
massaging and developing the limbs of the young wahines.
Our friends will not, I am sure, be offended if I mention a laughable
incident that all took in jovial good part. Next the Princess, Senator
“Bob” Shingle, best of toastmasters, had concluded his opening speech,
and sat down amidst hearty applause. But his sitting was not of a
permanence that was to be expected, being in fact an entire
disappearance to those at my end of the long table, and alarm widened
the eyes of Muriel, his wife, sister to Princess David Kawananakoa.
Alack, the floor of the aged lanai had not upborne such weight of
Polynesian aristocracy these many years, and the hind-legs of even this
medium-sized haole’s chair had gone incontinently through the rotten
planking.
Hardly had the bubble of merriment subsided when, to my speechless
horror, Prince Cupid vanished from my side in a clean back-somersault.
He was on his nimble feet almost before he struck the sand nearly a foot
below the lanai-level—not for nothing had he learned football tactics
in his university days. His good-natured mirth put all at ease, and the
alert nervousness of Senator Charles Chillingworth and others of his
stature and avoirdupois called forth much funning. There were
fortunately no more accidents, and the speech-making in appreciation of
Jack and his services to Hawaii was gratifying in the extreme.
I can see Jack now, as he rose, all in white save for his black soft
tie, hesitating half-diffidently with the fingers of one hand absently
caressing the flowers on the ti-leaves, before lifting his eyes,
black-blue and misted with feeling. At first his voice, low and clear,
shook slightly, but gathered, with his beautiful, Greek face, a
solemnity that increased as he spoke his heart to these people among
whom he loved to dwell.
Secondarily to the pure aloha motive of this luau, we had assembled our
friends for the christening of the Jack London Hula, chanted stanza by
stanza, each repeated by Ernest Kaai and his perfect Hawaiian singers
with their instruments. Mary Low was the mother of this _mélé_, for in
her fertile brain was conceived the idea of immortalizing, for Hawaii,
Jack London himself and more specifically his progress around the Big
Isle of Mounts, as was done for the chiefs of old by their bards and
minstrels.
The Hawaiian woman best fitted, in Mary’s judgment, to recite the saga,
was Rosalie (Lokalia) Blais-dell, who had helped in the versifying; and
all Lokalia asked in return for the long evening’s effort, which with
lofty sweetness she assured us was her honor and pleasure, was a copy
each of Jack’s “Cruise” and my “Log” of the _Snark_.
Thus, during the eating of the hundred and one tropic delicacies that a
swarm of pretty girls prepared and served from the kitchen, never was
the gayety so robust that it did not silence instantly when Lokalia’s
voice rose intoning above the lilting wash of reef waters against the
sea wall thirty feet away, followed by the succession of Kaai’s lovely
music to the mele. Each long stanza, carrying an incident of the
progress around Hawaii and those who welcomed Jack, closed with two
lines:
“Hainaia mai ana ka puana,
No Keaka Lakana neia inoa.”
“This song is then echoed,
’Tis in honor of Jack London.”
Listened critically all those qualified to judge, and now and again a
low “Good,” or “Perfect,” or “Couldn’t be better, Mary,” or “All honor
to Mary Kipikane!” would be forthcoming from Prince or Mayor or Senator.
And there was in the mélé a swaying Spanish dance song for Lakana
Wahine—Kaikilani Poloku, which is myself; for kind hearts gave me that
name of a beloved queen of the long gone years, whose meaning is passing
sweet to me.
Laden to the eyes with no false leis by the hands of Hawaii, we looked
down from the high steamer deck into the upturned faces of the people of
our Aloha Land, standing ankle-deep in flowers and serpentine. The
_Matsonia_ cast off hawsers, and, moving ahead majestical-slow, parted
the veil of serpentine and flowers woven from her every deck to the
quay.
“Of all lands of joy and beauty under the sun...” Jack began, the words
trailing into eloquent silence. He had approached Hawaii with gifts of
candor and affection in hands, and eyes, and lips. And real Hawaii,
impermeable to meanness or harboring of grudge over franknesses that had
but voiced a grave interest in her, has been the greater giver, in that
she granted him the joy and satisfaction of realizing that they had not
known each other in vain.