OUR FRONTIER IN THE PACIFIC
1
Honolulu marks our frontier in the Pacific. Honolulu has been conquered.
If the conquest is that of love, then the offspring will be lovely; if
of mere force, or intrigue, then Heaven help Honolulu! As far as outward
signs go, we are in a city American in most details. The numerous
trolleys, the modern buildings, the motor-cars, the undaunted Western
efficiency which no people is able to withstand has gripped Hawaii in an
iron grip. True that the foreign (that is, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese,
Portuguese) districts are steeped in squalor, but this is old Honolulu.
The new is a little Los Angeles with all its soullessness, and it has
taken all the illusions of modern civilization to accomplish it. The
first illusion was that the natives would be better off as Americans
than as Hawaiians; the second, that Hawaiians were lazy and Japanese and
Chinese were necessary; the third, that cleanliness is next to
godliness. How have these things worked out? The Hawaiians are in the
ever-receding minority, the Japanese in the unhappy majority, and
enjoyment of cleanliness has made most men forget that it is only _next_
to something else. If the invited are coming to Honolulu expecting
money-grabbers to turn to poetry and petty politicians to philosophy,
they had better save their fares. If readers of magazines expect to find
a melting-pot in which all the ingredients are dancing about with their
arms round one another's neck, they had better remain at home.
For the first and foremost effect of the tropics is to individualize
things. In colder climes people huddle together to conserve warmth; here
they give one another plenty of space. Virtually one of the first things
the new-comer does is to name and separate things from the mass. Every
little thing has its personality. Plants grow in profusion, but each
opens out to its utmost. One is much more inclined to ask what this
flower is called in Honolulu than in America, for each stands out, and
one stands out to each. Honolulu exudes moisture and fragrance, stirring
the passions as does the scent of a clean woman. It limbers up one's
reasoning faculties and arouses one's curiosity.
On the street every Chinese and every Japanese comes in for his share of
attention. One begins to single out types as it has never occurred to
one to do in New York. In Honolulu all intermingle, flower in a sort of
unity, but in the very mass they retain their natural variations. The
white people are ordinarily good, they have mastered the technique of
life sufficiently and play tolerably well to an uncritical audience.
While the Hawaiian policeman in charge of the traffic stands out in bold
relief because the dignity and importance of his position have stiffened
the easy tendencies of his race,--he is self-conscious. Monarch of
Confusion, arrayed in uniform, tall and with the manner of one always
looking from beneath heavy eyebrows, it is said that he causes as much
trouble as he allays. But that is mere prejudice. Who would dare ignore
his arm and hand as he directs the passing vehicle? He fascinates. He
commands. His austere silence is awe-inspiring. When he permits a driver
to pass, there is a touch of the contemptuous in that relinquishment.
Nor dare the driver turn the corner till, in like manner, this human
indicator points the direction for him. The finger follows now almost
mockingly, until another car demands its attention, and it becomes
threatening again.
One hears of the all-inclusive South Seas as though it were something
totally without variation. The average tourist and scribe soon acquires
the South-Sea style. But the more discriminating know full well that the
expressions which describe one of the South Sea islands fall flat when
applied to another. "Liquid sunshine" is a term peculiarly Hawaiian. It
would never apply to Fiji, for instance, for there the words
"atmospheric secretion" are more accurate. Hence, it is more than mere
political chance that has made Hawaii so utterly different from the
Philippines and the litter of South Seas.
Honolulu is essentially an American city. The hundreds of motor-cars
that dash in and about the streets do so just as they would in "sunny
California." The shops that attract the Americans are just like any in
America,--clean, attractive, with their best foot forward. So
meticulous, so spotless, so untouchable are they that the soul of the
seeker nearly sickens for want of spice and flavor. To have to live on
Honolulu's Main Street would be like drinking boiled water. One imagines
that when the white men came thither, finding disease and uncleanliness
rampant, they determined that if they were to have nothing else they
would have things clean. All newcomers to Oriental and primitive
countries cling to that phase of civilization with something akin to
terror. Generally they get used to the dirt. They have not done so in
Honolulu. It may be that mere distance has something to do with the
different results, but certain it is that Manila, under American control
just as is Honolulu, has none of these prim, not primitive, drawbacks.
Twenty years of American rule have done little really to Americanize
Manila, while they have utterly metamorphosed Honolulu.
The man-made machine has now outlived the vituperation of idealists. The
man-made machine is running, and even the most romantic enjoys life the
better for it. Clean hotels, swimming-pools within-doors, motor-cars
that bring nature to man with the least loss of time and cost of
fatigue,--these are things which only a fool would despise. But one
longs for some show of the human touch, none the less, and cities that
are built by machine processes are, despite all their virtues, not
attractive. At least, they are not different enough from any other city
in the modern world to justify a week's journey for the seeing. One
hears that steamers and trains and airplanes are killing romance. That
is so, but not because they in themselves conduce to satiety, but
because they destroy indigenous creations and substitute importations
and iron exactitude. Within the next few generations there will, indeed,
be a South Seas, indistinguishable and without variety. Honolulu is an
example. But Honolulu is not Hawaii! It is only a bit of decoration. So
we shall leave this phase of Hawaii for consideration at a time when,
having seen the things native to the Pacific, we reflect upon the
meaning and purport of things alien.
In Hawaii, we are told,--and without exaggeration,--one can stand in the
full sunshine and watch the rain across the street. So, too, can one
enjoy some of the material blessings of modern life, yet be within touch
of nature incomparably exquisite.
2
He was only a street-car conductor. Every day he journeyed from the
heart of Honolulu, like a little blood corpuscle, through arteries of
trade hardened by over-feeding, in a jerking, rocking old trolley car,
to the very edge of Manoa Valley. His way lay along the fan-shaped plane
behind the sea, and was lined with semi-palatial residences and Oahu
College. Palms swayed in the breeze, and the night-blooming cereus slept
in the glittering sunlight upon the stone walls. He was only a
street-car conductor, furnished with his three spare meals a day and his
bed, but he fed along the way on sweets that no street-car conductor in
any other place in the world has by way of compensation. He was carved
with wrinkles and his frail frame bent slightly forward, but his heart
was young within him, and he acted like a plutocrat whose hobby was
gardening and whose gardens were rich with the finest flowers on earth.
The delight he took in the open country, barely the edge of which he
reached so many times a day, was pathetic. When I asked him to let me
off where I could wander on the open road, he beamed with pleasure and
delight, and told me where I should have to go really to reach the wild.
There may be other places in the world as beautiful and even more so,
but no place ever had such a street-car conductor to recommend it. And
no recommendation was ever more poetic and inspiring than this,--not
even that of the Promotion Committee of Honolulu.
And, strange to say, I have never been guided more honestly and more
truthfully than when that street-car conductor advised me to go to Manoa
Valley. I lived an eternity of joy in the few hours I spent there. I
knew that not many miles beyond I should again be blocked by the sea. I
could not see it because of the hills which spend three hundred and
sixty-five days of every year dressing themselves in their very best and
posing before the mirror of the sky. Not more than one or two natives
passed me, nor did any other living creature appear. I could only
romance with myself, refusing to be fooled by the talk about fair
maidens with leis round their necks. I was certain that back home there
were maidens whose beauty could not be equaled here; whose soft, white
skins and shapely forms were never excelled by tropical loveliness. But
I was just as certain that there was nothing at home that compared to
nature as it is lavished upon man here in Hawaii, and especially in
Manoa Valley.
We all have our compensations, and I have even shown preference for a
return to the joys of genuine human beauty which the maker of worlds
gave to America, and to leave to the mid-Pacific verdure and altitudes
whose combination stirs my mind with passionate adoration to this very
day. Still, I shall ever be grateful to that wizened street-car
conductor for having suggested that I visit his little valley, which he
himself can enter only after paying a penalty of sixteen journeys
between Heaven and Honolulu every day, carrying the money-makers
backward and forward. Perhaps he does not regard it as a penalty.
Perhaps he feels himself fully compensated if one or two of his human
parcels asks him where may be found the Open Road.
3
Sullen and less concerned with emotional or spiritual values was the
driver of the motor-bus whom we exhumed one day from the heart of
Honolulu's "foreign" section. He evidently regarded nature on his route
as too great a strain on his brakes, though he, too, must have felt that
compensation was meted out to him manifold. For few people come to
Hawaii and leave without contributing some small share to his support,
as he is the shuttle between Honolulu and Kaneohe, and carries the
thread of sheer joy through the eye of that wondrous needle, the Pali.
At the Pali one senses the youth and vigor of our earth. Its peak,
piercing the sky, seems on the point of emerging from the sea. It has
raised its head above the waters and stands with an air of contempt for
loneliness, wrapped in mist, defying the winds. The world seems to fall
away from it. It has triumphed. There is none of that withdrawing
dignity of Fujiyama, the great man who looks on. The Pali imposes itself
upon your consciousness with spectacular gusto, like the villain
stamping his way into the very center of the stage and gazing roundabout
over a protruding chin.
The palm-trees bow solemnly before changeless winds, in the direction of
Honolulu, which lies like an open fan at the foot of the valley near the
sea. Color is in action everywhere,--spots of metallic green, of
volcanic red, filtered through a screen of marine gray. Honolulu lies
below to the rear; Kaneohe, beyond vast fields of pineapple, before us;
the sea, wide, open, limitless except for the reaches of the heavens,
binding all. And then there is an upward, circular motion,--that of the
rising mists drawn by the burning rays of the sun pressing landward and
dashing themselves into the valley and falling in sheets of rain upon
the earth. Wedged into a gully, as though caught and unable to break
away, was a heavy cloud,--but it was being drained of every drop of
moisture as a traveler held up by a gang of highway-men.
This circular motion is found not only in inanimate nature. Once, at
least, it has whirled the Hawaiians into tragedy. Here, history tells
us, Kamehameha I (the fifth from the last of Hawaii's kings) hurled an
army of native Oahu islanders over this bluff, back into the source of
their being. Without quarter he pressed them on, over this pass; while
they, unwilling to yield to capture, chose gladly to dash themselves
into the valley below. One is impressed by the striking interplay of
emotion with sheer nature. The controlling element which directs both
man and mountain seems the same. States and stars alike emerge, crash,
and crumble.
We rolled rapidly down into the valley past miles and miles of pineapple
fields. Then we came, as it were, to the land's end. Nothing sheer now
before us, nothing precipitate. A bit of freshness, of coolness, and an
imperceptible tapering off. The sea.
[Illustration: A SAGE IN A CHINA SHOP AT HONOLULU]
[Illustration: THERE ARE ONLY A FEW CHINESE WOMEN IN HAWAII]
[Illustration: WHOA! LET'S HAVE OUR PICTURE TAKEN
We don't know whether we're Hawaiian, Chinese or American, but who
cares. Giddap!]
[Illustration: FEMININE PROPRIETY
Oriental and Occidental versions]
Here at Kaneohe dwelt Arthur Mackaye, brother of the poet, whose name
was vaguely known to me. He was slender, bearded, loosely clad, with
open collar but not without consciousness and conventionality,--a
conventionality in accordance with prescribed notions of freedom.
Refreshing, cool as the atmosphere roundabout, distinct from the
tropical lusciousness which is the general state of both men and nature
in and about Honolulu, the personality of this lone man--this man who
had flung everything aside--was a fit complement to the experience of
Manoa Valley and the Pali.
He conducted a small sight-seeing expedition on his own. The proprietor
of a number of glass-bottomed launches, he took me over the quiet waters
of the reefs. Throwing a black cloth over my head to shield me from the
brilliant sky, I gazed down into the still world within the coral reefs.
There lay unimaginable peace. What the Pali affords in panorama, the bay
at Kaneohe offers in concentrated form. Pink-and-white forests twenty to
forty feet deep, with immense cavities and ledges of delicate coral,
fringe the shore. Fish of exquisite color move in and out of these giant
chambers, as much at home in one as in another. Droll, sleepy sponges,
like lumps of porous mud, lie flat against the reefs, waiting for
something edible to come their way. Long green sea-worms extend and
contract like the tentacles of an octopus in an insatiable search for
food.
An unusual silence hangs over the memory of that trip. I cannot recall
that the unexpected companion I picked up in Honolulu said anything; the
lonely one who furnished the glass-bottomed boat certainly said nothing;
the fish and sponges emphasized the tone of silence associated with the
experience. But the Pali shrieked; it was the one imposing element that
defied stillness. And below it is Honolulu, where silence is not to be
found.
4
For the Honolulu spirit is averse to silence. Honolulu is the most
talkative city in the world. The people seem to talk with their eyes,
with their gait, with their postures. Night and day there stirs the
confusion of people attending to one another's wants. One is in a
ceaseless whirl of extraverted emotions. One cannot get away from it.
The man who could be lonely in Honolulu would have to have his ears
closed with cement. If New York were as talkative as Honolulu, not all
of America's Main Streets together would drown it out.
For Honolulu teems with good-fellowship. It is the religion of Honolulu
to have a good time, and every one feels impelled before God and Patria
to live up to its precepts. Everybody not only has a good time but talks
having a good time. Not that there are no undercurrents of jealousy and
gossip. By no means. The stranger is let into these with the same gusto
that swirls him into pleasurable activities. It is a busy, whirligig
world. Even the Y.M.C.A. spirit prevails without restraint. I had found
the building of the association very convenient, and stopped there. That
put the stamp of goodness on me, but it did not exclude me from being
drawn into a roisterous crowd that danced and drank and dissipated
dollars, and heaved a sigh of relief that I did not preach to it. Its
members were glad that I was just "stopping" at the Y. They didn't see
how I could do it, but that was my affair. If I still managed to be a
good fellow,--well, I belonged to Honolulu.
Charmian London had given me a note of introduction to a friend, Wright,
of the "Bulletin." Wright was a bachelor and had a little bungalow
across from the Waikiki Hotel on the beach. There we met one evening. It
had every indication of the touch of a woman's hand. It was neatly
furnished, cozy, restful. Two nonchalant young men came in, but after a
delightful meal hurried away to some party. Wright and I were left. What
should we do? Something must be done.
He ordered a touring-car. We whirled along under the open sky with a
most disporting moon, and it seemed a pity we had none with us over whom
to romanticize. Quietly, as though we were on a moving stage, the world
slipped by,--palms, rice-fields ashimmer with silver light. Through
luxuriant avenues, we passed up the road toward the Pali. Somewhere
half-way we stopped. The Country Club. A few introductions, a moment's
stay, and off we went again, this time to avoid the dance that was to
take place there. Slipping along under the moonlight, we made our way
back to Waikiki beach, dismissed the car, and took a table at Heinie's
which is now, I understand, no more.
But we had only jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. Others, bored
with the club dance, had come to Heinie's for more fling than dancing
afforded. The hall was not crowded, so we were soon noticed. Mr. Wright
was known.
"They want us to come over," he said. "Just excuse me a moment."
Presently he returned. I had been specifically invited over with him. I
accepted the invitation. Then, till there were no more minutes left of
that day, we indulged in one continuous passing of wits and wets. Before
half the evening was over, I was one of the crowd in genuine Honolulu
fashion, and nothing was too personal for expression.
But one there was in the group to whom all her indulgences were
obviously strange, though she seemed well practised. She was a romantic
soul, and sought to counteract the teasing of the others. Her
deprecation of whisky and soda was almost like poor Satan's hatred of
hell. She vibrated to romantic memories like a cello G string. When she
learned that I was westward bound, she fairly moaned with regret.
"China!--oh, dear, beloved China! I would give anything in the world to
get back there!" she exclaimed, and whatever notions I had of the Orient
became exalted a thousandfold. But my own conviction is that she missed
the cheap servants which Honolulu lacks. In other words, there were
still not enough leisure and Bubbling Well Roads in Honolulu, nor the
international atmosphere that is Shanghai's. But that is mere
conjecture, and she was a romantic soul, and good to look at.
But there were two others in the crowd who did not, in their hilarious
spirits, whirl into my ken until some time afterward. Their speed was
that of the comet's, and what was a plodding little planet like myself
to do trying to move into their orbit? They were not native daughters of
Honolulu; most of their lives they had spent in California, which in the
light of Hawaii is a raw, chill land. There they carried on the drab
existence of trying to earn a living,--just work and no play. But
evidently they had never given up hope. They were tall, thin, fair, and
jolly. They invested. They won. It was only two thousand dollars. They
earned as much every year, no doubt, but it came to them in instalments.
Now they had a real roll. _Bang_ went the job! American industry, all
that depended on their being stable, honest producers, the smoothness of
organization, was banished from their minds. Let the country go to the
dogs; they were heading for Honolulu for a good time. And when they got
there they did not find the cupboard bare, nor excommunication for being
jobless.
For as long as two thousand dollars will last where money flows freely
(and there are plenty of men ready to help stretch it with generous
entertainment) these two escaped toilers from the American deep ran the
gamut of Honolulu's conviviality. Night after night they whispered
amorous compliments in the ears of the favorite dancers; day after day
they flitted from party to party. I had met them just as their two
thousand dollars were drawing to a close, but the only thing one could
hear was regret that they could not possibly be extended. Honolulu was
richer by two thousand; they were poorer to the extent of perpetual
restlessness and rebellion against the necessity of holding down a job.
Yet the "Primer" published by the Promotion Committee tells us that
Hawaii is "not a paradise for the jobless." These folk had no jobs, yet
they certainly felt and acted and spoke as though they were in Paradise.
Witness the arrivals and departures of steamers. The crowds gather as
for a fête or a carnival. Bands play, serpentines stream over the ship's
side, and turn its dull color into a careless rainbow. Hawaiian women
sell leis, necklaces of the most luscious flowers whose scent is enough
to empassion the most passionless. But as to jobs,--why, even the
longshoremen seem to be celebrating and the steamer moves as by
spirit-power.
Visit Waikiki beach, and every day it is littered with people who enjoy
the afternoon hours on the tireless breakers. Go to the hotels, and
hardly an hour finds them deserted. The motor-cars are constantly
carrying men and women about as though there was nothing in the wide
world to do. Even those who are unlucky enough to have jobs attend to
them in a leisurely sort of way. Yet these jobless people hold up their
hands in warning to possible immigrants that there is no room for them,
that "Hawaii is not a paradise for the jobless."
5
Who, then, does the work of the island? It is obvious that it is being
done. There isn't another island in the whole Pacific so modernized, so
thoroughly equipped, so American in every detail, so progressive and
well-to-do. It is the most sublimated of the sublime South Seas. One
wonders how white men could have remained so energetic in the tropics,
but one is not long left uninformed. Honolulu is an example of a most
ideal combination of peoples, the inventive, progressive, constructive
white man with the energetic, persistent, plodding Oriental. Without the
one or the other, Honolulu would not be what it is; both have
contributed to the welfare of the islands in ways immeasurable.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find the Oriental elements as much
in evidence as the Occidental. One hardly knows where one begins and the
other ends. As spacious and individualized as are the European sections,
so the Asiatic are a perfect jumble of details. The buildings are drab,
the streets are littered, the smells are insinuating, the sounds
excruciating.
A most painful noise upon an upper balcony of an overhanging Chinese
building made me come to with a sudden clapping of my hands against my
ears. As noise goes, it was perfect,--without theme or harmony. It could
not have been more uncontrolled. What consolation was it that in China
there was more of it! Gratitude awakened in me for the limitations a
wise joss had placed upon the capacities of the individual. Yet men are
never satisfied. These Chinese weren't, and combined their energies.
What one man couldn't accomplish, several could at least approach. So we
had a band. I should certainly never have thought it possible, myself.
However, they were trying to achieve something. It was neither gay nor
mournful; nor was it sentimental. What purpose could it possibly have
served? Surely they had no racial regrets or aspirations, they who
played it! The bird sings to his mate, but what mate would listen to
such tin-canning and howling, and not die?
To me there was something charming in this shamelessness of the Chinese,
something childlike and naïve. I had never realized the meaning of that
little rhyme,
I would not give the weakest of my song
For all the boasted strength of all the strong
If but the million weak ones of the world
Would realize their number and their wrong.
The thought is almost terrifying when applied to the teeming hordes of
the world, whether of Asia, Europe, or the South Seas. If sheer numbers
are any justification of supremacy, God had better take His old world
back and reshape it nearer something rational. One becomes conscious of
this welling up of the world in Hawaii. Not that the Chinese and the
Japanese haven't the same right to life and to its fulfilment in
accordance with latent instinct and ability, with all its special racial
traits and customs, but one doesn't just exactly see how numbers have
anything to do with it. Yet here are the Chinese and Japanese slowly,
quietly, persistently out-distancing the white by a process of doubling
in numbers, where mentality and ingenuity would doubtless fail.
One hears much about the progress of the Orient. That is, white folk
talk much about the way in which the East is taking to Western ways, and
call that progress. One would not expect that sort of progress to
proceed with any great velocity in the East itself, but it is only
necessary to observe the ingrowing tendencies of life in Hawaii, however
superficially, to see how foolishly optimistic is the expectation of
such progress. For even in Hawaii, where everything has had to be built
afresh, where everybody is an alien--with very few exceptions--and where
the dominant element is European, the East is still the East, and the
West the West. There is a slight overlapping, but not enough to make one
lose one's way,--to make a white man walk into a Chinese restaurant and
not know it. The fastidious white man whose curiosity gets the better of
him, moves about the Chinese and Japanese districts fully conscious of
his own shortcomings. He is less able to feel at home there than the
Oriental on the main street; but why doesn't the Oriental build for
himself a main street?
I was abroad early one Sunday morning, headed for the Chinese section.
Lost in thought, I went along, gazing on the ground. Had Charlie
Chaplin's feet suddenly come into my range of vision I should not have
been more surprised than I was when two tiny shoes, hardly bigger than
those of a large-sized doll, and with some of that stiff, automatic
movement of the _species mechanicus_, dissipated my reflections. I
raised my eyes slowly, as when waking, up, up, up,--hem of skirt,
knees, waist-line, flat bosom, narrow shoulders, sallow face, and slit
eyes! A Chinese woman! She was as big as a fourteen-year-old girl, but
her feet were a third of their due proportion. How many thousands of
years of natural selection went into the making of those little feet?
Yet she was a rare enough exception to astound my abstracted mind. About
her strolled hundreds of others of her race, who would have given much
of life to possess those two little feet.
Differences abound in Hawaii. The Chinese is no twin brother of the
Japanese. In fact, there is probably as much relationship between the
Hawaiian and the Japanese as there is between these two "Oriental"
races. The major part of the Japanese being Malay and the Polynesian
Hawaiians having at least lived with the Malays some hundreds of years
ago and infused some of their Caucasic ingredients into them, there is
more of "home-coming" when "Jap" meets "Poly," than when he meets
"Chink." But notwithstanding proximity and propinquity, over which
diplomatic letter-writers labor hard, when the Chinese and the Japanese
and the Hawaiian come together, the Hawaiian "vanishes like dewdrops by
the roadside," the Chinese jogs along, and the Japanese runs motor-cars
and raises children. The Japanese obtrudes himself much more upon the
life of the community than the other two races, but with no more
relinquishment of his own ways. He drives the cars and he drives white
men to more activity than they really enjoy. And the Hawaiian sells
necklaces of luscious flowers under the shaded porticoes of the
buildings along the waterfront.
[Illustration: MILES AWAY ROSE THE FUMES OF KILAUEA
During the day they were ashen and at night like rose dawn]
[Illustration: THE LARGEST CAULDRON OF MOLTEN ROCK ON EARTH
Eight hundred feet below it seethed]
[Illustration: A RIVER OF ROCK POURING OUT INTO THE SEA
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
[Illustration: WHIRLING EDDIES OF LAVA UNDERMINING FROZEN LAVA
PROJECTIONS
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
Aside from the adoption of our trousers and coat and hat, and a few
other unimportant aspects of our civilization, the observer on the
streets of Honolulu sees no mingling of races. The only outward sign of
this mixing is the Salvation Army. There, large as life, with the
usual circular crowd about them, stood these soldiers of misfortune,
praising the Lord in English. A row of unlimited Oriental offspring upon
the curb; a few grown-ups on the walk; a converted Japanese who looked
as though his Shinto father had disowned him; a self-conscious white boy
who confessed to having been converted just recently; two
indifferent-looking soldiers; a distrustful-looking leader and a
hopeless-visaged white woman. Twenty feet away, a saloon. I wonder what
the Salvation Army is going to do now that that object of attraction is
no more.
As far as Honolulu was concerned, it seemed to me that barter and trade
were more intoxicating to the majority than was drink. The world
everywhere about seemed a-litter with boxes and bales and shops and
indulgences. How much of all the things exchanged, how many of the
things for which these people toil endlessly, are worth while or
essential, or even truly satisfying? The dingy stores, their only worth
their damp coolness; the huddling and the innocent dirt; the
inextricable mesh of little things to be done,--only the Chinese sage
who posed for my camera in front of his wee stock of yarns was able to
tell their value to life. His long, thin, pointed beard, his lack of
vanity in accepting my interest in him, his genial smile and fatherly
disinterestedness symbolized more than anything I saw in Honolulu the
virtue and endurance of race. Beside the eager, grasping Japanese and
the rolling, expanding white men, he looked like the overtowering
palm-tree that seems to grow out of the monkey-pod in the park.
6
To a creature from another world, hovering over us in the unseen ether,
watching us move about beneath the sea of air which is life to us,
Honolulu would seem like a little glass aquarium. The human beings move
about as though on the best of terms with one another. Some look more
gorgeous than others, but from outward appearances they are as innocent
of ill intentions against one another as the aquatic creatures for which
Hawaii is famous, out in the cool, moist aquarium at Waikiki.
Kihikihi, the Hawaiians call one of them, and his friends the white folk
have christened him Moorish Idol. I don't know what Kihikihi means, but
as to his being an idol, I can't accept that for a moment, except in so
far as he deserves to be idolized. For about him there is no more of
that static, woodeny thing which idols generally are than there is about
Pavlowa. Yet he is only a fish, and not so very large at that. He is
moon-shaped, but rainbow-hued. He is perhaps three-quarters of an inch
across the shoulders, but six inches up and down, and perhaps eight from
nose to the ends of his two tails. And so he looks like a three-quarter
moon. Soft, vertical bands of black, white, and egg-yellow run into one
another on both sides, and a long white plume trails downward in a
semicircle. He is the last word in form, translucent harmony of color
and of motion. He moves about with rhythmic dignity and grace. At times
his eyes bulge with an eagerness and self-importance as though the world
depended on him for its security. Though he is constantly searching for
food, he does not seem avaricious; and while he admits his importance,
he is not proud.
Kihikihi has a rival in Nainai, who has been given an alias,--Surgeon
Fish, light brown with an orange band on his sides. Nainai is heavier
than Kihikihi, more plump. His color, too, is heavier and therefore
seems more restrained. It is richer and hence stimulates envy and
desire.
Lauwiliwili Unkunukuoeoe has no aliases, thank you, but he has a snout
on which his Hawaiian name could be stamped in fourteen-point type and
still leave room for half a dozen aliases. Only a water-creature could
possess such a title as this and keep from dragging it in the mud.
Knowing that he would be called by that appellation in life, his Creator
must have compensated him with plenty of snout.
But it is better to have one long snout than eight. And though no one
would give preference to any devil-fish, this long-snouted creature is
the rival by an inverse ratio of that eight-snouted glutton. The
octopus, the devil of the deep, is an insult to fishdom. The Moorish
Idol and this Medusa-like monster in the same aquarium make a worse
combination than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This ugly, flabby, boneless
body, just thick skin and muscle, with a large bag for a head,--eight
sea-worms extending and contracting in an insatiable search for food is
the paramount example of gross materialism. If only the high cost of
living would drive to suicide this beast with hundreds of mouths to
feed, the world might be rid of a perfidious-looking monster. But his
looks do him great injustice, and were the Hawaiian variety--which is,
after all, only squid--to disappear, the natives would be deprived of
one of their chief delicacies. At the markets--that half-way house
between aquaria and museums--numerous dried octopus, like moth-eaten
skins, lie about waiting for the housewife's art to camouflage them. But
I shall have something to say elsewhere about markets and museums, and
now shall turn, for a moment, to more startling wonders still.
7
An artist is delighted if he finds a study with a perfect hand or a
beautiful neck; or, in nature, if a simple charm is left undisturbed by
the confusion of human creation. Yet at night as our ship passed the
island of Maui, it seemed to me that all the sweet simplicities that
make life worth while had been assembled here in the beginning of the
world and left untouched. The moon rose on the peak of the cone-shaped
mountain, and for a time stood set, like a moonstone in a ring. The
pyramid of night-blue earth was necklaced in street lights, which
stretched their frilled reflections across the surface of the sea; and
just back of it all lay the crater of Haleakala, the House of the Sun.
At sunrise next morning we were docked at Hilo on the island of Hawaii,
two hundred miles from Honolulu. There was nothing here impressive to
me, despite the waterfalls. For two and a half hours we drove by motor
over the turtle-back surface of Hawaii toward Kilauea. Tree-ferns,
palms, and plantations stretched in unending recession far and wide. A
sense of mystery and awe crept slowly over me as we neared the region of
the volcano. At eleven we arrived at the Volcano House.
Yet, in a mood of strange indifference I gazed across the five miles of
flat, dark-brown frozen lava which is the roof of the crater.
Ash-colored fumes rose from the field of fissures, like smoke from an
underground village. Sullen, sallow vapors, these. Sulphur banks, tree
molds cast in frozen lava, empty holes! Nothing within left to rot, but
fringed with forests and brush, sulphur-stained or rooted in frozen
lava. Everywhere promise of volcanic fury, prophecy of the end of the
world.
The road lay like a border round the rim of an antique bowl which had
been baked, cracked, chipped, but shaped to a usefulness that is beauty.
All day long we waited, watching the clouds of gray fumes rise steadily,
silently, and with a sad disinterestedness out of the mouth of the
crater.
Frozen, the lava was the great bed of assurance, a rock of fearlessness.
It seemed to say to the volcano: "I can be indifferent. Down there, deep
down, is your limitation. Rise out of the pit and you become, like me,
congealed. There, down in that deep, is your only hope of life. This
great field of lifeless lava is proof of your effort to reach beyond
your sphere. So why fear?" And there was no fear.
[Illustration: A BLIZZARD OF FUMING HEAT
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
[Illustration: WHERE THE TIDES TURN TO STONE
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
[Illustration: THE LAKE OF SPOUTING MOLTEN LAVA
In the volcano of Kilauea. At night the white here shown is pink
and terrifying
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
As night came on the gray fumes began to flush pink with the reflection
of the heart of the crater. We set out in cars for the edge. Extinct
craters yawned on every side, their walls deep and upright. Some were
overgrown with green young trees, but as we came nearer to the living
crater, life ceased. Great rolls of cloud-fumes rose from the gulch to
wander away in silence. What a strange journey to take! From out a
boiling pit where place is paid for by furious fighting, where pressure
is father of fountains of boiling rock, out from struggle and howling
fury, these gases rose into the world of living matter, into the world
of wind and water. Out of the pit of destruction into the air, never
ceasing, always stirring down there, rising to where life to us is death
to it. The lava, seething, red, shoots aimlessly upward, only to quell
its own futile striving in intermittent exhaustion.
We stood within a foot of the edge. Eight hundred feet below us the lava
roared and spit. In the night, the entire volcano turned a pink glow,
and before us lay three-quarters of a mile of Inferno come true. The red
liquid heaves and hisses. Some of it shoots fully fifty feet into the
air; some is still-born and forms a pillar of black stone in the midst
of molten lava. From the other corner a steady stream of lava issues
into the main pool, and the whole thumps and thuds and sputters and
spouts, restless, toiling eternally.
On our way to the crater we were talkative. We joked, burnt paper over
the cracks, discussed volcanic action, and expressed opinions about
death and the probability of animal consciousness after death. But as we
turned away from the pit we fell silent. It was as though we had looked
into the unknown and had seen that which was not meant for man to see.
And the clouds of fumes continued to issue calmly, unperturbed, with a
dreadful persistence.
Just as our car groped its way through the mists to the bend in the
road, a Japanese stepped before us with his hands outstretched. "Help!"
he shouted. "Man killed." We rushed to his assistance and found that a
party of Japanese in a Ford had run off the road and dropped into a
shallow crater. Down on the frozen bed below huddled a group of men,
women, and children, terrified. As we crawled down we found one Japanese
sitting with the body of his dead companion in his arms, pressing his
hot face against the cold cheek of his comrade. A chill drizzle swept
down into the dark pit. It was a scene to horrify a stoic. To the
wretched group our coming was a comfort the richness of which one could
no more describe than one could the torture of lava in that pit over
yonder.
Japanese are said to be fatalists. They hover about Kilauea year in and
year out. One man sat with a baby in his arms, his feet dangling over
the volcano. Playfully he pretended to toss the child in, and it
accepted all as play. The same confidence the dead man had had in the
driver whose carelessness had overturned the car. And now it seemed that
his body belonged in the larger pit at which he had marveled not more
than half an hour earlier.
As I look back into the pit of memory where the molten material,
experience, has its ebb and flow, I can still see the seething of rock
within a cup of stone, the boiling of nature within its own bosom. Where
can one draw the line between experience past and present? Wherever I
am, the shooting of that fountain of lava is as real as it was to me
then; nor can conglomerate noises drown out the sound of lava pouring
back into lava, of undermined rock projections crashing with a hissing
sound back upon themselves. It is to me like the sound of voices when
King Kamehameha I forced the natives of the island of Oahu over the
Pali, and the group of terrified Japanese were like the fish in the
coral caves at Kaneohe when aware of the approach of a fish that feeds
upon them.
Yet there is a sound rising clear in memory, perhaps more wonderful even
than the shrieking of tortured human beings or the hissing of molten
lava. As I stood upon the rim of Halemaumau there arose the vision of
Kapiolani, the Hawaiian girl who, defying superstition, ventured down
into the jaws of the crater and by her courage exorcised Kilauea of its
devils. What in all the world is more wonderful than frailty imbued with
passion mothering achievement? Kapiolani may be called Hawaii's Joan of
Arc. Unable to measure her strength with men, she defied their gods. A
world of prejudice, all the world to her, stood between her and Kilauea.
Courage triumphant had conquered fear. In defiance of her clan and of
her own terror, she was the first native to approach the crater, and in
that she made herself the equal of Kilauea. As she cast away the
Hawaiian idols, herself emerged an idol.