The white population here, which constitutes "society," is very
small. There are two venerable missionaries "Father Coan" and
"Father Lyman," the former pastor of a large native congregation,
which, though much shrunken, is not only self-sustaining, but
contributes $1200 a year to foreign missions, and the latter, though
very old and frail, the indefatigable head of an industrial school
for native young men. Their houses combine the trimness of New
England, with the luxuriance of the tropics; they are cool retreats,
embowered among breadfruit, tamarind, and bamboo, through whose
graceful leafage the blue waters of the bay are visible.
Innumerable exotics are domesticated round these fair homesteads.
Two of "Father Lyman's" sons are influential residents, one being
the Lieutenant-Governor of the island. Other sons of former
missionaries are settled here in business, and there are a few
strangers who have been attracted hither. Dr. Wetmore, formerly of
the mission, is a typical New Englander of the old orthodox school.
It is pleasant to see him brighten into almost youthful enthusiasm
on the subject of Hawaiian ferns. My host, a genial, social,
intelligent American, is sheriff of Hawaii, postmaster, etc., and
with his charming wife (a missionary's daughter), and some friends
who live with them, make their large house a centre of kindliness,
friendliness, and hospitality. Mr. Thompson, pastor of the foreign
church, is a man of very liberal culture, as well as wide
sympathies. The lady principal of the Government school is a
handsome, talented Vermont girl, and besides being an immense
favourite, well deserves her unusual and lucrative position.
There are hardly any young ladies, and very few young men, but
plenty of rosy, blooming children, who run about barefoot all the
year. Besides the Hilo residents, there are some planters' families
within seven miles, who come in to sewing circles, church, etc.
There is a small class of reprobate white men who have ostracized
themselves by means of drink and bad morals, and are a curse to the
natives. The half whites, among whom "Bill Ragsdale" is the leading
spirit, are not numerous. Hilo has no carriage roads and no
carriages: every one must ride or travel in a litter. People are
very kind to each other. Horses, dresses, patterns, books, and
articles of domestic use, are lent and borrowed continually. The
smallness of the society and the close proximity are too much like a
ship. People know everything about the details of each other's
daily life, income, and expenditure, and the day's doings of each
member of the little circle are matters for conversation. Indeed,
were it not for the volcano and its doings, conversation might
degenerate into gossip. There is an immense deal of personal talk;
the wonder is that there is so little ill-nature. Not only is what
everybody does here common property, but the sayings, doings,
goings, comings, and purchases of every one in all the other islands
are common property also, made so by letters and oral communication.
It is all very amusing, and on the whole very kindly, and human
interests are always interesting; but it has its perilous side.
They are very kind to each other. There is no distress which is not
alleviated. There is no nurse, and in cases of sickness the ladies
take it by turns to wait on the sufferer by day and night for weeks,
and even months. Such inevitable mutual dependence of course
promotes friendliness.
The foreigners live very simply. The eating-rooms are used solely
for eating, the "parlours" are always cheerful and tasteful, and the
bedrooms very pretty, adorned with all manner of knick-knacks made
by the ladies, who are indescribably deft with their fingers. Light
Manilla matting is used instead of carpets. A Chinese man-cook, who
leaves at seven in the evening, is the only servant, except in one
or two cases, where, as here, a native woman condescends to come in
during the day as a nurse. In the morning the ladies, in their
fresh pretty wrappers and ruffled white aprons, sweep and dust the
rooms, and I never saw women look more truly graceful and refined
than they do, when engaged in the plain prose of these domestic
duties. They make all their own dresses, and when any lady is busy
and wants a dress in a hurry, two or three of them meet and make it
for her. I never saw people live such easy pleasant lives. They
have such good health, for one thing, partly no doubt because their
domestic duties give them wholesome exercise without pressing upon
them. They have abounding leisure for reading, music, choir
practising, drawing, fern-printing, fancy work, picnics, riding
parties, and enjoy sociability thoroughly. They usually ride in
dainty bloomer costumes, even when they don't ride astride. All the
houses are pretty, and it takes little to make them so in this
climate. One novel fashion is to decorate the walls with festoons
of the beautiful fern Microlepia tenuifolia, which are renewed as
soon as they fade, and every room is adorned with a profusion of
bouquets, which are easily obtained where flowers bloom all the
year. Many of the residents possess valuable libraries, and these,
with cabinets of minerals, volcanic specimens, shells, and coral,
with weapons, calabashes, ornaments, and cloth of native
manufacture, almost furnish a room in themselves. Some of the
volcanic specimens and the coral are of almost inestimable value, as
well as of exquisite beauty.
The gentlemen don't seem to have near so much occupation as the
ladies. There are two stores on the beach, and at these and at the
Court-house they aggregate, for lack of club-house and exchange.
Business is not here a synonym for hurry, and official duties are
light; so light, that in these morning hours I see the governor, the
sheriff, and the judge, with three other gentlemen, playing an
interminable croquet game on the Court-house lawn. They purvey
gossip for the ladies, and how much they invent, and how much they
only circulate can never be known!
There is a large native population in the village, along the beach,
and on the heights above the Wailuku River. Frame houses with
lattices, and grass houses with deep verandahs, peep out everywhere
from among the mangoes and bananas. The governess of Hawaii, the
Princess Keelikalani, has a house on the beach shaded by a large
umbrella-tree and a magnificent clump of bamboos, 70 feet in height.
The native life with which one comes constantly in contact, is very
interesting.
The men do whatever hard work is done in cultivating the kalo
patches and pounding the kalo. Thus kalo, the Arum esculentum,
forms the national diet. A Hawaiian could not exist without his
calabash of poi. The root is an object of the tenderest solicitude,
from the day it is planted until the hour when it is lovingly eaten.
The eating of poi seems a ceremony of profound meaning; it is like
the eating salt with an Arab, or a Masonic sign. The kalo root is
an ovate oblong, as bulky as a Californian beet, and it has large
leaves, shaped like a broad arrow, of a singularly bright green.
The best kinds grow entirely in water. The patch is embanked and
frequently inundated, and each plant grows on a small hillock of
puddled earth. The cutting from which it grows is simply the top of
the plant, with a little of the tuber. The men stand up to their
knees in water while cultivating the root. It is excellent when
boiled and sliced; but the preparation of poi is an elaborate
process. The roots are baked in an underground oven, and are then
laid on a slightly hollowed board, and beaten with a stone pestle.
It is hard work, and the men don't wear any clothes while engaged in
it. It is not a pleasant-looking operation. They often dip their
hands in a calabash of water to aid them in removing the sticky
mass, and they always look hot and tired. When it is removed from
the board into large calabashes, it is reduced to paste by the
addition of water, and set aside for two or three days to ferment.
When ready for use it is either lilac or pink, and tastes like sour
bookbinders' paste. Before water is added, when it is in its dry
state, it is called paiai, or hard food, and is then packed in ti
leaves in 20 lb. bundles for inland carriage, and is exported to the
Guano Islands. It is a prolific and nutritious plant. It is
estimated that forty square feet will support an Hawaiian for a
year.
The melon and kalo patches represent a certain amount of spasmodic
industry, but in most other things the natives take no thought for
the morrow. Why should they indeed? For while they lie basking in
the sun, without care of theirs, the cocoanut, the breadfruit, the
yam, the guava, the banana, and the delicious papaya, which is a
compound of a ripe apricot with a Cantaloupe melon, grow and ripen
perpetually. Men and women are always amusing themselves, the men
with surf-bathing, the women with making leis--both sexes with
riding, gossiping, and singing. Every man and woman, almost every
child, has a horse. There is a perfect plague of badly bred, badly
developed, weedy looking animals. The beach and the pleasant lawn
above it are always covered with men and women riding at a gallop,
with bare feet, and stirrups tucked between the toes. To walk even
200 yards seems considered a degradation. The people meet outside
each others' houses all day long, and sit in picturesque groups on
their mats, singing, laughing, talking, and quizzing the haoles, as
if the primal curse had never fallen. Pleasant sights of out-door
cooking gregariously carried on greet one everywhere. This style of
cooking prevails all over Polynesia. A hole in the ground is lined
with stones, wood is burned within it, and when the rude oven has
been sufficiently heated, the pig, chicken, breadfruit, or kalo,
wrapped in ti leaves is put in, a little water is thrown on, and the
whole is covered up. It is a slow but sure process.
Bright dresses, bright eyes, bright sunshine, music, dancing, a life
without care, and a climate without asperities, make up the sunny
side of native life as pictured at Hilo. But there are dark moral
shadows, the population is shrinking away, and rumours of leprosy
are afloat, so that some of these fair homes may be desolate ere
long. However many causes for regret exist, one must not forget
that only forty years ago the people inhabiting this strip of land
between the volcanic wilderness and the sea were a vicious, sensual,
shameless herd, that no man among them, except their chiefs, had any
rights, that they were harried and oppressed almost to death, and
had no consciousness of any moral obligations. Now, order and
external decorum at least, prevail. There is not a locked door in
Hilo, and nobody makes anybody else afraid.
The people of Hawaii-nei are clothed and civilized in their habits;
they have equal rights; 6,500 of them have kuleanas or freeholds,
equable and enlightened laws are impartially administered; wrong and
oppression are unknown; they enjoy one of the best administered
governments in the world; education is universal, and the throne is
occupied by a liberal sovereign of their own race and election.
Few of them speak English. Their language is so easy that most of
the foreigners acquire it readily. You know how stupid I am about
languages, yet I have already picked up the names of most common
things. There are only twelve letters, but some of these are made
to do double duty, as K is also T, and L is also R. The most
northern island of the group, Kauai, is as often pronounced as if it
began with a T, and Kalo is usually Taro. It is a very musical
language. Each syllable and word ends with a vowel, and there are
none of our rasping and sibilant consonants. In their soft
phraseology our hard rough surnames undergo a metamorphosis, as Fisk
into Filikina, Wilson into Wilikina. Each vowel is distinctly
pronounced, and usually with the Italian sound. The volcano is
pronounced as if spelt Keel-ah-wee-ah, and Kauai as if Kah-wye-ee.
The name Owhyhee for Hawaii had its origin in a mistake, for the
island was never anything but Hawaii, pronounced Hah-wye-ee, but
Captain Cook mistook the prefix O, which is the sign of the
nominative case, for a part of the word. Many of the names of
places, specially of those compounded with wai, water, are very
musical; Wailuku, "water of destruction;" Waialeale, "rippling
water;" Waioli, "singing water;" Waipio, "vanquished water;"
Kaiwaihae, "torn water." Mauna, "mountain," is a mere prefix, and
though always used in naming the two giants of the Pacific, Mauna
Kea, and Mauna Loa, is hardly ever applied to Hualalai, "the
offspring of the shining sun;" or to Haleakala on Maui, "the house
of the sun."
I notice that the foreigners never use the English or botanical
names of trees or plants, but speak of ohias, ohelos, kukui (candle-
nut), lauhala (pandanus), pulu (tree fern), mamane, koa, etc. There
is one native word in such universal use that I already find I
cannot get on without it, pilikia. It means anything, from a
downright trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement. "I'm in a
pilikia," or "very pilikia," or "pilikia!" A revolution would be "a
pilikia." The fact of the late king dying without naming a
successor was pre-eminently a pilikia, and it would be a serious
pilikia if a horse were to lose a shoe on the way to Kilauea. Hou-
hou, meaning "in a huff," I hear on all sides; and two words, makai,
signifying "on the sea-side," and mauka, "on the mountain side."
These terms are perfectly intelligible out of doors, but it is
puzzling when one is asked to sit on "the mauka side of the table."
The word aloha, in foreign use, has taken the place of every English
equivalent. It is a greeting, a farewell, thanks, love, goodwill.
Aloha looks at you from tidies and illuminations, it meets you on
the roads and at house-doors, it is conveyed to you in letters, the
air is full of it. "My aloha to you," "he sends you his aloha,"
"they desire their aloha." It already represents to me all of
kindness and goodwill that language can express, and the convenience
of it as compared with other phrases is, that it means exactly what
the receiver understands it to mean, and consequently, in all cases
can be conveyed by a third person. There is no word for "thank
you." Maikai "good," is often useful in its place, and smiles
supply the rest. There are no words which express "gratitude" or
"chastity," or some others of the virtues; and they have no word for
"weather," that which we understand by "weather" being absolutely
unknown.
Natives have no surnames. Our volcano guide is Upa, or Scissors,
but his wife and children are anything else. The late king was
Kamehameha, or the "lonely one." The father of the present king is
called Kanaina, but the king's name is Lunalilo, or "above all."
Nor does it appear that a man is always known by the same name, nor
that a name necessarily indicates the sex of its possessor. Thus,
in signing a paper the signature would be Hoapili kanaka, or Hoapili
wahine, according as the signer was man or woman. I remember that
in my first letter I fell into the vulgarism, initiated by the
whaling crews, of calling the natives Kanakas. This is universally
but very absurdly done, as Kanaka simply means man. If an Hawaiian
word is absolutely necessary, we might translate native and have
maole, pronounced maori, like that of the New Zealand aborigines.
Kanaka is to me decidedly objectionable, as conveying the idea of
canaille.
I had written thus far when Mr. Severance came in to say that a
grand display of the national sport of surf-bathing was going on,
and a large party of us went down to the beach for two hours to
enjoy it. It is really a most exciting pastime, and in a rough sea
requires immense nerve. The surf-board is a tough plank shaped like
a coffin lid, about two feet broad, and from six to nine feet long,
well oiled and cared for. It is usually made of the erythrina, or
the breadfruit tree. The surf was very heavy and favourable, and
legions of natives were swimming and splashing in the sea, though
not more than forty had their Papa-he-nalu, or "wave sliding
boards," with them. The men, dressed only in malos, carrying their
boards under their arms, waded out from some rocks on which the sea
was breaking, and, pushing their boards before them, swam out to the
first line of breakers, and then diving down were seen no more till
they re-appeared as a number of black heads bobbing about like corks
in smooth water half a mile from shore.
What they seek is a very high roller, on the top of which they leap
from behind, lying face downwards on their boards. As the wave
speeds on, and the bottom strikes the ground, the top breaks into a
huge comber. The swimmers but appeared posing themselves on its
highest edge by dexterous movements of their hands and feet, keeping
just at the top of the curl, but always apparently coming down hill
with a slanting motion. So they rode in majestically, always just
ahead of the breaker, carried shorewards by its mighty impulse at
the rate of forty miles an hour, yet seeming to have a volition of
their own, as the more daring riders knelt and even stood on their
surf-boards, waving their arms and uttering exultant cries. They
were always apparently on the verge of engulfment by the fierce
breaker whose towering white crest was ever above and just behind
them, but just as one expected to see them dashed to pieces, they
either waded quietly ashore, or sliding off their boards, dived
under the surf, taking advantage of the undertow, and were next seen
far out at sea, preparing for fresh exploits.
The great art seems to be to mount the roller precisely at the right
time, and to keep exactly on its curl just before it breaks. Two or
three athletes, who stood erect on their boards as they swept
exultingly shorewards, were received with ringing cheers by the
crowd. Many of the less expert failed to throw themselves on the
crest, and slid back into smooth water, or were caught in the
combers which were fully ten feet high, and after being rolled over
and over, ignominiously disappeared amidst roars of laughter, and
shouts from the shore. At first I held my breath in terror,
thinking the creatures were smothered or dashed to pieces, and then
in a few seconds I saw the dark heads of the objects of my anxiety
bobbing about behind the rollers waiting for another chance. The
shore was thronged with spectators, and the presence of the elite of
Hilo stimulated the swimmers to wonderful exploits.
These people are truly amphibious. Both sexes seem to swim by
nature, and the children riot in the waves from their infancy. They
dive apparently by a mere effort of the will. In the deep basin of
the Wailuku River, a little below the Falls, the maidens swim,
float, and dive with garlands of flowers round their heads and
throats. The more furious and agitated the water is, the greater
the excitement, and the love of these watery exploits is not
confined to the young. I saw great fat men with their hair streaked
with grey, balancing themselves on their narrow surf-boards, and
riding the surges shorewards with as much enjoyment as if they were
in their first youth. I enjoyed the afternoon thoroughly.
Is it "always afternoon" here, I wonder? The sea was so blue, the
sunlight so soft, the air so sweet. There was no toil, clang, or
hurry. People were all holidaymaking (if that can be where there is
no work), and enjoying themselves, the surf-bathers in the sea, and
hundreds of gaily-dressed men and women galloping on the beach. It
was so serene and tropical. I sympathize with those who eat the
lotus, and remain for ever on such enchanted shores.
I am gaining health daily, and almost live in the open air. I have
hired the native policeman's horse and saddle, and with a Macgregor
flannel riding costume, which my kind friends have made for me, and
a pair of jingling Mexican spurs am quite Hawaiianised. I ride
alone once or twice a day exploring the neighbourhood, finding some
new fern or flower daily, and abandon myself wholly to the
fascination of this new existence.
I.L.B.