[Transcriber's Notes: The following words are noted as having changed
between the publication of this book and the year 2004: 'Nuuanu
Valley', versus 'Nuanu'; 'lei', vs. 'le' for a flower garland; 'holoku'
vs. 'holaku' for a Hawaiian black dress; 'Wailua', vs. 'Waialua';
'Kealakekua Bay' vs. 'Kealakeakua'; 'Kahului' vs. 'Kaului'; 'kuleana'
vs. 'kuliana' for a small land-holding; 'kulolo' vs. 'kuulaau' for a
taro pudding; 'piele' vs. 'paalolo' for a sweet-potato and coconut
pudding; 'Koa' trees vs. 'Ko'; 'Sausalito' vs. 'Soucelito'; 'Klickitat',
vs. 'Klikatat'; and 'Mount Rainier' vs. 'Mount Regnier'.
Also, in chapter 1, the author mis-stated information on taro fields;
it should say that a square forty feet on each side will support a
person for a year; this is equivalent to a square mile feeding 15,000.
An explanation of footnotes in the Appendix: The book has both footnotes
at the bottom of each page, to which I assigned letters, and four pages
of notes at the end of the Appendix. The latter includes comments by
the translator in brackets, therefore these notes, which use numbers,
will not be enclosed in the normal [Footnote: ] brackets to avoid any
confusion. The lettered footnotes follow the numbered notes at the
end.]
[Illustration: THE HAWAIIAN ARCHIPELAGO.]
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA,
OREGON,
AND THE
SANDWICH ISLANDS.
BY CHARLES NORDHOFF,
AUTHOR OF
"CALIFORNIA: FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE," &c., &c.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
TO MY FRIENDS,
MR. AND MRS. HENRY A. DIKE,
OF BROOKLYN, N.Y.
PREFACE.
The favor with which my previous volume on California was received by the
public induced me to prepare the present volume, which concerns itself,
as the title sufficiently shows, with the northern parts of California,
Oregon (including a journey through Washington Territory to Victoria, in
Vancouver's Island), and the Sandwich Islands.
I have endeavored, as before, to give plain and circumstantial details,
such as would interest and be of use to travelers for pleasure or
information, and enable the reader to judge of the climate, scenery,
and natural resources of the regions I visited; to give, in short, such
information as I myself would like to have had in my possession before
I made the journey.
Since this book went to press, Lunalilo, the King of the Sandwich Islands,
has died of rapid consumption; and his successor is the Hon. David
Kalakaua, a native chief, who has been prominent in the political affairs
of the Islands, and was the rival of the late king after the death of
Kamehameha V. Colonel Kalakaua is a man of education, of better physical
stamina than the late king, of good habits, vigorous will, and a strong
determination to maintain the independence of the Islands, in which he is
supported by the people, who are of like mind with him on this point. His
portrait is given on the next leaf.
[Illustration: KING KALAKAUA.]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
HONOLULU AND THE ISLAND OF OAHU
CHAPTER II.
HILO, WITH SOME VOLCANOES
CHAPTER III.
MAUI, AND THE SUGAR CULTURE
CHAPTER IV.
KAUAI, WITH A GLANCE AT CATTLE AND SHEEP
CHAPTER V.
THE HAWAIIAN AT HOME: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
CHAPTER VI.
COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL
CHAPTER VII.
THE LEPER ASYLUM ON MOLOKAI
* * * * *
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA:
ITS AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS, DAIRIES, FORESTS, FRUIT-FARMS, ETC.
CHAPTER I.
THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY: A GENERAL VIEW, WITH HINTS TO TOURISTS AND
SPORTSMEN
CHAPTER II.
WINE AND RAISINS--PROFITS OF DRYING FRUITS
CHAPTER III.
THE TULE LANDS AND LAND DRAINAGE
CHAPTER IV.
SHEEP-GRAZING IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
CHAPTER V.
THE CHINESE AS LABORERS AND PRODUCERS
CHAPTER VI.
THE MENDOCINO COAST AND CLEAR LAKE--GENERAL VIEW
CHAPTER VII.
AN INDIAN RESERVATION
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REDWOODS AND THE SAW-MILL COUNTRY OF MENDOCINO
CHAPTER IX.
DAIRY-FARMING IN CALIFORNIA
CHAPTER X.
TEHAMA AND BUTTE, AND THE UPPER COUNTRY
CHAPTER XI.
TOBACCO CULTURE--WITH A NEW METHOD OR CURING THE LEAF
CHAPTER XII.
THE FARALLON ISLANDS
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND PUGET SOUND--HINTS TO TOURISTS
* * * * *
APPENDIX.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF A VENERABLE SAVAGE TO THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN
ISLANDS
NOTES
ILLUSTRATIONS.
MAP OF THE HAWAIIAN ARCHIPELAGO
KING KALAKAUA
DIAMOND HEAD AND WAIKIKI
HONOLULU--GENERAL VIEW
HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU
GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, HONOLULU
ROYAL SCHOOL, HONOLULU
COURT-HOUSE, HONOLULU
MRS. LUCY G. THURSTON
KAWAIAHO CHURCH--FIRST NATIVE CHURCH IN HONOLULU
DR. JUDD
DR. COAN
BETHEL CHURCH
DR. DAMON
QUEEN'S HOSPITAL, HONOLULU
NATIVE SCHOOL-HOUSE IN HONOLULU
COCOA-NUT GROVE, AND RESIDENCE OF THE LATE KING KAMEHAMEHA V., AT WAIKIKI,
OAHU
HAWAIIAN POI DEALER
THE PALACE, HONOLULU
EMMA, QUEEN OF KAMEHAMEHA IV.
A HAWAIIAN CHIEF
THE CRATER OF KILAUEA--ONE PHASE
KEALAKEAKUA BAY, WHERE CAPTAIN COOK WAS KILLED
THE VOLCANO HOUSE
HAWAIIAN TEMPLE, FROM A RUSSIAN ENGRAVING, ABOUT 1790
LAVA FIELD, HAWAII--FLOW OF 1868
VIEW OF THE CRATER OF SOUTH LAKE IN A STATE OF ERUPTION, FROM THE CREST OF
THE NORTH LAKE
HILO
SURF BATHING
LAHAINA, ISLAND OF MAUI
CASCADE AND RIVER OF LAVA--FLOW OF 1869
MAP OF THE HALEAKALA CRATER
WAILUKU, ISLAND OF MAUI
KEAPAWEO MOUNTAIN, KAUAI
CHAIN OF EXTINCT VOLCANOES NEAR KOLOA, ISLAND OF KAUAI
WAIALUA FALLS, ISLAND OF KAUAI
IMPLEMENTS
GRASS HOUSE
HAWAIIAN WARRIORS
LUNALILO
KAMEHAMEHA I.
QUEEN OF KAMEHAMEHA I.
ANCIENT GODS OF HAWAII
HAWAIIANS EATING POI
NATIVE HAT PEDDLER
HULA-HULA, OR DANCING-GIRLS
HAWAIIAN STYLE OF DRESS
NATIVE PIPE
NECKLACE OF HUMAN HAIR
MAP OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
A CALIFORNIA VINEYARD
WINE VATS
TRAINING A VINE
A BOTTLING-CELLAR
INDIAN RANCHERIA
PIEDRAS BLANCAS
POINT ARENA LIGHT-HOUSE
SHIPPING LUMBER, MENDOCINO COUNTY
A WATER-JAM OF LOGS
MOUNT HOOD, OREGON
COAST VIEW, MENDOCINO COUNTY
INDIAN SWEAT-HOUSE
ANOTHER COAST-VIEW, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
A SAW-MILL PORT ON PUGET SOUND
CAPE HORN, COLUMBIA RIVER
SAW-MILL
WOOD-CHOPPER AT WORK
MOUNT HOOD, OREGON
INDIANS SPEARING SALMON, COLUMBIA RIVER
CHINOOK WOMAN AND CHILD
VIEW ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER
LUMBERING IN WASHINGTON TERRITORY--PREPARING LOGS
VICTORIA HARBOR, VANCOUVER'S ISLAND
PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON TERRITORY
POINT REYES
COLUMBIA RIVER SCENE
STREET IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY
"TACOMA," OR MOUNT RAINIER
INDIAN CRADLE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY
RUNNING THE ROOKERIES--GATHERING MURRE EGGS
LIGHT-HOUSE ON THE SOUTH FARALLON
ARCH AT WEST END, FARALLON ISLANDS
SEA-LIONS
THE GULL'S NEST
SHAGS, MURRES, AND SEA-GULLS
CONTEST FOR THE EGGS
THE GREAT ROOKERY
INDIAN GIRLS AND CANOE, PUGET SOUND
SALEM, CAPITAL OF OREGON
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
MAP OF PUGET SOUND AND VICINITY
THE DUKE OF YORK
QUEEN VICTORIA
NANAIMO, VANCOUVER'S ISLAND
ANCIENT HAWAIIAN IDOL
THE TARO PLANT
[Illustration: DIAMOND HEAD AND WAIKIKI.]
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, OREGON,
AND
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
HONOLULU AND THE ISLAND OF OAHU.
The Hawaiian group consists, as you will see on the map, of eleven
islands, of which Hawaii is the largest and Molokini the smallest. The
islands together contain about 6000 square miles; and Hawaii alone has an
area of nearly 4000 square miles, Maui 620, Oahu (which contains Honolulu,
the capital) 530, and Kauai 500. Lanai, Kahoolawe, Molokai, Niihau,
Kaula, Lehua, and Molokini are small islands. All are of volcanic
origin, mountainous, and Hawaii contains the largest active crater in the
world--Kilauea--one of the craters of Mauna Loa; while Maui contains
the largest known extinct crater, Haleakala, the House of the Sun--a pit
thirty miles in circumference and two thousand feet deep. Mauna Loa and
Mauna Kea are nearly 14,000 feet high, as high as Mount Grey in Colorado;
and you can not ride anywhere in the islands without seeing extinct
craters, of which the hill called Diamond Head, near Honolulu, is an
example.
[Illustration: HONOLULU--GENERAL VIEW.]
The voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu is now very comfortably made in
one of the Pacific Mail Company's steamers, which plies regularly between
the two ports, and makes a round trip once in every month. The voyage down
to the Islands lasts from eight to nine days, and even to persons subject
to sea-sickness is likely to be an enjoyable sea-journey, because after
the second day the weather is charmingly warm, the breezes usually mild,
and the skies sunny and clear. In forty-eight hours after you leave
the Golden Gate, shawls, overcoats, and wraps are discarded. You put on
thinner clothing. After breakfast you will like to spread rugs on deck
and lie in the sun, fanned by deliciously soft winds; and before you see
Honolulu you will, even in winter, like to have an awning spread over you
to keep off the sun. When they seek a tropical climate, our brethren on
the Pacific coast have to endure no such rough voyage as that across
the Atlantic. On the way you see flying-fish, and if you are lucky an
occasional whale or a school of porpoises, but no ships. It is one of the
loneliest of ocean tracks, for sailing-vessels usually steer farther north
to catch stronger gales. But you sail over the lovely blue of the Pacific
Ocean, which has not only softer gales but even a different shade of color
than the fierce Atlantic.
We made the land at daylight on the tenth day of the voyage, and by
breakfast-time were steaming through the Molokai Channel, with the high,
rugged, and bare volcanic cliffs of Oahu close aboard, the surf beating
vehemently against the shore. An hour later we rounded Diamond Head, and
sailing past Waikiki, which is the Long Branch of Honolulu charmingly
placed amidst groves of cocoa-nut-trees, turned sharp about, and steamed
through a narrow channel into the landlocked little harbor of Honolulu,
smooth as a mill-pond.
It is not until you are almost within the harbor that you get a fair view
of the city, which lies embowered in palms and fine tamarind-trees, with
the tall fronds of the banana peering above the low-roofed houses; and
thus the tropics come after all somewhat suddenly upon you; for the
land which you have skirted all the morning is by no means tropical in
appearance, and the cocoa-nut groves of Waikiki will disappoint you on
their first and too distant view, which gives them the insignificant
appearance of tall reeds. But your first view of Honolulu, that from the
ship's deck, is one of the pleasantest you can get: it is a view of gray
house-tops, hidden in luxuriant green, with a background of volcanic
mountains three or four thousand feet high, and an immediate foreground of
smooth harbor, gay with man-of-war boats, native canoes and flags, and
the wharf, with ladies in carriages, and native fruit-venders in what will
seem to you brightly colored night-gowns, eager to sell you a feast of
bananas and oranges.
There are several other fine views of Honolulu, especially that from the
lovely Nuanu Valley, looking seaward over the town, and one from the roof
of the prison, which edifice, clean, roomy, and in the day-time empty
because the convicts are sent out to labor on public works and roads, has
one of the finest situations in the town's limits, directly facing the
Nuanu Valley.
From the steamer you proceed to a surprisingly excellent hotel, which was
built at a cost of about $120,000, and is owned by the government.
You will find it a large building, affording all the conveniences of a
first-class hotel in any part of the world. It is built of a concrete
stone made on the spot, of which also the new Parliament House is
composed; and as it has roomy, well-shaded court-yards and deep, cool
piazzas, and breezy halls and good rooms, and baths and gas, and a
billiard-room, you might imagine yourself in San Francisco, were it not
that you drive in under the shade of cocoa-nut, tamarind, guava, and
algeroba trees, and find all the doors and windows open in midwinter; and
ladies and children in white sitting on the piazzas.
[Illustration: HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU.]
It is told in Honolulu that the building of this hotel cost two of the
late king's cabinet, Mr. Harris and Dr. Smith, their places. The Hawaiian
people are economical, and not very enterprising; they dislike debt, and
a considerable part of the Hawaiian national debt was contracted to build
this hotel. You will feel sorry for Messrs. Harris and Smith, who were for
many years two of the ablest members of the Hawaiian cabinet, but you will
feel grateful for their enterprise also, when you hear that before this
hotel was completed--that is to say, until 1871--a stranger landing in
Honolulu had either to throw himself on the hospitality of the citizens,
take his lodgings in the Sailors' Home, or go back to his ship. It is not
often that cabinet ministers fall in so good a cause, or incur the public
displeasure for an act which adds so much to the comfort of mankind.
The mercury ranges between 68° and 81° in the winter months and
between 75° and 86° during the summer, in Honolulu. The mornings are
often a little overcast until about half-past nine, when it clears
away bright. The hottest part of the day is before noon. The
trade-wind usually blows, and when it does it is always cool; with a
south wind; it is sometimes sultry, though the heat is never nearly so
oppressive as in July and August in New York. In fact, a New Yorker
whom I met in the Islands in August congratulated himself as much on
having escaped the New York summer as others did on having avoided the
winter.
The nights are cool enough for sound rest, but not cold.
It is not by any means a torrid climate, and it has, perhaps, the
fewest daily extremes of any pleasant climate in the world. For
instance, the mercury ranged in January between 69° at 7 A.M., 75-1/2°
at 2 P.M., and 71-1/2° at 10 P.M. The highest temperature in that month
was 78°, and the lowest 68°. December and January are usually the
coolest months in the year at Honolulu, but the variation is extremely
slight for the whole year, the maximum of the warmest day in July
(still at Honolulu) being only 86°, and this at noon, and the lowest
mark being 62°, in the early morning in December. A friend of mine
resident during twenty years in the Islands has never had a blanket in
his house.
It is said that the climate is an excellent one for consumptives, and
physicians here point to numerous instances of the kindly and healing
effect of the mild air. At the same time, I suspect it must in the
long-run be a little debilitating to Americans. It is a charming climate
for children; and as sea-bathing is possible and pleasant at all times,
those who derive benefit from this may here enjoy it to the fullest extent
during all the winter months as well as in the summer.
Of course you wear thin, but not the thinnest, clothing. White is
appropriate to the climate; but summer flannels are comfortable in winter.
The air is never as sultry as in New York in July or August, and the
heat is by no means oppressive, there being almost always a fresh breeze.
Honolulu has the reputation of being the hottest place on the islands,
and a walk through its streets at midday quickly tires one; but in a
mountainous country like this you may choose your temperature, of course.
The summits of the highest peaks on Hawaii are covered with almost
perpetual snow; and there are sugar planters who might sit around a fire
every night in the year.
Unlike California, the Islands have no special rainy season, though
rain is more abundant in winter than during the summer months. But the
trade-wind, which is also the rain-wind, greatly controls the rain-fall;
and it is useful for visitors to bear in mind that on the weather side
of every one of the Islands--that side exposed to the wind--rains are
frequent, while on the lee side the rain-fall is much less, and in some
places there is scarcely any. Thus an invalid may get at will either a dry
or moist climate, and this often by moving but a few miles. Not only is
it true that at Hilo it sometimes rains for a month at a time, while at
Lahaina they have a shower only about once in eighteen months; but you may
_see_ it rain every day from the hotel piazza in Honolulu, though you get
not a drop in the city itself; for in the Nuanu and Manoa valleys there
are showers every day in the year--the droppings of fragments of clouds
which have been blown over the mountain summits; and if you cross the Pali
to go the windward side of the island, though you set out from Honolulu
amidst brilliant sunshine which will endure there all day unchanged, you
will not ride three miles without needing a mackintosh. But the residents,
knowing that during the greater part of the year the showers are light and
of brief duration, take no precautions against them; and indeed an island
shower seems to be harmless to any one but an invalid, for it is not a
climate in which one easily "takes cold."
The very slight changes in temperature between day and night make the
climate agreeable, and I think useful, to persons in tender health. But I
do not believe it can be safely recommended for all cases of consumption.
If the patient has the disease fully developed, and if it has been
caused by lack of nutrition, I should think the island air likely to be
insufficiently bracing. For persons who have "weak lungs" merely, but no
actual disease, it is probably a good and perfectly safe climate; and if
sea-bathing is part of your physician's prescription, it can, as I said
before, be enjoyed in perfection here by the tenderest body all the year
round.
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, HONOLULU.]
Honolulu, being the capital of the kingdom, contains the government
offices; and you will perhaps be surprised, as I was, to find an excellent
public hospital, a reform school, and other proper and well-managed
charities. When you have visited these and some of the numerous schools
and the native churches, and have driven or ridden to Waikiki for a
sea-bath, and have seen the Nuanu Valley and the precipice called the
Pali, if you are American, and familiar with New England, it will be
revealed to you that the reason why all the country looks so familiar
to you is that it is really a very accurate reproduction of New
England country scenery. The white frame houses with green blinds, the
picket-fences whitewashed until they shine, the stone walls, the small
barns, the scanty pastures, the little white frame churches scattered
about, the narrow "front yards," the frequent school-houses, usually with
but little shade: all are New England, genuine and unadulterated; and
you have only to eliminate the palms, the bananas, and other tropical
vegetation, to have before you a fine bit of Vermont or the stonier parts
of Massachusetts. The whole scene has no more breadth nor freedom about it
than a petty New England village, but it is just as neat, trim, orderly,
and silent also. There is even the same propensity to put all the
household affairs under one roof which was born of a severe climate in
Massachusetts, but has been brought over to these milder suns by the
incorrigible Puritans who founded this bit of civilization.
[Illustration: ROYAL SCHOOL, HONOLULU.]
In fact, the missionaries have left an indelible mark upon these islands.
You do not need to look deep to know that they were men of force, men of
the same kind as they who have left an equally deep impress upon so large
a part of our Western States; men and women who had formed their own lives
according to certain fixed and immutable rules, who knew no better country
than New England, nor any better ways than New England ways, and to
whom it never occurred to think that what was good and sufficient in
Massachusetts was not equally good and fit in any part of the world.
Patiently, and somewhat rigorously, no doubt, they sought from the
beginning to make New England men and women of these Hawaiians; and what
is wonderful is that, to a large extent, they have succeeded.
As you ride about the suburbs of Honolulu, and later as you travel about
the islands, more and more you will be impressed with a feeling of respect
and admiration for the missionaries. Whatever of material prosperity has
grown up here is built on their work, and could not have existed but for
their preceding labors; and you see in the spirit of the people, in their
often quaint habits, in their universal education, in all that makes these
islands peculiar and what they are, the marks of the Puritans who came
here but fifty years ago to civilize a savage nation, and have done their
work so thoroughly that, even though the Hawaiian people became extinct,
it would require a century to obliterate the way-marks of that handful of
determined New England men and women.
[Illustration: COURT-HOUSE, HONOLULU.]
Their patient and effective labors seem to me, now that I have seen the
results, to have been singularly undervalued at home. No intelligent
American can visit the islands and remain there even a month, without
feeling proud that the civilization which has here been created in so
marvelously short a time was the work of his country men and women; and if
you make the acquaintance of the older missionary families, you will not
leave them without deep personal esteem for their characters, as well as
admiration of their work. They did not only form a written language
for the Hawaiian race, and painfully write for them school-books, a
dictionary, and a translation of the Scriptures and of a hymn-book; they
did not merely gather the people in churches and their children into
schools; but they guided the race, slowly and with immense difficulty,
toward Christian civilization; and though the Hawaiian is no more a
perfect Christian than the New Yorker or Massachusetts man, and
though there are still traces of old customs and superstitions, these
missionaries have eradicated the grosser crimes of murder and theft so
completely, that even in Honolulu people leave their houses open all
day and unlocked all night, without thought of theft; and there is not a
country in the world where the stranger may travel in such absolute safety
as in these islands.
The Hawaiian, or Sandwich Islands, were discovered--or rediscovered, as
some say--by Captain Cook, in January, 1778, a year and a half after
our Declaration of Independence. The inhabitants were then what we call
savages--that is to say, they wore no more clothing than the climate
made necessary, and knew nothing of the Christian religion. In the
period between 1861 and 1865 this group had in the Union armies a
brigadier-general, a major, several other officers, and more than one
hundred private soldiers and seamen, and its people contributed to the
treasury of the Sanitary Commission a sum larger than that given by most
of our own States.
[Illustration: MRS. LUCY G. THURSTON.]
In 1820 the first missionaries landed on the shores of these islands, and
Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston, one of those who came in that year, still lives, a
bright, active old lady, with a shrewd wit of her own. Thirty-three years
afterward, in 1853, the American Board of Missions determined that "the
Sandwich Islands, having been Christianized, shall no longer receive aid
from the Board;" and in this year, 1873, the natives of these islands
are, there is reason to believe, the most generally educated people in the
world. There is scarcely a Hawaiian--man, woman, or child--of suitable
age but can both read and write. All the towns and many country localities
possess substantial stone or, more often, framed churches, of the oddest
New England pattern; and a compulsory education law draws every child into
the schools, while a special tax of two dollars on every voter, and an
additional general tax, provide schools and teachers for all the children
and youth.
[Illustration: KAWAIAHO CHURCH--FIRST-NATIVE CHURCH IN HONOLULU.]
Nine hundred and three thousand dollars were given by Christian people in
the United States during thirty-five years to accomplish this result; and
to-day the islands themselves support a missionary society, which sends
the Gospel in the hands of native missionaries into other islands at its
own cost, and not only supports more than a dozen "foreign" missionaries,
but translates parts of the Bible into other Polynesian tongues.
Nor was exile from their homes and kindred the only privation the
missionaries suffered. They came among a people so vile that they had not
even a conception of right and wrong; so prone to murder and pillage that
the first Kamehameha, the conqueror, gave as excuse for his conquest that
it was necessary to make the paths safe; so debauched in their common
conversation that the earlier missionaries were obliged for years rigidly
to forbid their own children not only from acquaintance with the natives
among whom they lived, but even from learning the native language, because
to hear only the passing speech of their neighbors was to suffer the
grossest contamination.
Of those who began this good work but few now remain. Most of them have
gone to their reward, having no doubt suffered, as well as accomplished,
much. Of the first band who came out from the United States, the only one
living in 1873 is Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston, a bright, active, and lively old
lady of seventy-five years, who drives herself to church on Sundays in a
one-horse chaise, and has her own opinions of passing events. How she has
lived in the tropics for fifty years without losing even an atom of the
New England look puzzles you; but it shows you also the strength which
these people brought with them, the tenacity with which they clung
to their habits of dress and living and thought, the remorseless
determination which they imported, with their other effects, around Cape
Horn.
[Illustration: DR. JUDD.]
Then there was Dr. Judd, who has died since these lines were written, who
came out as physician to the mission, and proved himself in the islands,
as the world knows, a very able man, with statesmanship for some great
emergencies which made him for years one of the chief advisers of the
Hawaiian kings. It was to me a most touching sight to see, on a Sunday
after church, Mrs. Thurston, his senior by many years but still alert
and vigorous, taking hold of his hand and tenderly helping him out of the
church and to his carriage.
[Illustration: DR. COAN.]
And in Hilo, when you go to visit the volcano, you will find Dr. Coan, one
of the brightest and loveliest spirits of them, all, the story of whose
life in the remote island whose apostle he was, is as wonderful and as
touching as that of any of the earlier apostles, and shows what great
works unyielding faith and love can do in redeeming a savage people. When
Dr. and Mrs. Coan came to the island of Hawaii, its shores and woods were
populous; and through their labors and those of the Reverend Mr. Lyman
and one or two others, thousands of men and women were instructed in
the truths of Christianity, inducted into civilized habits of life, and
finally brought into the church.
As you sail along the green coast of Hawaii from its northern point to
Hilo, you will be surprised at the number of quaint little white churches
which mark the distances almost with the regularity of mile-stones; if,
later, you ride through this district or the one south of Hilo, you will
see that for every church there is also a school-house; you will see
native children reading and writing as well as our own at home; you may
hear them singing tunes familiar in our own Sunday-schools; you will see
the native man and woman sitting down to read their newspaper at the close
of day; and if you could talk with them, you would find they knew almost
as much about our late war as you do, for they took an intense interest in
the war of the rebellion. And you must remember that when, less than forty
years ago, Dr. and Mrs. Coan came to Hilo, the people were naked savages,
with but one church and one school-house in the district, and almost
without printed books or knowledge of reading. They flocked to hear the
Gospel. Thousands removed from a distance to Hilo, where, in their
rapid way, they built up a large town, and kept up surely the strangest
"protracted meeting" ever held; and going back to their homes after many
months, they took with them knowledge and zeal to build up Christian
churches and schools of their own.
Over these Dr. Coan has presided these many years; not only preaching
regularly on Sundays and during the week in the large native church at
Hilo, and in two or three neighboring churches, but visiting the more
distant churches at intervals to examine and instruct the members, and
keep them all on the right track. He has seen a region very populous
when he first came to it decrease until it has now many more deserted and
ruined house-places than inhabited dwellings; but, also, he has seen a
great population turned from darkness to light, a considerable part of it
following his own blameless and loving life as an example, and very many
living to old age steadfast and zealous Christians.
On your first Sunday at Honolulu you will probably attend one or other of
the native churches. They are commodious buildings, well furnished; and a
good organ, well played, will surprise you. Sunday is a very quiet day in
the Islands: they are a church-going people, and the empty seats in
the Honolulu native churches give you notice of the great decrease in
population since these were built.
[Illustration: BETHEL CHURCH.]
If you go to hear preaching in your own language, it will probably be to
the Seamen's Chapel where the Rev. Mr. Damon preaches--one of the oldest
and one of the best-known residents of Honolulu. This little chapel was
brought around Cape Horn in pieces, in a whale-ship many years ago, and
was, I believe, the first American church set up in these islands. It is
a curious old relic, and has seen many changes. Mr. Damon has lived here
since 1846 a most zealous and useful life as seamen's chaplain. He is, in
his own field, a true and untiring missionary, and to his care the port
owes a clean and roomy Seamen's Home, a valuable little paper, _The
Friend_, which was for many years the chief reading of the whalemen who
formerly crowded the ports of Hawaii; and help in distress, and fatherly
advice, and unceasing kindness at all times to a multitude of seamen
during nearly thirty years. The sailors, who quickly recognize a genuine
man, have dubbed him "Father Damon;" and he deserves, what he has long
had, their confidence and affection.
[Illustration: DR. DAMON.]
The charitable and penal institutions of Honolulu are quickly seen, and
deserve a visit. They show the care with which the Government has looked
after the welfare of the people. The Queen's Hospital is an admirably
kept house. At the Reform School you will see a number of boys trained and
educated in right ways. The prison not only deserves a visit for itself,
but from its roof you obtain, as I said before, one of the best views of
Honolulu and the adjacent country and ocean.
[Illustration: QUEEN'S HOSPITAL, HONOLULU.]
Then there are native schools, elementary and academic, where you will see
the young Hawaiian at his studies, and learn to appreciate the industry
and thoroughness with which education is carried on all over these
islands. You will see also curious evidence of the mixture of races here;
for on the benches sit, and in the classes recite, Hawaiian, Chinese,
Portuguese, half white and half Chinese children; and the little
pig-tailed Celestial reads out of his primer quite as well as any.
[Illustration: NATIVE SCHOOL-HOUSE IN HONOLULU.]
In the girls' schools you will see an occasional pretty face, but fewer
than I expected to see; and to my eyes the Hawaiian girl is rarely very
attractive. Among the middle-aged women, however, you often meet with fine
heads and large, expressive features. The women have not unfrequently
a majesty of carriage and a tragic intensity of features and expression
which are quite remarkable. Their loose dress gives grace as well as
dignity to their movements, and whoever invented it for them deserves
more credit than he has received. It is a little startling at first to see
women walking about in what, to our perverted tastes, look like calico
or black stuff night-gowns; but the dress grows on you as you become
accustomed to it; it lends itself readily to bright ornamentation; it
is eminently fit for the climate; and a stately Hawaiian dame, marching
through the street in black _holaku_--as the dress is called--with a long
necklace, or _le_, of bright scarlet or brilliant yellow flowers, bare and
untrammeled feet, and flowing hair, surmounted often by a low-crowned
felt hat, compares very favorably with a high-heeled, wasp-waisted,
absurdly-bonneted, fashionable white lady.
[Illustration: COCOA-NUT GROVE, AND RESIDENCE OF THE LATE KING KAMEHAMEHA
V., AT WAIKIKI, OAHU.]
As you travel through the country, you see not unfrequently one of
the tall, majestic, large women, who were formerly, it is said by old
residents, more numerous than now. I have been assured by several persons
that the race has dwindled in the last half century; and all old residents
speak with admiration of the great stature and fine forms of the chiefs
and their wives in the early days. It does not appear that these chiefs
were a distinct race, but they were despotic rulers of the common people;
and their greater stature is attributed by those who should know to their
being nourished on better food, and to easier circumstances and more
favorable surroundings.
When you have seen Honolulu and the Nuanu Valley, and bathed and drunk
cocoa-nut milk at Waikiki, you will be ready for a charming excursion--the
ride around the Island of Oahu. For this you should take several days. It
is most pleasantly made by a party of three or four persons, and ladies,
if they can sit in the saddle at all, can very well do it. You should
provide yourself with a pack-mule, which will carry not only spare
clothing but some provisions; and your guide ought to take care of your
horses and be able, if necessary, to cook you a lunch. The ride is easily
done in four days, and you will sleep every night at a plantation or farm.
The roads are excellent for riding, and carriages have made the journey.
It is best to set out by way of Pearl River and return by the Pali,
as thus you have the trade-wind in your face all the way. If you are
accustomed to ride, and can do thirty miles a day, you should sleep the
first night at or near Waialua, the next at or near what is called
the Mormon Settlement, and on the third day ride into Honolulu.
If ladies are of your party, and the stages must be shorter, you can
ride the first day to Ewa, which is but ten miles; the next, to Waialua,
eighteen miles further; the third, to the neighborhood of Kahuku, twelve
miles; thence to Kahana, fifteen miles; thence to Kaalaea, twelve miles;
and the next day carries you, by an easy ride of thirteen miles, into
Honolulu. Any one who can sit on a horse at all will enjoy this excursion,
and receive benefit from it; the different stages of it are so short that
each day's work is only a pleasure. On the way you will see, near Ewa,
the Pearl Lochs, which it has recently been proposed to cede as a
naval station to the United States; and near Waialua an interesting
boarding-school for Hawaiian girls, in which they are taught not only
in the usual school studies, but in sewing, and the various arts of the
housewife. If you are curious to see the high valley in which the famous
Waialua oranges are grown, you must take a day for that purpose. Between
Kahuku and Kahana it is worth while to make a detour into the mountains to
see the Kaliawa Falls, which are a very picturesque sight. The rock, at a
height of several hundred feet, has been curiously worn by the water into
the shape of a canoe. Here, also, the precipitous walls are covered
with masses of fine ferns. At Kahana, and also at Koloa, you will see
rice-fields, which are cultivated by Chinese. You pass also on your road
several sugar-plantations; and if it is the season of sugar-boiling,
you will be interested in this process. For miles you ride along the
sea-shore, and your guide will lead you to proper places for a midday
bath, preliminary to your lunch.
After leaving the Mormon Settlement, the scenery becomes very grand--it
is, indeed, as fine as any on the Islands, and compares well with any
scenery in the world. That it can be seen without severe toil gives it,
for such people as myself, no slight advantage over some other scenery
in these Islands and elsewhere, access to which can be gained only
by toilsome and disagreeable journeys. There is a blending of sea and
mountain which will dwell in your memory as not oppressively grand, and
yet fine enough to make you thankful that Providence has made the world so
lovely and fair.
As you approach the Pali, the mountain becomes a sheer precipice for some
miles, broken only by the gorge of the Pali, up which, if you are prudent,
you will walk, letting your horses follow with the guide--though Hawaiian
horsemen ride both up and down, and have been known to gallop down the
stone-paved and slippery steep. As you look up at these tall, gloomy
precipices, you will see one of the peculiarities of a Sandwich Island
landscape. The rocks are not bare, but covered from crown to base with
moss and ferns; and these cling so closely to the surface that to your
eye they seem to be but a short, close-textured green fuzz. In fact, these
great rocks, thus adorned, reminded me constantly of the rock scenery in
such operas as Fra Diavolo; the dark green being of a shade which I do
not remember to have seen before in nature, though it is not uncommon in
theatrical scenery.
The grass remains green, except in the dry districts, all the year round;
and the common grass of the Islands is the _maniania_, a fine creeping
grass which covers the ground with a dense velvety mat; and where it is
kept short by sheep makes an admirable springy lawn. It has a fine deep
color and bears drought remarkably well; and it is the favorite pasture
grass of the Islands. I do not think it as fattening as the alfilleria of
Southern California or our own timothy or blue grass; but it is a valuable
grass to the stockmen, because it eats out every other and less valuable
kind.
On your journey around Oahu you need a guide who can speak some English;
you must take with you on the pack-mule provisions for the journey; and
it is well to have a blanket for each of your party. You will sleep each
night in a native house, unless, as is very likely to be the case, you
have invitations to stop at plantation houses on your way. At the native
houses they will kill a chicken for you, and cook taro; but they have
no other supplies. You can usually get cocoa-nuts, whose milk is very
wholesome and refreshing. The journey is like a somewhat prolonged picnic;
the air is mild and pure; and you need no heavy clothing, for you are sure
of bright sunny weather.
For your excursions near Honolulu, and for the adventure I have described,
you can hire horses; though if you mean to stay a month or two it is
better to buy. A safe and good horse, well saddled and bridled, brought to
you every morning at the hotel, costs you a dollar a day. In that case
you have no care or responsibility for the animal. But unless there are
men-of-war in port you can buy a sufficiently good riding-horse for from
twelve to twenty-five dollars, and get something of your investment back
when you leave; and you can buy saddles and all riding-gear cheaply in
Honolulu. The maintenance of a horse in town costs not over fifty cents
per day.
Your guide for a journey ought to cost you a dollar a day, which includes
his horse; when you stop for the day he unsaddles your horses and ties
them out in a grass-field where they get sufficient nourishment. For your
accommodation at a native house, you ought to pay fifty cents for each
person of your party, including the guide. The proprietor of the Honolulu
hotel is very obliging and readily helps you to make all arrangements for
horses and guides; and if you have brought any letters of introduction, or
make acquaintances in the place, you will find every body ready to assist
you. Riding is the pleasantest way of getting about; but on Oahu the roads
are sufficiently good to drive considerable distances, and carriages are
easily obtainable.
One of the pleasant surprises which meet a northern traveler in these
islands is the number of strange dishes which appear on the table and in
the bill of fare. Strawberries, oranges--the sweetest and juiciest I have
eaten anywhere, except perhaps in Rio de Janeiro--bananas and cocoa-nuts,
you have at will; but besides these there are during the winter months the
guava, very nice when it is sliced like a tomato and eaten with sugar and
milk; taro, which is the potato of the country and, in the shape of poi,
the main subsistence of the native Hawaiian; bread-fruit; flying-fish,
the most tender and succulent of the fish kind; and, in their season,
the mango, the custard-apple, the alligator-pear, the water-melon, the
rose-apple, the ohia, and other fruits.
Taro, when baked, is an excellent and wholesome vegetable, and from its
leaves is cooked a fine substitute for spinach, called _luau_. Poi also
appears on your hotel table, being the national dish, of which many
foreigners have become very fond. It is very fattening and easily
digested, and is sometimes prescribed by physicians to consumptives.
As you drive about the suburbs of Honolulu you will see numerous taro
patches, and may frequently see the natives engaged in the preparation of
poi, which consists in baking the root or tuber in underground ovens, and
then mashing it very fine, so that if dry it would be a flour. It is
then mixed with water, and for native use left to undergo a slight
fermentation. Fresh or unfermented poi has a pleasant taste; when
fermented it tastes to me like book-binder's paste, and a liking for it
must be acquired rather than natural, I should say, with foreigners.
[Illustration: HAWAIIAN POI DEALER.]
So universal is its use among the natives that the manufacture of poi is
carried on now by steam-power and with Yankee machinery, for the sugar
planters; and the late king, who was avaricious and a trader, incurred the
dislike of his native subjects by establishing a poi-factory of his own
near Honolulu. Poi is sold in the streets in calabashes, but it is also
shipped in considerable quantities to other islands, and especially to
guano islands which lie southward and westward of this group. On these
lonely islets, many of which have not even drinking-water for the laborers
who live on them, poi and fish are the chief if not the only articles of
food. The fish, of course, are caught on the spot, but poi, water, salt,
and a few beef cattle for the use of the white superintendents are carried
from here.
Taro is a kind of _arum_. It grows, unlike any other vegetable I know of
unless it be rice, entirely under water. A taro patch is surrounded by
embankments; its bottom is of puddled clay; and in this the cutting, which
is simply the top of the plant with a little of the tuber, is set. The
plants are set out in little clumps in long rows, and a man at work in a
taro patch stands up to his knees in water. Forty square feet of taro, it
is estimated, will support a person for a year, and a square mile of
taro will feed over 15,000 Hawaiians.
[Illustration: THE PALACE, HONOLULU.]
By-the-way, you will hear the natives say _kalo_ when they speak of taro;
and by this and other words in common use you will presently learn of
a curious obliquity in their hearing. A Hawaiian does not notice any
difference in the sounds of _r_ and _l_, of _k_ and _t_, or of _b_, _p_,
and _f_. Thus the Pali, or precipice near Honolulu, is spoken of as the
Pari; the island of Kauai becomes to a resident of it Tauwai, though a
native of Oahu calls it Kauai; taro is almost universally called _kalo_;
and the common salutation, _Aloha_, which means "Love to you," and is the
national substitute for "How do you do?" is half the time _Aroha_; Lanai
is indifferently called Ranai; and Mauna Loa is in the mouths of most
Hawaiians Mauna Roa. Indeed, in the older charts the capital of the
kingdom is called Honoruru.
Society in Honolulu possesses some peculiar features, owing in part to the
singularly isolated situation of this little capital, and partly to the
composition of the social body. Honolulu is a capital city unconnected
with any other place in the world by telegraph, having a mail once a month
from San Francisco and New Zealand, and dependent during the remainder of
the month upon its own resources. To a New Yorker, who gets his news hot
and hot all day and night, and can't go to sleep without first looking
in at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to hear the latest item, this will seem
deplorable enough; but you have no idea how charming, how pleasant, how
satisfactory it is for a busy or overworked man to be thus for a while
absolutely isolated from affairs; to feel that for a month at least the
world must get on without your interfering hand; and though you may dread
beforehand this enforced separation from politics and business, you will
find it very pleasant in the actual experience.
As you stand upon the wharf in company with the élite of the kingdom to
watch the steamer depart, a great burden falls from your soul, because for
a month to come you have not the least responsibility for what may happen
in any part of the planet. Looking up at the black smoke of the departing
ship, you say to yourself, "Who cares?" Let what will happen, you are not
responsible. And so, with a light heart and an easy conscience, you get
on your horse (price $15), and about the time the lady passengers on the
steamer begin to turn green in face, you are sitting down on a spacious
_lanai_ or veranda, in one of the most delightful sea-side resorts in the
world, with a few friends who have determined to celebrate by a dinner
this monthly recurrence of their non-intercourse with the world.
[Illustration: EMMA, QUEEN OF KAMEHAMEHA IV.]
The people are surprisingly hospitable and kind and know how to make
strangers at home; they have leisure, and know how to use it pleasantly;
the climate controls their customs in many respects, and nothing is
pursued at fever heat as with us. What strikes you, when you have found
your way into Honolulu society and looked around, is a certain sensible
moderation and simplicity which is in part, I suspect, a remainder of the
old missionary influence; there is a certain amount of formality, which
is necessary to keep society from deteriorating, but there is no striving
after effect; there are, so far as a stranger discovers, no petty cliques
or cabals or coteries, and there is a very high average of intelligence:
they care about the best things.
They know how to dine; and having good cooks and sound digestions, they
add to these one requisite to pleasant dining which some more pretentious
societies are without: they have leisure. Nothing is done in haste in
Honolulu, where they have long ago convinced themselves that "to-morrow is
another day." Moreover, you find them well-read, without being blue; they
have not muddled their history by contradictory telegraphic reports of
matters of no consequence; in fact, so far as recent events are concerned,
they stand on tolerably firm ground, having perused only the last monthly
record of current events. Consequently, they have had time to read and
enjoy the best books; to follow with an intelligent interest the most
notable passing events; and as most of them come from families or have
lived among people who have had upon their own shoulders some conscious
share of government, political, moral, or religious, these talkers are
not pedantic, but agreeable. As to the ladies, you find them charming;
beautifully dressed, of course, but they have not given the whole day
and their whole minds to the dress; they are cheerful, easily excited to
gayety, long accustomed to take life easily, and eating as though they did
not know what dyspepsia was.
Indeed, when you have passed a month in the Islands you will have a better
opinion of idleness than you had before, though in some respects the odd
effects of a tropical climate will hardly meet your approval. Euchre,
for instance, takes the place here which whist holds elsewhere as the
amusement of sensible people.
[Illustration: A HAWAIIAN CHIEF.]
Finally, society in Honolulu is respectable. It is fashionable to be
virtuous, and if you were "fast," I think you would conceal it. The
Government has always encouraged respectability, and discountenanced vice.
The men who have ruled the Islands--not the missionaries alone, but the
political rulers since--have been plain, honest, and, in the main, wise
men; and they have kept politics respectable in the little monarchy. The
disreputable adventurer element which degrades our politics, and invades
society too, is not found here. You will say the rewards are not great
enough to attract this vile class. Perhaps not; but at any rate it is not
there; and I do not know, in short, where else in the world you would find
so kindly, so gracefully hospitable, and, at the same time, so simple and
enjoyable a society as that of Honolulu.
No one can visit the Islands without being impressed by the boundless
hospitality of the sugar planters, who, with their superintendents
and managers, form, away from the few towns, almost the only white
inhabitants. Hospitality so free-handed is, I suspect, found in few
other parts of the world. Though Honolulu has now a commodious hotel, the
residents keep up their old habits of graceful welcome to strangers. The
capital has an excellent band, which plays in public places several times
a week; and it does not lack social entertainments, parties, and dinners,
to break the monotony of life. Not only the residents of foreign birth,
but a few Hawaiians also, people of education, culture, and means,
entertain gracefully and frequently.
As for the common people, they are by nature or long custom, or both, as
kindly and hospitable as men can be. If you ask for lodgings at night-fall
at a native hut, you are received as though you were conferring a favor;
frequently the whole house, which has but one room, is set apart for you,
the people going elsewhere to sleep; a chicken is slain in your honor, and
for your exclusive supper; and you are served by the master of the house
himself. The native grass-house, where it has been well built, is a very
comfortable structure. It has but a single room, calico curtains serving
as partitions by night; at one end a standing bed-place, running across
the house, provides sleeping accommodations for the whole family, however
numerous. This bed consists of mats; and the covers are either of tapa
cloth--which is as though you should sleep under newspapers--or of
blankets. The more prosperous people have often, besides this, an enormous
bedstead curtained off and reserved for strangers; and you may see the
women take out of their chests, when you ask hospitality, blankets,
sheets, and a great number of little pillows for the bed, as well as often
a brilliant silk coverlet; for this bed appears to be like a Cape Cod
parlor--for ornament rather than use. The use of the dozen little pillows
puzzled me, until I found that they were intended to tuck or wedge me in,
so that I should not needlessly and uncomfortably roll about the vast bed.
They were laid at the sides, and I was instructed to "chock" myself with
them. On leaving, do not inquire what is the cost of your accommodations.
The Hawaiian has vague ideas about price. He might tell you five or ten
dollars; but if you pay him seventy-five cents for yourself and your
guide, he will be abundantly and thoroughly satisfied.
[Illustration: THE CRATER OF KILAUEA--ONE PHASE.]
CHAPTER II.
HILO, WITH SOME VOLCANOES.
Hilo, as you will perceive on the map, lies on the eastern or windward
side of the Island of Hawaii. You get there in the little inter-island
steamer _Kilauea_, named after the volcano, and which makes a weekly tour
of all the Islands except far-off Kauai, which it visits but once a month.
The charge for passage is fifteen dollars from Honolulu to Hilo, and
twenty-five dollars for the round trip.
The cabin is small; and as you are likely to have fine weather, you will,
even if you are a lady, pass the time more pleasantly on deck, where the
steward, a Goa man and the most assiduous and tactful of his trade, will
place a mattress and blankets for you. You must expect to suffer somewhat
from sea-sickness if you are subject to that ill, for the passage is not
unlikely to be rough. On the way you see Lahaina, and a considerable part
of the islands of Maui and Hawaii; in fact, you are never out of sight of
land.
If you start on Monday evening you will reach Hilo on Wednesday--and
"about this time expect rain," as the almanac-makers say. They get about
seventeen feet of rain at Hilo during the year; and as they have sometimes
several days without any at all, you must look for not only frequent but
heavy showers. A Hilo man told me of a curious experiment which was once
made there. They knocked the heads out of an oil-cask--so he said--and it
rained in at the bung-hole faster than it could run out at the ends. You
may disbelieve this story if you please; I tell it as it was told me; but
in any case you will do well to provide yourself for Hilo and the volcano
journey with stout water-proof clothing.
Hilo, on those days when the sun shines, is one of the prettiest places on
the Islands. If you are so fortunate as to enter the bay on a fine day
you will see a very tropical landscape--a long, pleasant, curved sweep of
beach, on which the surf is breaking, and beyond, white houses nestling
among cocoa-nut groves, and bread-fruit, pandanus, and other Southern
trees, many of them bearing brilliant flowers; with shops and stores along
the beach. Men and boys sporting in the surf, and men and women dashing on
horseback over the beach, make up the life of the scene.
Hilo has no hotel; it has not even a carriage; but it has a very
agreeable and intelligent population of Americans, and you will find good
accommodations at the large house of Mr. Severance, the sheriff of Hawaii.
If his house should be full you need not be alarmed, for some one will
take you in.
This is the usual and most convenient point of departure for the volcano.
Here you hire horses and a guide for the journey. Having gone to Hilo on
the steamer, you will do best to return to Honolulu by schooner, which
leaves you at liberty to choose your point and time of departure. Hawaii
lies to windward of Oahu; and a schooner, which might need four or
five days to beat up to Hilo, will run down from any part of Hawaii in
twenty-four hours. If you are an energetic traveler, determined to see
every thing, and able to endure a good deal of rough riding, you may spend
six weeks on Hawaii. In that time you may not only see the active volcano
of Kilauea, but may ascend Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, whose immense slopes
and lofty and in the winter snow-clad summits show gloriously on a clear
day from Hilo; and you may ride from Hilo along the north-eastern
coast, through the Hamakua and Kohala districts, ending your journey at
Kealakeakua Bay where Captain Cook was killed. There you can take schooner
for Honolulu; or if your energies hold out ride through Kau and Puna
back to Hilo.
The Hamakua and Hilo coasts you will see from the steamer, which sails
close along this bold and picturesque shore on her way to Hilo. This part
of the island is but an extension of the vast slope of Mauna Kea; and
all the waters which drain from its cloud-laden summit pour into the
sea through numerous deep channels, or gorges which they have worn for
themselves, and occasionally dash into the ocean from high cliffs, forming
water-falls visible from the ship's deck. Of the gorges or cañons, there
are seventy-nine in a distance of about thirty miles; many of them are
from five to eight hundred feet deep; and as you ride along the coast, you
have no sooner emerged from one of these deep pits than you descend by a
road seldom easy, and often very steep indeed, into another. The sides of
these gorges are lined with masses of the most magnificent ferns, and at
their bottoms you find sparkling streams; and as you look up the cañons
you see picturesque water-falls. In short, to the lover of bold and
strange scenery this ride offers many pleasures; and that its difficulties
may not be exaggerated to any one's apprehension, I will mention that
during the spring of 1873 an English lady, taking with her only a native
woman as guide, made the tour of the whole seventy-nine gulches, and
thought herself amply rewarded for her toils by what she saw. As for
myself, I must confess that four of these gulches--the four nearest
Hilo--satisfied me; these I saw in visiting some sugar-plantations.
[Illustration: KEALAKEAKUA BAY, WHERE CAPTAIN COOK WAS KILLED.]
If you do not intend such a thorough exploration of Hawaii, but mean only
to see the volcano of Kilauea, your pleasantest plan is to ride from Hilo
by the direct road to the crater, and return by way of Puna. You will have
ridden a trifle over one hundred miles through a very remarkable and in
some parts a beautiful country; you will have slept one night in a native
house, and will have seen much of Hawaiian life, and enjoyed a tiring but
at the same time a very novel journey, and some sights which can not be
matched outside of Iceland. To do this, and spend two or three days in
pleasant sight-seeing near Hilo, will bring you back to Honolulu in from
twelve to fourteen days after you left it.
Your traveling expenses will be sufficiently moderate. At Hilo you pay for
board and lodgings eight dollars per week. The charge for horses is ten
dollars each for the volcano journey, with a dollar a day for your guide.
This guide relieves you of all care of the animals, and is useful in
various ways. At the Volcano House the charge for horse and man is five
dollars per day, and you pay half-price for your guide. There is a charge
of one dollar for a special guide into the crater, which is made in your
bill, and you will do well to promise this guide, when you go in, a small
gratuity--half a dollar, or, if your party is large, a dollar--if he gives
you satisfaction. He will get you specimens, carry a shawl for a lady, and
make himself in other ways helpful.
[Illustration: THE VOLCANO HOUSE.]
When you get on your horse at Hilo for the volcano, leave behind you all
hope of good roads. You are to ride for thirty miles over a lava bed,
along a narrow trail as well made as it could be without enormous expense,
but so rough, so full of mud-holes filled with broken lava in the first
part of the journey, and so entirely composed of naked, jagged, and ragged
lava in the remainder, that one wonders how the horses stand it. A canter,
except for two or three miles near the Volcano House, is almost out of the
question; and though the Hawaiians trot and gallop the whole distance, a
stranger will scarcely follow their example.
You should insist, by-the-way, upon having all your horses reshod the day
before they leave Hilo; and it is prudent, even then, to take along an
extra pair of shoes and a dozen or two horse-nails. The lava is extremely
trying to the horse's shoes; and if your horse casts a shoe he will go
lame in fifteen minutes, for the jagged lava cuts almost like glass.
Moreover, do not wait for a fine day; it will probably rain at any rate
before you reach the Volcano House, and your wisest way is to set out
resolutely, rain or shine, on the appointed morning, for the sun may
come out two or three hours after you have started in a heavy rain. Each
traveler should take his water-proof clothing upon his own saddle--it may
be needed at any time--and the pack-mule should carry not only the spare
clothing, well covered with India-rubber blankets, but also an abundant
lunch to be eaten at the Half-way House.
India-rubber or leather leggings, and a long, sleeveless Mackintosh seemed
to me the most comfortable and sufficient guards against weather. Ladies
should ride astride; they will be most comfortable thus. There are no
steep ascents or abrupt descents on the way. Kilauea is nearly four
thousand feet higher than the sea from which you set out; but the rise
is so gradual and constant that if the road were good one might gallop a
horse the whole distance.
You should set out not later than half-past seven, and make up your mind
not to be hurried on the way. There are people who make the distance
in six hours, and boast about it; but I accomplished it with a party of
ladies and children in ten hours with very little discomfort, and did not
envy the six-hour people. There is nothing frightful, or dangerous, or
disagreeable about the journey, even to ladies not accustomed to riding;
and there is very much that is new, strange, and wonderful to Americans
or Europeans. Especially you will be delighted with the great variety and
beauty of the ferns, which range from minute and delicate species to the
dark and grand fronds of the tree-fern, which rises in the more elevated
region to a height of twenty feet, and whose stalk has sometimes a
diameter of three or four feet. From a variety of this tree-fern the
natives take a substance called pulu, a fine, soft, brown fuzz, used for
stuffing pillows and mattresses.
Your guide will probably understand very little English: let him be
instructed in your wishes before you set out. The native Hawaiian is the
most kind and obliging creature in the world, and you will find your guide
ready to do you every needful service. You can get nothing to eat on the
road, except perhaps a little sugar-cane; therefore you must provide a
sufficient lunch. At the Half-way House, but probably nowhere else, you
will get water to drink.
When you reach the Volcano House, I advise you to take a sulphur
vapor-bath, refreshing after a tedious ride; and after supper you will sit
about a big open fire and recount the few incidents and adventures of the
day.
The next day you give to the crater. Unless the night is very foggy you
will have gone to sleep with the lurid light of Kilauea in your eyes.
Madame Pele, the presiding goddess of the volcano, exhibits fine
fire-works at night sometimes, and we saw the lava spurting up in the air
above the edge of the smaller and active crater, one night, in a quite
lively manner. On a moderately clear night the light from the burning
lakes makes a very grand sight; and the bedrooms at the little Volcano
House are so placed that you have Madame Pele's fire-works before you all
night.
The house stands but a few feet from the edge of the great crater, and you
have no tedious preliminary walk, but begin your descent into the pit
at once. For this you need stout shoes, light clothing, and, if you have
ladies in your party, a heavy shawl for each. The guide takes with him a
canteen of water, and also carries the shawls. You should start about
nine o'clock, and give the whole day to the crater, returning to dinner at
five.
The great crater of Kilauea is nine miles in circumference, and perhaps
a thousand feet deep. It is, in fact, a deep pit, bounded on all sides
by precipitous rocks. The entrance is effected by a series of steps, and
below these by a scramble over lava and rock debris. It is not difficult,
but the ascent is tiresome; and it is a prudent precaution, if you have
ladies with you, to take a native man for each lady, to assist her over
the rougher places, and up the steep ascent. The greater part of the
crater was, when I saw it, a mass of dead, though not cold lava; and over
this you walk to the farthest extremity of the pit, where you must ascend
a tolerably steep hill of lava, which is the bank of the fiery lake. The
distance from the Volcano House to the edge of this lake is, by the road
you take, three miles.
[Illustration: HAWAIIAN TEMPLE, FROM A RUSSIAN ENGRAVING, ABOUT 1790.]
The goddess Pele, who, according to the Hawaiian mythology, presides over
Kilauea, is, as some say all her sex are, variable, changeable, mutable.
What I shall tell you about the appearance of the crater and lake is true
of that time; it may not have been correct a week later; it was certainly
not true of a month before. We climbed into the deep pit, and then
stood upon a vast floor of lava, rough, jammed together, broken, jagged,
steaming out a hot sulphurous breath at almost every seam, revealing rolls
of later lava injections at every deep crack, with caverns and high ridges
where the great mass, after cooling, was forced together, and with a steep
mountain-side of lava at our left, along the foot of which we clambered.
This floor of lava, which seems likely to be a more or less permanent
feature, was, three or four years ago, upon a level with the top of the
high ridge, or ledge, whose base you skirt. The main part of the crater
was then a floor of lava vaster even than it now is. Suddenly one day, and
with a crash which persuaded one or two persons at the Volcano House that
the whole planet was flying to pieces, the greater part of this lava floor
sank down, or fell down, a depth of about five hundred feet, to the level
whereon we now walked. The wonderful tale was plain to us as we examined
the details on the spot. It was as though a top-heavy and dried-out
pie-crust had fallen in in the middle, leaving a part of the circumference
bent down, but clinging at the outside to the dish.
[Illustration: LAVA FIELD, HAWAII--FLOW OF 1868.]
After this great crash the lava seems from time to time to have boiled up
from beneath through cracks, and now lies in great rolls upon the surface,
or in the deeper cracks. It is related that later the lake or caldron at
the farther end of the crater boiled over, and sent down streams of lava
which meandered over the black plain; that, continuing to boil over at
intervals, this lake increased the height of its own banks, for the lava
cools very rapidly; and thus was built up a high hill, which we ascended
after crossing the lava plains, in order to look down, in fear and wonder,
upon the awful sight below. What we saw there on the 3d of March, 1873,
was two huge pits, caldrons, or lakes, filled with a red, molten, fiery,
sulphurous, raging, roaring, restless mass of matter, to watch whose
unceasing tumult was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life.
The two lakes were then separated by a narrow and low-lying ledge
or peninsula of lava, which I was told they frequently overflow, and
sometimes entirely melt down. Standing upon the northern bank we could see
both lakes, and we estimated their shortest diameter to be about 500 feet,
and the longest about one-eighth of a mile. Within this pit the surface of
the molten lava was about eighty feet below us. It has been known to sink
down 400 feet; last December it was overflowing the high banks and sending
streams of lava into the great plain by which we approached it; and since
I saw it, it has risen to within a few feet of the top of the bank,
and has forced a way out at one side, where, in September, 1873, it was
flowing out slowly on to the great lava plain which forms the bottom of
the main crater.
What, therefore, Madame Pele will show you hereafter is uncertain. What we
saw was this: two large lakes or caldrons, each nearly circular, with
the lower shelf or bank, red-hot, from which the molten lava was repelled
toward the centre without cessation. The surface of these lakes was of a
lustrous and beautiful gray, and this, which was a cooling and tolerably
solid scum, was broken by jagged circles of fire, which appeared of a
vivid rose-color in contrast with the gray. These circles, starting at
the red-hot bank or shore, moved more or less rapidly toward the centre,
where, at intervals of perhaps a minute, the whole mass of lava suddenly
but slowly bulged up, burst the thin crust, and flung aloft a huge, fiery
wave, which sometimes shot as high as thirty feet in the air. Then ensued
a turmoil, accompanied with hissing, and occasionally with a dull roar as
the gases sought to escape, and spray was flung in every direction; and
presently the agitation subsided, to begin again in the same place, or
perhaps in another.
Meantime the fiery rings moved forward perpetually toward the centre, a
new one re-appearing at the shore before the old was ingulfed; and not
unfrequently the mass of lava was so fiercely driven by some force from
the bank near which we stood, that it was ten or fifteen feet higher
near the centre than at the circumference. Thus somewhat of the depth was
revealed to us, and there seemed something peculiarly awful to me in the
fierce glowing red heat of the shores themselves, which never cooled with
exposure to the air and light.
Thus acted the first of the two lakes. But when, favored by a strong
breeze, we ventured farther, to the side of the furthermost one, a still
more terrible spectacle greeted us. The mass in this lake was in yet more
violent agitation; but it spent its fury upon the precipitous southern
bank, against which it dashed with a vehemence equal to a heavy surf
breaking against cliffs. It had undermined this lava cliff, and for a
space of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet the lava beat and surged into
glaring, red-hot, cavernous depths, and was repelled with a dull, heavy
roar, not exactly like the boom of breakers, because the lava is so much
heavier than water, but with a voice of its own, less resonant, and, as we
who listened thought, full of even more deadly fury.
It seems a little absurd to couple the word "terrible" with any action of
mere inanimate matter, from which, after all, we stood in no very evident
peril. Yet "terrible" is the only word for it. Grand it was not, because
in all its action and voice it seemed infernal. Though its movement is
slow and deliberate, it would scarcely occur to you to call either the
constant impulse from one side toward the other, or the vehement and vast
bulging of the lava wave as it explodes its thin crust or dashes a fiery
mass against the cliff, majestic, for devilish seems a better word.
Meantime, though we were favored with a cool and strong breeze, bearing
the sulphurous stench of the burning lake away from us, the heat of the
lava on which we stood, at least eighty feet above the pit, was so great
as to be almost unendurable. We stood first upon one foot, and then on the
other, because the soles of our feet seemed to be scorching through thick
shoes. A lady sitting down upon a bundle of shawls had to rise because the
wraps began to scorch; our faces seemed on fire from the reflection of
the heat below; the guide's tin water-canteen, lying near my feet, became
presently so hot that it burned my fingers when I took it up; and at
intervals there came up from behind us a draught of air so hot, and so
laden with sulphur that, even with the strong wind carrying it rapidly
away, it was scarcely endurable. It was while we were coughing and
spluttering at one of these hot blasts, which came from the numerous
fissures in the lava which we had passed over, that a lady of our party
remarked that she had read an excellent description of this place in the
New Testament; and so far as I observed, no one disagreed with her.
After the lakes came the cones. When the surface of this lava is so
rapidly cooling that the action below is too weak to break it, the gases
forcing their way out break small vents, through which lava is then
ejected. This, cooling rapidly as it comes to the outer air, forms by its
accretions a conical pipe of greater or less circumference, and sometimes
growing twenty or thirty feet high, open at the top, and often with
openings also blown out at the sides. There are several of these cones on
the summit bank of the lake, all ruined, as it seemed to me, by some too
violent explosion, which had blown off most of the top, and in one case
the whole of it, leaving then only a wide hole.
Into these holes we looked, and saw a very wonderful and terrible sight.
Below us was a stream of lava, rolling and surging and beating against
huge, precipitous, red-hot cliffs; and, higher up, suspended from other,
also red or white hot overhanging cliffs, depended huge stalactites, like
masses of fiercely glowing fern leaves waving about in the subterraneous
wind; and here we saw how thin was in some such places the crust over
which we walked, and how near the melting-point must be its under surface.
For, as far as we could judge, these little craters or cones rested upon
a crust not thicker than twelve or fourteen inches, and one fierce blast
from below seemed sufficient to melt away the whole place. Fortunately
one can not stay very long near these openings, for they exhale a very
poisonous breath; and so we were drawn back to the more fascinating but
less perilous spectacle of the lakes; and then back over the rough lava,
our minds filled with memories of a spectacle which is certainly one of
the most remarkable our planet affords.
When you have seen the fiery lakes you will recognize a crater at sight,
and every part of Hawaii and of the other islands will have a new interest
for you;
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE CRATER OF SOUTH LAKE IN A STATE OF ERUPTION,
FROM THE CREST OF THE NORTH LAKE.]
for all are full of craters, and from Kilauea to the sea you may trace
several lines of craters, all extinct, but all at some time belching forth
those interminable lava streams over which you ride by the way of the Puna
coast for nearly seventy miles back to Hilo.
I advise you to take this way back. Almost the whole of it is a land of
desolation. A narrow trail across unceasing beds of lava, a trail which
in spots was actually hammered down to make it smooth enough for horses'
feet, and outside of whose limits in most places your horse will refuse to
go, because he knows it is too rough for beast or man: this is your road.
Most of the lava is probably very ancient, though some is quite recent;
and ferns and guava bushes and other scanty herbage grow through it.
In some of the cavernous holes, which denote probably ancient cones or
huge lava bubbles, you will see a cocoa-nut-tree or a pandanus trying to
subsist; and by-and-by, after a descent to the sea-shore, you are rewarded
with the pleasant sight of groves of cocoa-nuts and umbrageous arbors of
pandanus, and occasionally with a patch of green.
Almost the whole of the Puna coast is waterless. From the Volcano House
you take with you not only food for the journey back to Hilo, but water in
bottles; and your thirsty animals get none until you reach the end of
your first day's journey, at Kaimu. Here, also, you can send a more than
half-naked native into the trees for cocoa-nuts, and drink your fill
of their refreshing milk, while your jaded horses swallow bucketfuls of
rain-water.
[Illustration: HILO.]
It will surprise you to find people living among the lava, making
potato-patches in it, planting coffee and some fruit-trees in it, fencing
in their small holdings, even, with lava blocks. Very little soil is
needed to give vegetation a chance in a rainy reason, and the decomposed
lava makes a rich earth. But except the cocoa-nut which grows on
the beach, and seems to draw its sustenance from the waves, and the
sweet-potato, which does very well among the lava, nothing seems really to
thrive.
It will add much to the pleasure of your journey to Kilauea if you carry
with you, to read upon the spot and along the road, Brigham's valuable
Memoir on the Hawaiian Volcanoes. With this in hand, you will comprehend
the nature, and know also the very recent date of some important changes,
caused by earthquakes and lava flows, on the Puna coast. Near and at
Kaimu, for instance, there has been an apparent subsidence of the land,
which is supposed in reality, however, I believe, to have been caused
rather by the breaking off of a vast lava ledge or overhang, on which,
covered as it was with earth and trees, a considerable population had long
lived. In front of the native house in which you will sleep, at Kaimu,
part of a large grove of cocoa-nut-trees was thus submerged, and you may
see the dead stumps still sticking up out of the surf.
Kaimu is twenty-five miles from the Volcano House. The native house
at which you will pass the night is clean, and you may there enjoy the
novelty of sleeping on Hawaiian mats, and under the native cover of tapa.
You must bring with you tea or coffee, sugar, and bread, and such other
food as is necessary to your comfort. Sweet-potatoes and bananas, and
chickens caught after you arrive, with abundant cocoa-nuts, are the
supplies of the place. The water is not good, and you will probably drink
only cocoa-nut milk, until, fifteen miles farther on, at Captain Eldart's,
you find a pleasant and comfortable resting-place for the second night,
with a famous natural warm bath, very slightly mineral. Thence a ride of
twenty-three miles brings you back to Hilo, all of it over lava, most of
it through a sterile country, but with one small burst of a real paradise
of tropical luxuriance, a mile of tall forest and jungle, which looks more
like Brazil than Hawaii.
One advantage of returning by way of the Puna coast, rather than by the
direct route from Kilauea, is that you have clear, bright weather all the
way. The configuration of the coast makes Puna sunny while Hilo is rainy.
If you desire a longer ride than that by the Puna coast, you can cross
the island, from the Volcano House, by way of Waiahino and Kapapala to
Kauwaloa on the western coast, whence a schooner will bear you back to
Honolulu. A brief study of the map of Hawaii in this volume will show the
different routes suggested in this chapter.
Moreover, when you are at Kilauea, you have done something toward
the ascent of Mauna Loa; and guides, provisions, and animals for that
enterprise can be obtained at the Volcano House, as well as such ample
details of the route that I will not here attempt any directions. It is
not an easy ride; and you must carry with you warm clothing. A gentleman
who slept at the summit in September, 1873, told me the ice made over two
inches thick during the night.
If Mauna Loa is active, a traveler on the Islands ought by all means to
see it; for Dr. Coan assures me that it is then one of the most terrific
and grand sights imaginable. I did not visit it, as it was not active
while I was on the Islands, though its fires were alive. The crater is a
pit about three miles in circumference, with precipitous banks about two
thousand feet deep. At the bottom is the burning lake, which has a curious
habit of throwing up a jet, more or less constant, of fiery lava, to the
height, this last summer, of four or five hundred feet from the surface of
the lake. It is a fine sight, but, of course, somewhat distant. I am
told that this jet has at times reached nearly to the summit level of the
crater; and it must then have been a glorious spectacle.
[Illustration: SURF BATHING.]
Near Hilo are some pretty water-falls and several sugar plantations, to
which you can profitably give a couple of days, and on another you should
visit Cocoa-nut Island, and--as interesting a spot as almost any on the
Islands--a little lagoon on the main-land near by, in which you may see
the coral growing, and pick it up in lovely specimens with the stones upon
which it has built in these shallow and protected waters. Moreover,
the surf-beaten rocks near by yield cowries and other shells in some
abundance; and I do not know anywhere of a pleasanter picnic day than that
you can spend there.
Finally, Hilo is one of the very few places on these islands where you
can see a truly royal sport--the surf-board. It requires a rough day and
a heavy surf, but with a good day it is one of the finest sights in the
world.
The surf-board is a tough plank about two feet wide and from six to twenty
feet long, usually made of the bread-fruit-tree. Armed with these, a party
of tall, muscular natives swim out to the first line of breakers, and,
watching their chance to duck under this, make their way finally, by the
help of the under-tow, into the smooth water far off: beyond all the surf.
Here they bob up and down on the swell like so many ducks, watching their
opportunity. What they seek is a very high swell, before which they place
themselves, lying or kneeling on the surf-board. The great wave dashes
onward, but as its bottom strikes the ground, the top, unretarded in its
speed and force, breaks into a huge comber, and directly before this the
surf-board swimmer is propelled with a speed which we timed and found to
exceed forty miles per hour. In fact, he goes like lightning, always just
ahead of the breaker, and apparently downhill, propelled by the vehement
impulse of the roaring wave behind him, yet seeming to have a speed and
motion of his own.
It is a very surprising sight to see three or four men thus dashed for
nearly a mile toward the shore at the speed of an express train, every
moment about to be overwhelmed by a roaring breaker, whose white crest
was reared high above and just behind them, but always escaping this
ingulfment, and propelled before it. They look, kneeling or lying on their
long surf-boards, more like some curious and swift-swimming fish--like
dolphins racing, as it seemed to me--than like men. Once in a while, by
some mischance the cause of which I could not understand, the swimmer
_was_ overwhelmed; the great comber overtook him; he was flung over and
over like a piece of wreck, but instantly dived, and re-appeared beyond
and outside of the wave, ready to take advantage of the next. A successful
shot launched them quite high and dry on the beach far beyond where we
stood to watch. Occasionally a man would stand erect upon his surf-board,
balancing himself in the boiling surf without apparent difficulty.
The surf-board play is one of the ancient sports of Hawaii. I am told that
few of the younger generation are capable of it, and that it is thought to
require great nerve and coolness even among these admirable swimmers, and
to be not without danger.
In your journeys to the different islands you need to take with you, as
part of your baggage, saddle and bridle, and all the furniture of a horse.
You can hire or buy a horse anywhere very cheaply; but saddles are often
unattainable, and always difficult to either borrow or hire. "You might as
well travel here without your boots as without your saddle," said a friend
to me; and I found it literally true, not only for strangers, but for
residents as well. Thus you may notice that the little steamer's hold,
as she leaves Honolulu, contains but few trunks; but is crowded with a
considerable collection of saddles and saddle-bags, the latter the most
convenient receptacles for your change of clothing.
Riding on Hawaii is often tiresome, even to one accustomed to the saddle,
by reason of the slow pace at which you are compelled to move. Wherever
you stop, for lunch or for the night, if there are native people near,
you will be greatly refreshed by the application of what they call
"lomi-lomi." Almost everywhere you will find some one skillful in this
peculiar and, to tired muscles, delightful and refreshing treatment.
To be lomi-lomied, you lie down upon a mat, loosening your clothing, or
undressing for the night if you prefer. The less clothing you have on the
more perfectly the operation can be performed. To you thereupon comes a
stout native, with soft, fleshy hands but a strong grip, and, beginning
with your head and working down slowly over the whole body, seizes
and squeezes with a quite peculiar art every tired muscle, working and
kneading with indefatigable patience, until in half an hour, whereas you
were sore and weary and worn-out, you find yourself fresh, all soreness
and weariness absolutely and entirely removed, and mind and body soothed
to a healthful and refreshing sleep.
The lomi-lomi is used not only by the natives, but among almost all
the foreign residents; and not merely to procure relief from weariness
consequent on overexertion, but to cure headache, to relieve the aching
of neuralgic or rheumatic pains, and, by the luxurious, as one of the
pleasures of life. I have known it to relieve violent headache in a very
short time. The old chiefs used to keep skillful lomi-lomi men and women
in their retinues; and the late king, who was for some years too stout to
take exercise, and was yet a gross feeder, had himself lomi-lomied after
every meal, as a means of helping his digestion.
It is a device for relieving pain or weariness which seems to have no
injurious reaction and no drawback but one--it is said to fatten the
subjects of it.
[Illustration: LAHAINA, ISLAND OF MAUI.]
CHAPTER III.
MAUI, AND THE SUGAR CULTURE.
Maui lies between Oahu and Hawaii, and is somewhat larger than the
first-named island. It contains the most considerable sugar-plantations,
and yields more of this product than any one of the other islands. It is
notable also for possessing the mountain of Haleakala, an extinct volcano
ten thousand feet high, which has the largest crater in the world--a
monstrous pit, thirty miles in circumference, and two thousand feet deep.
There is some reason to believe that Maui was originally two islands,
the northern and southern parts being joined together by an immense sandy
plain, so low that in misty weather it is hardly to be distinguished from
the ocean; and some years ago a ship actually ran aground upon it, sailing
for what the captain imagined to be an open passage.
Maui has also the famous Wailuku Valley, a picturesque gorge several miles
deep, and giving you a very fair example of the broken, verdure-clad, and
now lonely valleys of these islands; which are in reality steep, narrow
cañons, worn out of the mountains by the erosion of water. The old
Hawaiians seem to have cared little how difficult a piece of country was;
they not only made their taro patches in the streams which roar at the
bottoms of such gorges, but they fought battles among the precipices which
you find at the upper ends of these valleys, where the defeated usually
met their deaths by plunging down into the stream far below.
After seeing a live or burning crater like Kilauea, Haleakala, I thought,
would be but a dull sight; but it is, on the contrary, extremely well
worth a visit. The islands have no sharp or angular volcanic peaks.
Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, on Hawaii, though 14,000 feet high, are mere
bulbs--vast hills, not mountains; and the ascent to the summit of
Haleakala, though you surmount 10,000 feet, is neither dangerous nor
difficult. It is tedious, however, for it involves a ride of about twelve
miles, mostly over lava, uphill. It is best to ride up during the day, and
sleep at or near the summit, where there are one or two so-called caves in
the lava, broken lava-bubbles in fact, sufficiently roomy to accommodate
several persons. You must take with you a guide, provisions, and blankets,
for the nights are cold; and you find near the summit water, wood enough
for a small fire, and forage for your horses. Each person should have
water-proof clothing, for it is very likely to rain, at least on the
Makawao side.
[Illustration: CASCADE AND RIVER OF LAVA--FLOW OF 1869.]
The great crater is best seen at sunrise, and, if you are so fortunate
as to have a tolerably clear sky, you may see, lying far away below you,
almost all of the islands. Hawaii lies far enough away to reveal its
entire outline, with Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea rising near either end, and
the depression near which lies Kilauea in the middle. The cloud effects at
sunrise and sunset are marvelous, and alone repay the ascent.
But the crater itself, clear of fog and clouds in the early morning, and
lighted up by the rising sun, is a most surprising sight. It is ten miles
in diameter, and the bottom lies 2000 feet below where you stand. The vast
irregular floor contains more than a dozen subsidiary craters or great
cones, some of them 750 feet high, and nearly as large as Diamond Head. At
the Kaupo and Koolau gaps, indicated on the map, the lava is supposed to
have burst through and made its way down the mountain sides. The cones are
distinctly marked as you look down upon them; and it is remarkable that
from the summit the eye takes in the whole crater, and notes all its
contents, diminished of course by their great distance. Not a tree, shrub,
or even tuft of grass obstructs the view.
To describe such a scene is impossible. A study of the map, with the
figures showing elevations, will give you a better idea of it than a long
verbal description. It is an extraordinarily desolate scene. A few wild
goats scramble over the rocks, or rush down the nearly perpendicular
cliff; occasionally a solitary bird raises its harsh note; the wind howls
fiercely; and as you lie under the lee of a mass of lava, taking in the
scene and picking out the details as the rising sun brings them out one by
one, presently the mist begins to pour into the crater, and often by ten
o'clock fills it up completely.
The natives have no tradition of Haleakala in activity. There are signs
of several lava flows, and of one in particular, clearly much more recent
than the others. It must have presented a magnificent and terrible sight
when it was in full activity. I did not ride into the crater, but it is
possible to do so, and the natives have a trail, not much used, by which
they pass. If you descend, be careful not to leave or lose this trail, for
in many parts your horse will not be able to get back to it if you suffer
him to stray off even a few yards, the lava is so sharp and jagged. As you
descend the mountain on the Makawao side you will notice two finely shaped
craters on the side of the mountain, which also in their time spewed out
lava. Nearer the coast your eye, become familiar with the peculiar
shape of these cones or craters, will notice yet others; and, indeed, to
appreciate the peculiarities of Sandwich Island scenery, in which extinct
craters and cones of all sizes have so great a part, it is necessary to
have visited Kilauea and Haleakala. The latter name, by-the-way,
means "House of the Sun;" and as you watch the rising sun entering and
apparently taking possession of the vast gloomy depths, you will think the
name admirably chosen.
If you carry a gun you are likely to have a shot at wild turkeys on your
way up or down. It is remarkable that many of our domestic animals easily
become wild on the islands. There are wild goats, wild cats, wild chickens
and turkeys; the cattle run wild; and on Hawaii one man at least has been
killed and torn to pieces by wild dogs, which run in packs in some parts
of the island.
Sugar plantations are found on all four of the larger islands; and on
all of them there are successful examples of this enterprise; but Maui
contains, I believe, the greatest number, and is thought to be the best
fitted for the business. It is on this island, therefore, that the curious
traveler can see this industry under its most favorable aspects. There
is no doubt that for the production of sugar these islands offer some
extraordinary advantages.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE HALEAKALA CRATER.]
I have seen a field of thirty acres which two years ago produced nearly
six tons of sugar to the acre. Four tons per acre is not a surprising
crop; and, from all I can hear, I judge that two and a half tons per acre
may be considered a fair yield. The soil, too, with proper treatment,
appears to be inexhaustible. The common custom is to take off two crops,
and then let the field lie fallow for two years; but where they irrigate
even this is not always done. There is no danger of frost, as in
Louisiana, and cane is planted in some part of the islands in almost
every month of the year. In Lahaina it matures in from fourteen to sixteen
months; in some districts it requires eighteen months; and at greater
altitudes even two years.
But under all the varying circumstances, whether it is irrigated or not,
whether it grows on bottoms or on hill slopes, in dry or in damp regions,
everywhere the cane seems to thrive, and undoubtedly it is the one product
of the islands which succeeds. A worm, which pierces the cane near the
ground and eats out the pith, has of late, I am told, done some damage,
and in some parts the rat has proved troublesome. But these evils do not
anywhere endanger or ruin the crop, as the blight has ruined the coffee
culture and discouraged other agricultural ventures. The sugar product
of the islands has constantly increased. In 1860 they exported 1,444,271
pounds of sugar; in 1864, 10,414,441 pounds; in 1868, 18,312,926 pounds;
and in 1871, 21,760,773 pounds of sugar.
What is remarkable is that, with this rapid increase in the production
of sugar, you hear that the business is unprosperous; and if to this you
reply that planters, like farmers, are hard to satisfy, they show you that
the greater number of the plantations have at some time been sold by the
sheriff, some of them more than once, and that, in fact, only six or seven
are to-day in the hands of their founders.
I do not doubt that there has been bad management on many plantations,
and that this accounts in part for these failures, by which many hundred
thousand dollars have been lost. For the advantages of the sugar planter
on these islands are very decided. He has not only, as I showed you above,
a favorable climate and an extraordinarily fertile soil, but he has
a laboring population, perhaps the best, the most easily managed, the
kindliest, and--so far as habits affect the steadiness and usefulness
of the laborer--the least vicious in the world. He does not have to pay
exorbitant wages; he is not embarrassed to feed or house them, for food
is so abundant and cheap that economy in its distribution is of no moment;
and the Hawaiian is very cheaply housed.
But bad management by no means accounts for all the non-success. There are
some natural disadvantages serious enough to be taken into the account.
In the first place, you must understand that the rain-fall varies
extraordinarily. The trade-wind brings rain; the islands are bits of
mountain ranges; the side of the mountain which lies toward the rain-wind
gets rain; the lee side gets scarcely any. At Hilo it rains almost
constantly; at Lahaina they get hardly a shower a year. At Captain
Makee's, one of the most successful plantations on Maui, water is stored
in cisterns; at Mr. Spencer's, not a dozen miles distant, also one of the
successful plantations, which lies on the other side of Mount Haleakala,
they never have to irrigate. Near Hilo the long rains make cultivation
costly and difficult; but the water is so abundant that they run their
fire-wood from the mountains and their cane from the fields into the
sugar-houses in flumes, at a very great saving of labor. Near Lahaina
every acre must be irrigated, and this work proceeds day and night in
order that no water may run to waste.
Then there is the matter of shipping sugar. There are no good ports except
Honolulu. Kaului on Maui, Hanalei and Nawiliwili on Kauai, and one or two
plantations on Oahu, have tolerable landings. But almost everywhere the
sugar is sent over vile roads to a more or less difficult landing, whence
it is taken in launches to the schooners which carry it to Honolulu, where
it is stored, coopered, and finally reshipped to its market. Many landings
are made through the surf, and I remember one which, last spring,
was unapproachable by vessel or boat for nearly four weeks.
Each sugar planter has, therefore, problems of his own to solve. He can
not pattern on his neighbors. He can not base his estimate on theirs. He
can not be certain even, until he has tried, which of the ten or a dozen
varieties of cane will do best on his soil. He must look out for wood,
which is by no means abundant, and is often costly to bring down from the
mountain; he must look out for his landing; must see that taro grows near
at hand; must secure pasture for his draught cattle: in short, he must
consider carefully and independently many different questions before he
can be even reasonably sure of success. And if, with all this uncertainty,
he embarks with insufficient capital, and must pay one per cent. a month
interest, and turn his crop over to an agent in Honolulu, who is his
creditor, and who charges him five per cent. for handling it, it will not
be wonderful to any business man if he fails to grow rich, or if even he
by-and-by becomes bankrupt. Many have failed. Of thirty-four plantations,
the number worked in all the islands at this time, only six or seven are
in the hands of their founders. Some, which cost one hundred thousand
dollars, were sold by the sheriff for fifteen or eighteen thousand; some,
which cost a quarter of a million, were sold for less than a hundred
thousand.
If you speak with the planters, they will tell you that their great
difficulty is to get a favorable market; that the duty on their sugar
imported into San Francisco eats up their profits; and that the only
cure--the cure-all, I should say, for all the ills they suffer--is a
treaty with the United States, which shall admit their product duty free.
Of course any one can see that if the sugar duty were remitted to them,
the planters would make more money, or would lose less. An ingenuous
planter summed up for me one day the whole of that side of the case, by
saying, "If we had plenty of labor and a free market for our sugar, we
should be thoroughly satisfied."
But I am persuaded that, as there are planters now who are prosperous and
contented, and who make handsome returns even with the sugar duty against
them, so, if that were removed, there would be planters who would continue
their regular and slow march toward bankruptcy; and for whom the remitted
duty would be but a temporary respite, while it would deprive them of a
cheap and easy way to account for their failure. Wherever on the islands
I found a planter living on his own plantation, managing it himself, and
_out of debt_, I found him making money, even with low prices for his
sugar, and even if the plantation itself was not favorably placed; not
only this, but I found plantations yielding steady and sufficient profits,
under judicious management, which in previous hands became bankrupt. But
on the other hand, where I found a plantation heavily encumbered with
debt and managed by a superintendent, the owner living elsewhere, I heard
usually, though not always, complaints of hard times. If a sugar planter
has his land and machinery heavily mortgaged at ten or twelve per cent
interest; if he must, moreover, borrow money on his crop in the field to
enable him to turn that into sugar; if then he sends the product to an
agent in Honolulu, who charges him five per cent. for shipping it to San
Francisco; and if in San Francisco another agent charges him five per
cent. more, _on the gross returns including freight and duty_, for selling
it; if besides all this the planter buys his supplies on credit, and is
charged one per cent. a month on these, compounded every three months
until it is paid, and pays almost as much freight on his sugar from the
plantation to Honolulu as from there to its final market--it is highly
probable that he will, in the course of time, fail.
There are not many legitimate enterprises in the world which would bear
such charges and leave a profit to the manager. But it is on this system
that the planting of sugar has been, to a large extent, carried on for
years in the Islands. Under it a good deal of money has been made, but not
by the planters. Nor is this essentially unjust. In the majority of cases,
planters began rashly with small means, and had to borrow largely to
complete their enterprises and get to work. The capitalist of course took
a part of the profits as interest. But the capitalist was in many
cases also the agent and store-keeper in Honolulu; and he shaved off
percentages--all in the way of business--until the planter was really
no more than the foreman of his agent and creditor. When, under such
circumstances, a planter complained that he did not make the fortune he
anticipated, and reasoned that therefore sugar planting in the Islands is
unprofitable, he seemed to me to speak beside the question--for his agent
and creditor, his employer in fact, made no complaint: _he_ always made
money; and as he had invested the money to carry on the enterprise, this
was but the natural result.
The planters make a grave mistake in not acting together and advising
together on their most important interests. There are so few of them that
it should be easy to unite; and yet for lack of concerted action they
suffer important abuses to go on. For instance, it is a serious loss
to the planter that when he ships or engages a hand he must pay a large
"advance," amounting usually to at least half a year's pay. This custom is
hurtful to the laborer, who wastes it, and it inflicts a serious loss
upon the planter. Suppose he employs a hundred men, and pays fifty dollars
advance, he invests at once five thousand dollars for which he gets no
interest, though if, as is probable, he borrowed it, he must pay one
per cent. a month. This abuse could be abolished in a day by the simple
announcement that no planter would hereafter pay more than ten dollars
advance. But it has gone on for years, and the sum paid gets higher every
year merely by the planters outbidding each other.
Again, it is possible to ship sugar from some of the Islands direct to
San Francisco, and for but little more than is now paid for shipping it
to Honolulu. Half a dozen planters on Hawaii or Maui, clubbing together,
could easily get a ship or half a dozen ships to come for their sugar, and
thus save five per cent. on their gross returns, now paid to agents. But
this is not done, partly because so many planters are in need of money,
which they borrow in Honolulu, with the understanding that they will
submit their produce to the management of agents there.
Again, the planters err, I think, in not giving personal study to the
question of a market for their sugar. They leave this to the agents to
manage. No doubt these gentlemen are competent; but it is easy to see that
their interests may be somewhat different from those of the planter. For
instance, some years ago an arrangement was offered by the San Francisco
sugar refineries by which these agreed to take two-thirds of the product
of the plantations in crude sugar, to furnish bags to contain this
product, and to pay cash for it in Honolulu. Under this system the planter
was saved the heavy expense of sugar kegs, and the cost of two agencies
of five per cent. each, besides getting cash in Honolulu, whereas now his
sugar is usually sold at three months in San Francisco, and he probably
loses six months' interest, reckoning from the time his sugar leaves the
plantation. This arrangement, several planters told me, was profitable to
them; but it was discontinued--it was not to the advantage of the agents;
its discontinuance was no doubt a blunder for the planters. Moreover,
the Australian market has been too long neglected; but the advantage of
possessing two markets instead of one is too obvious to require statement.
It is a reasonable conclusion, from all the facts in the case, that
sugar planting can be carried on at a fair and satisfactory profit in the
Hawaiian Islands, wherever skill and careful personal attention are given,
and due economy enforced by a planter who has at the same time sufficient
capital to carry on the business. The example of Captain Makee and Mr.
A.H. Spencer on Maui, of Mr. Isenberg on Kauai and others sufficiently
prove this.
If I seem to have given more space to this sugar question than it appears
to deserve at the hands of a passing traveler, it is because sugar enters
largely into the politics of the Islands. It is the sugar interest which
urges the offer of Pearl River to the United States in exchange for a
treaty of reciprocity; and it is when sugar is low-priced at San Francisco
that the small company of annexationists raises its voice, and sometimes
threatens to raise its flag.
There is room on the different islands for about seventy-five or eighty
more plantations on the scale now common; and there are, I think, still
excellent opportunities for making plantations. The sugar lands unoccupied
are not high-priced; and men skilled in this industry, and with sufficient
capital, can do well there, and live in a delightful climate and among
pleasant society, in a country where, as I have before said, life and
property are more absolutely secure than anywhere else in the world. But
I strongly advise every one to avoid debt. It has been the curse of the
planters, even of those who have kept out of debt, for it has prevented
such unity of action among them as must have before this enabled them to
effect important improvements. For instance, were they out of debt there
is no reason that I can see why they should not succeed in making their
market in Honolulu, and drawing purchasers thither instead of sending
their sugar to far-off markets at their own risk and expense. If ships can
afford to sail in ballast to more distant islands for guano, calling at
Honolulu on the way, it is reasonable to suppose they could afford to come
thither for the more valuable sugar cargoes.
[Illustration: WAILUKU, ISLAND OF MAUI.]
The planters err, I think, in not planting the mountain sides, wherever
these are accessible and have soil, with trees. The forests of the country
are rapidly disappearing, especially from the higher plains and the
grass-bearing slopes. Not only is the wood cut for burning, but the cattle
browse down the young growth; and a pestilent grub has of late attacked
the older trees and destroyed them in great numbers. Already complaints
are heard of the greater dryness and infertility of certain localities,
which I do not doubt comes from suffering the ground to become bare. At
several points I was told that the streams were permanently lower than
in former years--of course because evaporation goes on more rapidly
near their head waters now that the ground is bare. But little care
or forethought is exercised in such matters, however. A few extensive
plantations of trees have been made, notably by Captain Makee on Maui, who
has set out a large number of Australian gum trees. The universal habit
of letting cattle run abroad, and the dearness of lumber for fencing,
discourages tree planting, which yet will be found some day one of the
most profitable investments in the islands, I believe; and I was sorry to
see in many places cocoa-nut groves dying out of old age and neglect, and
no young trees planted to replace them.
It remains to describe to you the "contract labor" system by which the
sugar-plantations are carried on. This has been frequently and, as it
seems to me, unjustly abused as a system of slavery. The laborers hire
themselves out for a stated period, usually, in the case of natives, for
a year, and in the case of Chinese for five years. The contract runs in
English and in Hawaiian or Chinese, and is sufficiently simple. Thus:
"This Agreement, made and entered into this ---- day of ----, A.D.
18--, by and between the owners of the ---- plantation, in the
island of ----, party of the first part, and ---- ----, party of
the second part, witnesseth:
"I. The said party of the second part promises to perform such
labor upon the ---- plantation, in the district of ----, island of
----, as the said party of the first part shall direct, and that
he will faithfully and punctually perform the same as becomes a
good workman, and that he will obey all lawful commands of the
said party of the first part, their agents or overseers, during
the term of ---- months, each month to consist of twenty-six
working days.
"II. The party of the first part will well and truly pay, or cause
to be paid, unto the said party of the second part, at the end
of each month during which this contract shall remain in force,
compensation or wages at the rate of ---- dollars for each month,
if said party of the second part shall well and truly perform his
labor as aforesaid."
The law requires that this contract shall be signed before a notary
public. The wages are usually eight dollars per month and food, or eleven
dollars per month without food; from which you will see that three dollars
per month will buy sufficient poi, beef, and fish to support a native
laborer in these islands. The engagement is entirely voluntary; the men
understand what they contract to do, and in all the plantations where they
are well treated they re-enlist with great regularity. The vicious custom
of "advances" mentioned above has become a part of the system; it arose,
I suppose, from the fact that the natives who shipped as whalemen received
advance pay; and thus the plantation laborers demanded it too. The
laborers are commonly housed in detached cottages, and live with their
families, the women forming an important, irregular laboring force at
seasons when the work is hurried. But they are not "contract" laborers,
but paid by the day. It has been found the best plan on most of the
plantations to feed the people, and food is so cheap that it is supplied
without stint.
This system has been vigorously, but, I believe, wrongly, attacked. The
recent census is an uncommonly barren document; but there is strong reason
to believe that while there is a general decrease in the population, on
the plantations there is but little if any decrease. In fact, the Hawaiian
living in his valley on his kuliana or small holding, leads an extremely
irregular life. He usually sups at midnight, sleeps a good deal during
the day, and has much idle time on his hands. On the plantations he works
regularly and not too hard, eats at stated intervals, and sleeps all
night. This regularity conduces to health. Moreover, he receives prompt
and sufficient medical attendance, he lives a more social and interesting
life, and he is as well fed, and mostly better lodged. There are very few
instances of abuse or cruelty; indeed, a plantation manager said to me,
"If I were to wrong or abuse one of my men, he would persuade a dozen or
twenty others not to re-enlist when their terms are out, and would
fatally embarrass me;" for it is not easy to get laborers.
There is good reason to believe, therefore, that the plantation laborers
are healthier, more prosperous, and just as happy as those who live
independently; and it is a fact that on most of the islands the greater
part of the younger people are found on the plantations. Churches are
established on or very near all the sugar estates, and the children
are rigorously kept at school there as elsewhere. The people take their
newspaper, discuss their affairs, and have usually a leader or two among
the foremen. On one plantation one of the foremen in the field was pointed
out to me: he was a member of the Legislature.
There is a good deal of complaint of a scarcity of labor. If more
plantations were opened it would be necessary to import laborers; but
for the present, it seems to me, the supply is not deficient. Doubtless,
however, many planters would extend their operations if they could get
workmen readily. Chinese have been brought over, though not in great
numbers; and of late the absurd and cruel persecution of these people in
California has driven several hundred to take refuge in the Islands, where
they are kindly treated and can live comfortably.
The machinery used in the sugar-houses is usually of the best; the larger
plantations all use vacuum-pans; and the planters are usually intelligent
gentlemen, familiar with the best methods of producing sugar, and with the
latest improvements. Yet it is a question whether the expensive machinery
is not in the long run a disadvantage, as it disables them from profitably
making those low grades of sugar which can be cheaply turned out with the
help of an "open train," and which appear to have, in these days, the most
ready sale and the best market.
[Illustration: KEAPAWEO MOUNTAIN, KAUAI.]
CHAPTER IV.
KAUAI, WITH A GLANCE AT CATTLE AND SHEEP.
Kauai lies farthest to leeward of the main islands of the Hawaiian group;
the steamer visits it usually but once a month; and the best way to see
it without unnecessary waste of time is to take passage in a schooner, so
timing your visit as to leave you a week or ten days on the island before
the steamer arrives to carry you back.
We took passage on a little sugar schooner, the _Fairy Queen_, of about
seventy-five tons, commanded by a smart native captain, and sailing one
afternoon about two o'clock, and sleeping comfortably on deck wrapped in
rugs, were landed at Waimea the following morning at day-break.
When you travel on one of these little native schooners you must provide
food for yourself, for poi and a little beef or fish make up the sea
ration as well as the land food of the Hawaiian. In all other respects you
may expect to be treated with the most distinguished consideration and
the most ready and thoughtful kindness by captain and crew; and the
picturesque mountain scenery of Oahu, which you have in sight so long as
daylight lasts, and the lovely star-lit night, with its soft gales and
warm air, combine to make the voyage a delightful adventure.
As usual in these Islands, a church was the first and most conspicuous
landmark which greeted our eyes in the morning. Abundant groves of
cocoa-nuts, for which the place is famous, assured us of a refreshing
morning draught. The little vessel was anchored off the shore, and our
party, jumping into a whale-boat, were quickly and skillfully steered
through the slight surf which pours upon the beach. The boat was pulled
upon the black sand; and the lady who was of my party found herself
carried to the land in the stout arms of the captain; while the rest of us
watched our chance, and, as the waves receded, leaped ashore, and managed
to escape with dry feet. The sun had not yet risen; the early morning was
a little overcast. A few natives, living on the beach, gathered around
and watched curiously the landing of our saddles and saddle-bags from the
boat; presently that pushed off, and our little company sat down upon an
old spar, and watched the schooner as she hoisted sails and bore away for
her proper port, while we waited for the appearance of a native person
of some authority to whom a letter had been directed, requesting him to
provide us with horses and a guide to the house of a friend with whom we
intended to breakfast. Presently three or four men came galloping along
the beach, one of whom, a burly Hawaiian, a silver shield on whose jacket
announced him a local officer of police, reported that he was at our
service with as many horses as we needed.
[Illustration: CHAIN OF EXTINCT VOLCANOES NEAR KOLOA, ISLAND OF KAUAI.]
It is one of the embarrassing incidents of travel on these Islands that
there are no hotels or Inns outside of Honolulu and Hilo. Whether he will
or no the traveler must accept the hospitality of the residents, and
this is so general and so boundless that it would impose a burdensome
obligation, were it not offered in such a kindly and graceful way as to
beguile you into the belief that you are conferring as well as receiving
a favor. Nor is the foreigner alone generous; for the native too, if you
come with a letter from his friend at a distance, places himself and all
he has at your service. When we had reached our friend's house, I asked
my conductor, the policeman, what I should pay him for the use of three
horses and his own services. He replied that he was but too happy to have
been of use to me, as I was the friend of his friend. I managed to force
upon him a proper reward for his attention, but I am persuaded that he
would have been content without.
Kauai is probably the oldest of the Hawaiian group; according to the
geologists it was the first thrown up; the bottom of the ocean began to
crack, up there to the north-west, and the rent extended gradually in the
south-easterly direction necessary to produce the other islands. It would
seem that Kauai must be a good deal older than Hawaii; for, whereas the
latter is covered with undecayed lava and has two active volcanoes, the
former has a rich and deep covering of soil, and, except in a few places,
there are no very plain or conspicuous cones or craters. Of course the
whole island bears the clearest traces of its volcanic origin; and near
Koloa there are three small craters in a very good state of preservation.
Having thus more soil than the other islands, Kauai has also more grass;
being older, not only are its valleys somewhat richer, but its mountains
are also more picturesque than those of Maui and Hawaii, as also they are
much lower. The roads are excellent for horsemen, and for the most part
practicable for carriages, of which, however, there are none to be hired.
The best way to see the island is to land, as we did, at Waimea; ride to
a singular spot called the "barking sands"--a huge sand-hill, gliding down
which you hear a dull rumble like distant thunder, probably the result of
electricity. On the way you meet with a mirage, remarkable for this that
it is a constant phenomenon--that is to say, it is to be seen daily at
certain hours, and is the apparition of a great lake, having sometimes
high waves which seem to submerge the cattle which stand about,
apparently, in the water.
From the sands you return to Waimea, and can ride thence next day to Koloa
in the forenoon, and to Na-Wiliwili in the afternoon. The following day's
ride will bring you to Hanalei, a highly picturesque valley which lies on
the rainy side of the island, Waimea being on the dry side. At Hanalei
you should take the steamer and sail in her around the Palis of Kauai, a
stretch of precipitous cliff twenty-five miles long, the whole of which is
inaccessible from the sea, except by the native people in canoes; and
many parts of which are very lovely and grand. Thus voyaging, you will
circumnavigate the island, returning to Na-Wiliwili, and thence in a night
to Honolulu.
It is easy and pleasant to see Kauai, taking a store of provisions with
you and lodging in native houses. But if you have made some acquaintances
in Honolulu you will be provided with letters of introduction to some of
the hospitable foreign families on this island; and thus the pleasure of
your visit will be greatly increased. I do not, I trust, violate the
laws of hospitality if I say something here of one of these families--the
owners of the little island of Niihau, who have also a charming residence
in the mountains of Kauai. They came to Honolulu ten or twelve years
ago from New Zealand in a ship of their own, containing not only their
household goods, but also some valuable sheep. Thus fitted out they were
sailing over the world, looking for such a little empire to own as they
found in Niihau; and here they settled, selling their ship; and here they
remain, prospering, and living a quiet, peaceful, Arcadian life, with
cattle and sheep on many hills, and with a pleasant, hospitable house,
where children and grandchildren are clustered together, and where the
stranger receives the heartiest of welcomes. It was a curious adventure to
undertake, this sailing over the great Pacific to seek out a proper home;
and I did not tire of listening to the account of their voyage and their
settlement in this new and out-of-the-way land, from the cheery and
delightful grandmother of the family, a Scotch lady, full of the sturdy
character of her country people, and altogether one of the pleasantest
acquaintances I made on the Islands.
[Illustration: WAIALUA FALLS, ISLAND OF KAUAI.]
Kauai has many German residents, mostly, like these Scotch people I
have spoken of, persons of education and culture, who have brought their
libraries with them, and on whose tables and shelves you may see the best
of the recent literature, as well as the best of the old. A New Yorker who
imagines, cockney-like, that civilization does not reach beyond the sound
of Trinity chimes is startled out of this foolish fancy when he finds
among the planters and missionaries here, as in other parts of these
Islands, men and women of genuine culture maintaining all the essential
forms as well as the realities of civilization; yet living so free
and untrammeled a life that he who comes from the high-pressure social
atmosphere of New York can not help but envy these happy mortals, who seem
to have the good without the worry of civilization, and who have caught
the secret of how to live simply and yet gently.
Kauai has four or five sugar-plantations, some of which are now
successful, though they were not always so. Success has been attained by
a resolute expenditure of money in irrigation ditches, which have made
the land yield constant and remunerative crops. But I could see here, as
elsewhere, that close and careful management--the eye of the master and
the hand of the master--insured the success.
But a large part of the island is given up to cattle. In the mountains
they have gone wild, and parties are made to hunt and shoot these. But on
the plains, of course, they are owned and herded. The raising of cattle is
an important and considerable business on all the Islands; and at present,
I believe, the cattle owners are making a good deal of money. In 1871,
19,384 hides were exported, as well as 185,240 pounds of tallow, 58,900
goat skins, and 471,706 pounds of wool.
The market for beef is limited, and the stockman boils down his beeves.
In many cases the best machinery is used for this purpose; the boiling is
done in closed vessels, and the business is carried on with precision. It
seemed to me, who remembered the high price of beef in our Eastern States,
like a sad waste to see a hundred head of fat steers driven into a corral,
and one after the other knocked on the head, slaughtered, skinned, cut up,
and put into the boilers to be turned into tallow. But it is the only use
to make of the beasts. The refuse, however, is here always wasted, which
appeared to me unnecessary, for it might well be applied to the enrichment
of the pastures.
On many of the ranches you see open try pots used; it is a more wasteful
process, I imagine, but it is simpler and requires a smaller expenditure
of capital for machinery. The cattle are managed here, as in California,
on horseback and with the help of the lasso; and he who on our Pacific
coast is called a _vaquero_, or cow-herd, is here known as a "Spaniol."
Such a native man is pointed out to you as an excellent Spaniol. This
comes from the fact that in the early days of cattle-raising here the
natives knew nothing of their management, and Spaniards had to be imported
from California to teach them the business. The native people now make
excellent vaqueros; they are daring horsemen, and as they work cheaply
and are easily fed and lodged, the management of cattle costs less here,
I imagine, than even in California. But it is necessary to take care that
the pastures shall not be overstocked; and the vast number of horses kept
by the natives is on all the Islands a serious injury to the pasturage of
both sheep and cattle.
The Hawaiian, who seventy-five years ago did not know that there existed
such a creature as a horse, and even fifty years ago beheld it as a
rarity, now can not live without this beast. There are probably more
horses than people on the Islands; and the native family is poor, indeed,
which has not two or three hardy, rough, grass-fed ponies, easy to ride,
sometimes tricky but more often quite trustworthy, and capable of living
where a European donkey would die in disgust. At a horse auction you see a
singular collection of good and bad horses; and it is one of the jokes of
the Islands to go to a horse auction and buy a horse for a quarter of a
dollar. The Government has vainly tried to put a check to the reckless
increase of horseflesh by laying a tax on these animals, and by impounding
them if the tax is not paid. I was told of a planter who bought on one
occasion fifty horses out of a pound, at twenty-five cents a head, and had
them all shot and put into a manure pile. But if the horse is worth his
tax it is pretty certain to be paid; and it is not easy to keep them off
the pastures.
Cattle ranchos usually extend over from fifteen to thirty thousand acres
of land; though many are smaller, and some, on Hawaii, larger. The grass
is of different varieties, but the most useful, as well as now the most
abundant, is the _manienie_, of which I have before made mention. Horses
and sheep, as well as cattle, become very fond of this grass, and eat it
down very close. The handling of the cattle is intrusted to native people,
who live on the rancho or estate; and the planter or stock farmer has
an advantage, in these Islands, in finding a laboring population living
within the bounds of his own place. The large estates were formerly the
property of the chiefs. They are the old "lands." But when the kuliana law
was made, the common people were allowed to take out for themselves such
small holdings as they held in actual cultivation. These kulianas they
still hold; and thus it often happens that within the bounds of a large
estate fifty or sixty families will live on their little freeholds;
and these form a natural and cheap laboring force for the plantation or
rancho.
On the Island of Niihau, I was told, there are still about three hundred
native people. The sheep are allowed to run at large on the island, there
being no wild animals to disturb them; at lambing and shearing times the
proprietors hire their native tenants to do the necessary work; and these
people at other times fish, raise water-melons and other fruits, and make
mats which are famous for their fine texture and softness, and sell at
handsome prices even in Honolulu.
Where, as is the case almost universally, the relations between the
stockman and the native people are kindly, there is a reciprocity of good
offices, and a ready service from the people, in return for management and
protection by the great proprietor, which is mutually agreeable, and in
which the proprietor stands in some such relation to the people as the
chief in old times, though of course with not a tithe of the power the
ancient rulers had.
At Kauai you will also see rice growing. This is one of the products which
is rapidly increasing in the Islands. Of rice and paddy, or unhulled rice,
the exports were in 1871, 417,011 pounds of the first, and 867,452 of
the last. In 1872 there were exported 455,121 pounds of rice and 894,382
pounds of paddy.
The taro patches make excellent rice fields; and it is an industry in
which the Chinese, who understand it, invest their savings. They employ
native labor; and it is not uncommon to find that a few Chinese have hired
all the taro patches in a valley from their native owners, and then
employ these natives to work for them; an arrangement which is mutually
beneficial, and agreeable besides to the Hawaiian, who has not much of
what we call "enterprise," and does not care to accumulate money. The
windward side of the Islands of Oahu and Kauai produces a great deal of
rice, and this is one of the products which promises to increase largely.
The rice is said to be of excellent quality.
[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS. _a_, Calabash for _poi_.--_b_, Calabash for
fish.--_c_, Water bottle.--_d_, _Poi_ mallets.--_e_, _Poi_ trough.--_f_,
Native bracelet.--_g_, Fiddle.--_h_, Flute.--_i i_, Drums.]
Kauai contained once the most important coffee-plantations; and the large
sugar-plantation of Princeville at Hanalei was originally planted
in coffee. But this tree or shrub is so subject to the attacks of a
leaf-blight that the culture has decreased. Yet coffee grows wild in many
of the valleys and hills, and here and there you find a small plantation
of a few hundred trees which does well. The coffee shrub thrives best in
these Islands among the lava rock, where there seems scarcely any soil;
and it must be sheltered from winds and also from the sun. I have seen
some young plantations placed in the midst of forests where the trees gave
a somewhat dense shade, and these seemed to grow well.
[Illustration: GRASS HOUSE.]
CHAPTER V.
THE HAWAIIAN AT HOME: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
As we rode one day near the sea-shore I heard voices among the rocks, and
sending the guide ahead with the horses, I walked over to the shore
with the lady and children who were my companions. There we saw a sight
characteristic of these islands. Three women decently clothed in a garment
which covered them from head to foot, and a man with only a breech-clout
on, were dashing into the surf, picking up sea-moss, and a little univalve
shell, a limpet, which they flung into small baskets which hung from their
shoulders. They were, in fact, getting their suppers, and they were
quite as much surprised at our appearance as we at theirs. They came out
politely, and showed the children what was in their baskets; the man,
understanding that our horses had gone ahead, kindly volunteered to pilot
us over the rocks to a village near by. I do not imagine that he was
embarrassed at his lack of clothing, and after the first shock of surprise
I am quite sure we were more inclined to admire his straight muscular
figure and his shining dark skin than to complain of his nakedness.
Presently, however, he slipped away into the bush, and re-appeared in a
hat, and a shirt which was so short that even my little girl burst into
laughter at this ridiculous and futile effort toward decency; and thus
arrayed, and with the kindly and gracious smile which illuminates a
Hawaiian's face when he puts himself to some trouble on your account, this
funny guide led us to our horses.
In the evening I related this incident to our host, an old resident, and
said, "I suppose this man could read?" "Read!" he replied; "he can read
and write as well as you. I know him very well; he is a prosperous man,
and is to be the next justice of the peace in that district. He doubtless
went home and spent the remainder of the afternoon in reading his
newspaper."
Native life in the Islands is full of such contrasts, and I found, on
examining the labor contracts on several sugar-plantations, that almost
without exception the working people signed their own names.
According to a census taken in December, 1872, the Hawaiian Islands
contained 56,897 souls, of whom 51,531 were natives and half-castes, and
5366 were foreigners. In six years the native population had decreased
7234, and the foreigners had increased 1172. Since 1866, therefore, the
Islands have lost 6062 souls.
Of the foreigners the Chinese are the most numerous, outnumbering all the
other foreign nationalities together except the Americans. Chinese have
been brought over here as coolie laborers on the plantations. They readily
intermarry with the native women, and these unions are usually fruitful
of healthy and bright children. It is said that the Chinese insist upon
taking better care of their children than the native women, uninstructed,
usually give them, and that therefore the Chinese half-caste families
are more thrifty than those of the pure blood Hawaiians. Moreover, the
Chinaman takes care of his wife. He endeavors to form her habits upon the
pattern of his own; and requires of her the performance of fixed duties,
which add to her happiness and health. In fact, the number of half-castes
of all races has increased thirty per cent. in the last six years.
The native population is admirably cared for by the authorities. The
Islands are divided for various governmental purposes into districts;
and in every district where the people are much scattered the government
places a physician--a man of skill and character--to whom it gives a
small salary for attending upon the common people, and he is, I believe,
expected to make a tour of his district at stated intervals. Of course he
is allowed to practice besides for pay. The sugar planters also usually
provide medical attendance for their laborers.
The Government maintains a careful guard over the schools. A compulsory
education law obliges parents, under fixed penalties, to send their
children to school; and besides the common or primary schools, there are a
number of academies, most of which receive some help from the Government,
while all are under Government supervision. The census gives the number of
children between six and fifteen years of age at 6931; and there are 324
teachers, or one teacher for every twenty-seven children in the whole
group. Attendance at school is, I suspect, more general here than in any
other country in the world. The last report of W.P. Kamakau, the President
of the Board of Education, made in March, 1872, returns 8287 children
actually attending upon 245 schools of various grades, 202 being common
schools. Under this system there is scarcely a Hawaiian of proper age who
can not both read and write.
Churches they maintain by voluntary effort, and their contributions are
very liberal. They take a pride in such organizations. Dr. Coan's native
church at Hilo contributes $1200 per year to foreign missions.
There are no beggars, and no public paupers except the insane, who are
cared for in an asylum near Honolulu, and the lepers, who are confined
upon a part of Molokai. The convicts and the boys in the reform school
contribute to their own support by their labor. The Queen's Hospital is
only for curable cases, and the people take care of their own infirm, aged
and otherwise incapable dependents.
It seems to me that very unusual judgment has been shown in the manner
in which benevolent and penal institutions have been created and managed
among these people; for the tendency almost everywhere in countries which
call themselves more highly civilized is to make the poor dependent
upon charity, and thus a fatal blow is struck at their character and
respectability. Here, partly of course because the means of living are
very abundant and easily got, but also, I think, because the government
has been wisely managed, the people have not been taught to look toward
public charity for relief; and though we Americans, who live in a big
country, are apt to think slightingly of what some one called a toy
kingdom, any one who has undertaken to manage or organize even a small
community at home will recognize the fact that it is a task beset by
difficulties.
But in these Islands a state, a society, has been created within a quarter
of a century, and it has been very ably done. I am glad that it has been
done mainly by Americans. Chief-justice Lee, now dead, but whose memory
is deservedly cherished here; Dr. Judd, who died in August, 1873; Mr. C.C.
Harris, lately Minister of Foreign Relations, and for many years occupying
different prominent positions in the Government; Dr. J. Mott Smith, lately
the Minister of Finance; Chief-justice Allen, and Mr. Armstrong, long at
the head of the Educational Department, the father of General Armstrong,
President of the Hampton University in Virginia, deserve, perhaps, the
chief credit for this work. They were the organizers who supplemented the
labors of the missionaries; and, fortunately for the native people, they
were all men of honor, of self-restraint, of goodness of heart, who knew
how to rule wisely and not too much, and who protected the people without
destroying their independence. What they have done would have given them
fame had it not been done two thousand miles from the nearest continent,
and at least five thousand from any place where reputations are made.
Of a total native population of 51,531, 6580 are returned by the census
as freeholders--more than one in every eight. Only 4772 are returned
as plantation laborers, and of these probably a third are Chinese; 2115
returned themselves as mechanics, which is a very large proportion of
the total able-bodied population. I believe that both freeholders and
mechanics find employment on the plantations as occasional laborers.
A people so circumstanced, well taught in schools, freeholders to a large
extent, living in a mild and salubrious climate, and with cheap and proper
food, ought not, one would say, to decrease. There are, of course, several
reasons for their very rapid decrease, and all of them come from contact
with the whites. These brought among them diseases which have corrupted
their blood, and made them infertile and of poor stamina. But to this,
which is the chief cause, must be added, I suspect, another less generally
acknowledged.
The deleterious habit of wearing clothes has, I do not doubt, done much to
kill off the Hawaiian people. If you think for a moment, you will see
that to adopt civilized habits was for them to make a prodigious change in
their ways of life. Formerly the maro and the slight covering of the tapa
alone shielded them from the sun and rain. Their bodies became hardy
by exposure. Their employments--fishing, taro-planting, tapa-making,
bird-catching, canoe-making--were all laborious, and pursued out-of-doors.
Their grass houses, with openings for doors and windows, were, at any
rate, tolerably well ventilated. Take the man accustomed thus to live,
and put shoes on his feet, a hat on his head, a shirt on his back, and
trowsers about his legs, and lodge him in a house with close-shutting
doors and windows, and you expose his constitution to a very serious
strain, especially in a country where there is a good deal of rain. Being,
after all, but half civilized, he will probably sleep in a wet shirt, or
cumber his feet with wet shoes; he will most likely neglect to open his
windows at night, and poison himself and his family with bad air, to the
influence of which, besides, his unaccustomed lungs will be peculiarly
liable; he will live a less active life under his changed conditions; and
altogether the poor fellow must have an uncommonly fine constitution to
resist it all and escape with his life. At the best, his system will be
relaxed, his power of resistance will be lessened, his chances of recovery
will be diminished in the same degree as his chances of falling ill are
increased. If now you throw in some special disease, corrupting the blood,
and transmitted with fatal certainty to the progeny, the wonder is that a
people so situated have not died out in a single generation.
In fact they have died out pretty fast, though there is reason to believe
that the mortality rate has largely decreased in the last three years;
and careful observers believe even that in the last year there has been
an actual increase, rather than a decrease in the native and half caste
population. In 1832 the Islands had a population of 130,315 souls; in
1836 there were but 108,579; in 1840, only 84,165, of whom 1962 were
foreigners; in 1850, 69,800, of whom 3216 were foreigners; and in 1860,
62,959, of whom 4194 were foreigners. The native population has decreased
over sixty per cent. in forty years.
In the same period the foreigners have increased very slowly, until there
are now in all 5366 foreigners and persons born here, but of foreign
parentage, on the Islands. You will see that while the Hawaiians have so
rapidly decreased that all over the Islands you notice, in waste fields
and desolate house places, the marks of this loss, foreigners have not
been attracted to fill up their places. And this in spite of the facts
that the climate is mild and healthful, the price of living cheap, the
Government liberal, the taxes low, and life and property as secure as in
any part of the world. One would think that a country which offers all
these advantages must be a paradise for poor men; and I do not wonder that
in the United States there is frequent talk of "annexing the Islands."
But, in fact, they offer no advantages, aside from those I have named, to
white settlers, and they have such serious natural disabilities as will
always--or, at least, for the next two or three millions of years--repel
our American people, and all other white settlers.
In the first place, there is very little of what we call agricultural
land on the Islands. They are only mountains rising from the sea, with
extremely little alluvial bottom, and that usually cut up by torrents, and
water-washed into gulches, until it is difficult in many parts to find
a fair field of even fifty acres. From these narrow bottoms, where they
exist, you look into deep gorges or valleys, out of which issue the
streams which force their way through the lower fields into the sea.
These valleys are never extensive, and are always very much broken and
contracted. They are useless for common agricultural purposes. In several
the culture of coffee has been begun; but they are so inaccessible, the
roads into them are so difficult, and the area of arable soil they contain
is, after all, so insignificant, that, even for so valuable a product as
coffee, transportation is found to be costly.
But it is along and in the streams which rush through the bottoms of these
narrow gorges that the Hawaiian is most at home. Go into any of these
valleys, and you will see a surprising sight: along the whole narrow
bottom, and climbing often in terraces the steep hill-sides, you will see
the little taro patches, skillfully laid so as to catch the water, either
directly from the main stream, or from canals taking water out above.
Such a taro patch oftenest contains a sixteenth, less frequently an eighth
of an acre. It consists of soil painfully brought down from above, and
secured by means of substantial stone walls, plastered with mud and
covered with grass, strong enough to resist the force of the torrent. Each
little patch or flat is so laid that a part of the stream shall flow over
it without carrying away the soil; indeed, it is expected to leave some
sediment. And as you look up such a valley you see terrace after terrace
of taro rising before you, the patches often fifty or sixty feet above the
brawling stream, but each receiving its proper proportion of water.
Near by or among these small holdings stand the grass houses of the
proprietors, and you may see them and their wives, their clothing tucked
up, standing over their knees in water, planting or cultivating the crop.
Here the Hawaiian is at home. His horse finds its scanty living on the
grass which fringes the taro patches; indeed, you may see horses here
standing belly deep in fresh water, and feeding on the grasses which grow
on the bottom; and again you find horses raised in the drier parts of
the islands that do not know what water is, never having drunk any thing
wetter than the dew on the grass. Among the taro patches the house place
is as narrow as a fishing schooner's deck--"two steps and overboard." If
you want to walk, it must be on the dikes within which the taro land is
confined; and if you ride, it must be in the middle of the rapid mountain
torrent, or along a narrow bridle-path high up on the precipitous side of
the mountain.
Down near the shore are fish ponds, with wicker gates which admit the
small fry from the sea, but keep in the large fish. Many of these ponds
are hundreds of acres in area, and from them the Hawaiian draws one of
his favorite dishes. Then there may be cocoa-nuts; there are sure to be
bananas and guavas. Beef costs but a trifle, and hogs fatten on taro. The
pandanus furnishes him material for his mats, and of mats he makes his
bed, as well as the floor of his house.
In short, such a gorge or valley as I have tried to describe to you
furnishes in its various parts, including the sea-shore, all that is
needed to make the Hawaiian prosperous; and I have not seen one which
had not its neatly kept school-house and church, and half a dozen framed
houses scattered among the humbler grass huts, to mark the greater wealth
of some--for the Hawaiian holds that the wooden house is a mark of thrift
and respectability.
But the same valley which now supports twenty or thirty native families in
comfort and happiness, and which, no doubt, once yielded food and all the
appliances of life in abundance to one or two hundred, would not tempt any
white man of any nation in the world to live in it, and a thousand such
gorges would not add materially to the prosperity of any white nation.
That is to say, the country is admirably adapted to its native people.
It favors, as it doubtless compelled and formed, all their habits and
customs. But it would repel any one else, and an American farmer would not
give a hundred dollars for the whole Wailuku Valley--if he had to live in
it and work it--though it would be worth many thousands to the natives if
it were once more populous as of old.
As you examine the works of the old Hawaiians, their fish ponds, their
irrigation canals, their long miles of walls inclosing ponds and taro
fields, you will not only see the proofs that the Islands were formerly
far more populous than now, but you will get a respect for the feudal
system of which these works are the remains.
The Hawaiian people, when they first became known to the world, were
several stages removed from mere savagery. They had elaborated a tolerably
perfect system of government and of land tenure, which has since been
swept away, as was inevitable, but which served its day very well indeed.
Under this system the chiefs owned every thing. The common people were
their retainers--followers in war and servants in peace. The chief,
according to an old Hawaiian proverb, owned "all the land, all the sea,
and all the iron cast up by the sea."
[Illustration: HAWAIIAN WARRIORS.]
The land was carefully parceled out among the chiefs, upon the plan of
securing to each one from his own land all that he and his retainers
needed for their lives. What they chiefly required was taro ground, the
sea for fish, the mulberry for tapa, and timber land for canoes; but they
required also _ti_ leaves in which to wrap their parcels, and flowers of
which to make their _les_, or flower necklaces. And I have seen modern
surveys of old "lands" in which the lines were run very irregularly, and
in some cases oven outlying patches were added, because a straight line
from mountain to sea was found to exclude some one product, even so
trifling as the yellow flowers of which _les_ are often made.
On such a "land," and from it, the chief and his people lived. He appears
to have been the brains and they the hands to work it. They owed him two
days' labor in every seven, in which they cultivated his taro, cleaned his
fish pond, caught fish for him, opened paths, made or transported canoes,
and did generally what he required. The remainder of the time was their
own, to cultivate such patches of taro as he allowed them to occupy, or to
do what they pleased. For any important public work he could call out all
his people, and oblige them to labor as long as he chose, and thus were
built the surprisingly solid and extensive walls which inclose the old
fish ponds, and many irrigating canals which show not only long continued
industry, but quite astonishing skill for so rude a people.
The chief was supreme ruler over his people; they lived by his tolerance,
for they owned absolutely nothing, neither land, nor house, nor food, nor
wife, nor child. A high chief was approached only with abject gestures,
and no one dared resist his acts or dispute his will. The sense of
obedience must have been very strong, for it has survived every change;
and only the other day a friend of mine saw a Hawaiian lady, a chiefess,
but the wife of an American, and herself tenderly nurtured and a woman of
education and refinement, boxing the ears of a tall native, whom she had
caught furiously abusing his wife, and the man bore his punishment as
meekly as a child. "Why?" "He knows I am his chief, and he would not dare
raise even an angry look toward me; he would not think of it, even," was
her reply, when she was asked how she had courage to interfere in what was
a very violent quarrel. Yet the present law recognizes no allegiance due
to a chief.
When the young king Lunalilo returned to the palace after the coronation,
the pipe-bearer, an old native retainer, approached him on his knees,
and was shocked at being ordered to get up and act like a man. The older
natives to this day approach a chief or chiefess only with humble and
deprecatory bows; and wherever a chief or chiefess travels, the native
people along the road make offerings of the fruits of the ground, and
even of articles of clothing and adornment. One of the curious sights
of Honolulu to us travelers, last spring, was to see long processions of
native people, men, women, and children, marching to the palace to
lay their offerings before the king, who is a high chief. Each brought
something--a man would walk gravely along with a pig under his arm; after
him followed perhaps a little child with half a dozen bananas, a woman
with a chicken tied by a string, a girl with a handkerchief full of eggs,
a boy with a cocoa-nut, an old woman with a calabash of poi, and so on.
In the palace yard all this was laid in a heap before the young king, who
thereupon said thank you, and, with a few kind words, dismissed the people
to their homes.
As an illustration of the power of the old chiefs, as well as of the
density of the population in former times, it is related that when the
wall inclosing a certain fish pond on the windward side of Oahu was to be
built, the chief then ruling over that land gave notice that on a certain
day every man, woman, and child within his domain must appear at a
designated point, bearing a stone. The wall, which stands yet, is half a
mile long, well built, and probably six feet high; and it was begun and
completed in that one day.
[Illustration: LUNALILO.]
I was shown, on Kauai, a young man of insignificant appearance, and of no
particular merit or force of character. To him an old woman recently dying
had by a will, written out for her by a friend of my own, left all her
property--a taro patch, a house, and some other land. My friend asked
why. He is my chief, was the reply; and sure enough, on inquiry my friend
discovered, what he had not before known, that the man was a descendant
of one of the chief families, of whom this old woman had in her early days
been a subject.
As the chief was the ruler, the people looked to him for food in a time of
scarcity. He directed their labors; he protected them against wrong from
others; and as it was his pride that his retainers should be more numerous
and more prosperous than those of the neighboring chief, if the head
possessed brains, no doubt the people were made content. Food was
abundant; commerce was unknown; the chief could not eat or waste more than
his people could easily produce for him; and until disturbing causes came
in with Captain Cook, no doubt feudalism wrought satisfactory results
here. One wonders how it was invented among such a people, or who it was
that first had genius enough to insist on obedience, to make rules, to
prescribe the tabu, and, in short, to evolve order out of chaos.
The tabu was a most ingenious and useful device; and when you hear of the
uses to which it was put, and of its effectiveness, you feel surprised
that it was not found elsewhere as an appurtenance of the feudal
machinery. Thus the chief allowed his people to fish in the part of the
ocean which he owned--which fronted his "land," that is to say. He tabued
one or two kinds of fish, however; these they were forbidden to catch; but
as a fisherman can not, even in these islands, exercise a choice as to the
fish which shall enter his net or bite at his hook, it followed that the
tabued fish were caught--but then they were at once rendered up to the
chief. One variety of taro, which makes poi of a pink color, was tabued
and reserved for the chiefs. Some birds were tabued on account of their
feathers; one especially, a black bird which has a small yellow feather
under each wing. The great feather cloak of Kamehameha I., which is
still kept as a sign of royalty, is made of these feathers, and contains
probably several thousand of them, thus gathered, two from each bird.
Further, a tabu prohibited women from eating with men, even with their
husbands; and when, on the death of the first Kamehameha, his Queen
Kahumanu, an energetic and fearless virago, dared for the first time to
eat with her son, a cry of horror went up as though "great Pan was dead;"
and this bold act really broke the power of the heathen priests.
A tabu forbade women to eat cocoa nuts and some other articles of food;
and the prohibition appears to have been used also to compel sanitary and
other useful restraints, for I have been told that a tabu preserved girls
from marriage until they had attained a certain age, eighteen, I believe;
and to this and some other similar regulations, rigorously enforced in the
old times, I have heard old residents attribute the fertility of the race
before foreigners came in.
[Illustration: KAMEHAMEHA I.]
He who violated a tabu was at once killed. Capital punishment seems to
have been an effective restraint upon crime among these savages, contrary
to the theories of some modern philosophers; probably it was effective for
two reasons, because it was prompt and because it was certain. One wonders
how long the tabu would have been respected, had a violator of it been
lodged in jail for eighteen months, allowed to appeal his case through
three courts, and at last been brained amidst the appeals for mercy of
the most respectable people of his tribe, and had his funeral ceremonies
performed by the high-priest, and closed with a eulogy upon his character,
and insinuations against the sound judgment and uprightness of the chief
who ordered the execution.
The first Kamehameha, who seems to have been a savage of considerable
merit, and a firm believer in capital punishment, subdued the Islands to
his own rule, but he did not aim to break the power of the chiefs over
their people. He established a few general laws, and insisted on peace,
order, and obedience to himself. By right of his conquest all lands were
supposed to be owned by him; he gave to one chief and took away from
another; he rewarded his favorites, but he did not alter the condition of
the people.
[Illustration: QUEEN OF KAMEHAMEHA I.]
But as traders came in, as commerce began, as money came into use, the
feudal system began to be oppressive. Sandal-wood was long one of the
most precious products of these islands--their Chinese name, indeed, is
"Sandal-wood Islands." The chiefs, greedy for money, or for what the ships
brought, forced their unhappy retainers into the mountains to gather this
wood. Exposed to cold, badly fed, and obliged to bear painful burdens,
they died in great numbers, so that it was a blessing to the Islanders
when the wood became scarce. Again, supplies of food were sold by the
chiefs to the ships, and this necessitated unusual labor from the people.
One famous chief for years used his retainers to tow ships into the narrow
harbor of Honolulu, sending them out on the reef, where, up to their
middle in water, they shouldered the tow-line.
Thus when, in 1848; the king, at the instance of that excellent man and
upright judge, Chief-justice Lee, gave the kuliana rights, he relieved the
people of a sore oppression, and at a single blow destroyed feudalism.
The kuliana is the individual holding. Under the kuliana law each native
householder became entitled to the possession in fee of such land as
he had occupied, or chose to occupy and cultivate. He had only to make
application to a government officer, have the tract surveyed, and pay a
small sum to get the title. It is creditable to the chiefs that, under the
influence of the missionaries, they consented to this important change,
fully knowing that it meant independence to the common people and an end
of all feudal rights; but it must be added that a large part of their
lands remained in their hands, making them, of course, still wealthy
proprietors.
Thus the present system of land tenure on the Islands is much the same as
our own; but the holdings of the common people are generally small, and
the chiefs, or their successors in many cases foreigners, still maintain
their right to the sea fisheries as against all who live outside the old
boundaries of their own "lands."
The families of most of the great chiefs have become extinct. Their wealth
became a curse to them when foreigners came in with foreign vices and
foreign luxuries. They are said to have been remarkable as men and women
of extraordinary stature and of uncommon perfection of form. I have been
told of many chiefesses nearly or quite six feet in height, and many
chiefs from six feet two inches to six feet six, and in one case six feet
seven inches high. There is no reason to doubt the universal testimony
that they were, as a class, taller and finer-looking than the common
people; but the older missionaries and residents believe that this arose
not from their being of a different race, but because they were absolutely
relieved from hard work, were more abundantly and carefully fed, and used
the lomi-lomi constantly. It is supposable, too, that in the wars which
prevailed among the tribes the weaklings, if any such were among the
chiefs, were pretty sure to be killed off; and thus a natural selection
went on which weeded out the small and inefficient chiefs.
Their government appears to have been a "despotism tempered by
assassination," for great as was the respect exacted by a chief, and
implicit as was the obedience he commanded, if he pushed his tyranny too
far, his people rose and slew him. Thus on Kauai, in the lower part of
the Hanapepe Valley, a huge cliff is shown, concerning which the tradition
runs that it was once the residence of the chief who ruled this valley.
This person, with a Titanic and Rabelaisian humor, was accustomed to
descend into the valley in the evening, seize a baby and carry it to his
stronghold to serve him as a pillow. Having slept upon it he slew it next
morning; and thus with a refinement of luxury he required a fresh baby
every evening. When patience had ceased to be a virtue, according to our
more modern formula, the people went up one night and knocked his brains
out; and there was a change of dynasties.
[Illustration: ANCIENT GODS OF HAWAII.]
The Hawaiian of the present day reads his Bible and newspaper, writes
letters, wears clothes, owns property, serves in the Legislature or
Parliament, votes, teaches school, acts as justice of the peace and even
as judge, is tax collector and assessor, constable and preacher. In spite
of all this, or rather with it, he retains the oddest traces of the habits
and customs of another age. For instance, he will labor for wages; but
he will persistently and for years give away to his relations all his pay
except what he needs for his actual subsistence, and if he is prosperous
he is pretty sure to have quite a swarm of people to support. A lady told
me that having repeatedly clothed her nurse in good apparel, and finding
this liberal soul, every time, in a day or two reduced to her original
somewhat shabby clothing, she at last reproached her for her folly. "What
can I do?" the woman replied; "they come and ask me for the holaku, or the
handkerchief, or whatever I have. Suppose you say they are yours--then
I will not give them away." Accordingly, the next new suit was formally
declared to belong to the mistress: it was not given away. An old woman,
kept chiefly for her skill in lomi-lomi by an American family, asked her
master one day for ten dollars. He gave her two five-dollar gold pieces,
and, to his amazement, saw her hand them over immediately, one to a little
girl and one to a boy, who had evidently come to get the money--not for
her use at all. A cook in my own family asked for the wages due him, which
he had been saving for some time; he received forty-four dollars, and gave
the whole amount at once to his father-in-law, who had come from another
island on purpose to get this money. Nor was it grudged to him, so far as
any of us could see. "By-and-by, if we are poor and in need, they will do
as much for us," is the excuse.
As you ride along in the country, you will see your guide slyly putting a
stone or a bunch of grass on a ledge near some precipice. If you look, you
will see other objects of the same kind lying there. Ask him about it and
he will tell you, with a laugh, that his forefathers in other times did
so, and he does the same. It is, in fact, a peace offering to the
local divinity of the place. Is he, then, an idolater? Not at all; not
necessarily, at least. He is under the compulsion of an old custom; and
he will even tell you that it is all nonsense. The same force leads him
to treat with respect and veneration a chief or chiefess even if abjectly
poor, though before the law the highest chief is no better than the common
people.
They are hearty and even gross feeders; and probably the only
christianized people who live almost entirely on cold victuals. A Hawaiian
does not need a fire to prepare a meal; and at a _luau_, or feast, all the
food is served cold, except the pig, which ought to be hot.
Hospitable and liberal as he is in his daily life, when the Hawaiian
invites his friends to a _luau_ he expects them to pay. He provides for
them roast pig, poi, baked ti-root, which bears a startling resemblance in
looks and taste to New England molasses-cake; raw fish and shrimps, limu,
which is a sea-moss of villainous odor; kuulaau, a mixture of taro and
cocoa-nut, very nice; paalolo, a mixture of sweet-potato and cocoa-nut;
raw and cooked cuttle-fish, roast dog, sea-eggs, if they can be got; and,
if the feast is something above the ordinary, raw pickled salmon with
tomatoes and red-pepper.
The object of such a luau is usually to enable the giver to pay for his
new house, or to raise money for some private object of his own. Notice
of the coming feast is given months beforehand, as also of the amount each
visitor is expected to give. It will be a twenty-five cent, or a fifty
cent, or a dollar luau. The pigs--the centre-piece of the feast--have
been fattening for a year before. The affair is much discussed. It is
indispensable that all who attend shall come in brand-new clothing, and a
native person will rather deny himself the feast than appear in garments
which have been worn before. A few of the relatives of the feast-giver act
as stewards, and they must be dressed strictly alike. At one luau which I
had the happiness to attend the six men who acted as stewards were arrayed
in green cotton shirts and crimson cotton trowsers, and had green wreaths
on their heads. I need not say that they presented a truly magnificent
appearance.
To such a luau people ride thirty or forty miles; arriving often the
evening beforehand, in order to be early at the feast next day. When they
sit down each person receives his abundant share of pig, neatly wrapped in
ti-leaves; to the remainder of the food he helps himself as he likes. They
eat, and eat, and eat; they beat their stomachs with satisfaction; they
talk and eat; they ride about awhile, and eat again; they laugh, sing,
and eat. At last a man finds he can hold no more. He is "pau"--done. He
declares himself "mauna"--a mountain; and points to his abdomen in proof
of his statement. Then, unless he expects a recurrence of hunger, he
carefully wraps up the fragments and bones which remain of his portion
of pig, and these he must take with him. It would be the height of
impoliteness to leave them; and each visitor scrupulously takes away
every remaining bit of his share. If now you look you will see a calabash
somewhere in the middle of the floor, into which each, as he completes his
meal, put his quarter or half dollar.
In the evening there are dancing and singing, and then you may hear and
see the extremely dramatic meles of the Hawaiians--a kind of rapid chant,
the tones of which have a singular fascination for my ears. A man and
woman, usually elderly or middle-aged people, sit down opposite each
other, or side by side facing the company. One begins and the other
joins in; the sound is as of a shrill kind of drone; it is accompanied by
gesticulations; and each chant lasts about two or three minutes, and ends
in a jerk. The swaying of the lithe figures, the vehement and passionate
movements of the arms and head, the tragic intensity of the looks, and the
very peculiar music, all unite to fasten one's attention, and to make this
spectacle of mele singing, as I have said, singularly fascinating.
The language of the meles is a dialect now unused, and unintelligible even
to most of the people. The whole chant concerns itself, however, with a
detailed description of the person of the man or woman or child to which
or in whose honor it is sung. Thus a mele will begin with the hair, which
may be likened in beauty to the sea-moss found on a certain part of Kauai;
or the teeth, which "resemble the beautiful white pebbles which men pick
up on the beach of Kaalui Bay on Maui;" and so on. Indeed an ancient
Hawaiian mele is probably, in its construction, much like the Song of
Solomon; though I am told that the old meles concerned themselves with
personal details by no means suitable for modern ears. A mele is always
sung for or about some particular person. Thus I have heard meles for the
present king; meles for a man or woman present; meles for a chief; and on
one occasion I was told they sang a mele for me; and I judged, from the
laughter some parts of it excited, that my feelings were saved by my
ignorance of the language.
On all festive occasions, and on many others, the Hawaiian loves to dress
his head with flowers and green wreaths. Les or garlands are made of
several substances besides flowers; though the most favorite are composed
of jasmine flowers, or the brilliant yellow flowers of one kind of ginger,
which give out a somewhat overpowering odor. These are hung around the
neck. For the head they like to use wreaths of the maile shrub, which has
an agreeable odor, something like that of the cherry sticks which smokers
like for pipe stems. This ornamentation does not look amiss on the young,
for to youth much is forgiven; but it is a little startling, at a luau,
to see old crones and grave grandfathers arrayed with equal gayety; and I
confess that though while the flowers and leaves are fresh the decorated
assembly is picturesque, especially as the women wear their hair flowing,
and many have beautiful wavy tresses, yet toward evening, when the
maile has wilted and the garlands are rumpled and decaying, this kind of
ornamentation gives an air of dissipation to the company which it by no
means deserves.
Finally, the daily life of the Hawaiian, if he lives near the sea-coast
and is master of his own life, is divided between fishing, taro planting,
poi making, and mat weaving. All these but the last are laborious
occupations; but they do not make hard work of them. Two days' labor every
week will provide abundant food for a man and his family. He has from five
to ten dollars a year of taxes to pay, and this money he can easily earn.
The sea always supplies him with fish, sea-moss, and other food. He is
fond of fussing at different things; but he also lies down on the grass
a good deal--why shouldn't he?--he reads his paper, he plays at cards,
he rides about a good deal, he sleeps more or less, and about midnight he
gets up and eats a hearty supper. Altogether he is a very happy creature,
and by no means a bad one. You need not lock your door against him; and an
election and a luau occasionally, give him all the excitement he craves,
and that not of an unwholesome kind.
What there is happy about his life he owes to the fine climate and the
missionaries. The latter have given him education enough to read his Bible
and newspaper, and thus to take some interest in and have some knowledge
of affairs in the world at large. They and their successors, the political
rulers, have made life and property secure, and caused roads and bridges
to be built and maintained; and the Hawaiian is fond of moving about. The
little inter-island steamer and the schooners are always full of people
on their travels; and as they do not have hotel bills to pay, but live on
their friends on these visits, there is a great deal of such movement.
It would hardly do to compare the Hawaiian people with those of New
England; but they will compare favorably in comfort, in intelligence,
in wealth, in morals, and in happiness with the common people of most
European nations; and when one sees here how happily people can live in a
small way, and without ambitious striving for wealth or a career, he
can not but wonder if, after all, in the year 2873, our pushing and
hard-pushed civilization of the nineteenth century will get as great
praise as it gets from ourselves, its victims.
[Illustration: HAWAIIANS EATING POI.]
CHAPTER VI.
COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL.
Commercial relations form and foster political alliances, especially
between a weak state and a strong one. The annual report for 1872 of
imports and exports, made up by the Collector-general of the Hawaiian
Kingdom, shows how completely the Islands depend upon the United States.
Of 146 merchant vessels and steamers entered at Hawaiian ports during
1872, 90 were American, only 15 were English; 6 were German, 9 belonged
to other nations, and 26 were Hawaiian. Of a total of 98,647 tons of
shipping, 73,975 were American, 6714 Hawaiian, and but 7741 British. Of 47
whaling vessels calling at Island ports during the year, 42 were American,
2 Hawaiian, and 3 British.
Of a little less than 16,000,000 pounds of sugar exported during the
same year, 14,500,000 were sent to the United States; of 39,000 pounds
of coffee 34,000 were sent to us; of 1,349,503 pounds of rice and paddy
exported, 1,317,203 pounds came to the United States. All the cotton, all
the goat-skins, nearly all the hides, all the wool, the greater part
of the peanuts and the pulu, in short, almost the whole exports of the
Islands, are sent to the United States.
On the other hand, of $1,234,147, the value of duty-paying merchandise
imported during 1872 into the Islands, $806,111 worth came from the United
States, $155,939 from Great Britain, and $205,396 from Germany. Besides
this, of the total value of bonded goods, $349,435, the large amount
of $135,487 was brought from sea by whalemen, almost all of whom were
Americans; and $99,567 worth was goods from the United States; or $235,000
of American products against $21,801 of British, and $23,904 of German
importation, in bond.
It is plain that the Island trade is so largely in our hands that no other
nation can be said to dispute it with us. If our flag flew over Honolulu
we could hardly expect to have a more complete monopoly of
Hawaiian commerce than we already enjoy. Moreover, almost all the
sugar-plantations--the most productive and valuable property on the
Islands--are owned by Americans; and the same is true of the greater
number of stock farms.
Our political predominance on the Islands is as complete as the
commercial. In the present cabinet all the ministers except one are
Americans. This was true also of the cabinet of the late king. Of the
Supreme Court, two of the judges are Americans, and one is German. Almost
all the executive and administrative offices are in the hands of Americans
or Hawaiians.
Nor can any foreign power rightly find fault with this state of things.
What the Islands are they are because of American effort, American
enterprise, American capital. American missionaries civilized them;
Americans gave them laws wisely adapted to the customs and habits of
their people; American enterprise and Boston capital established the sugar
culture and other of the important industries; perhaps I ought to add that
American sailors spread among the Islands the vices and diseases which,
more than all else, have caused the rapid decrease of the population,
and to combat and check which added toil and trouble to the labors of the
American missionaries.
The government of the Hawaiian Islands consists of a king and a
Parliament. The Parliament meets once in two years; and under the late
king consisted of but a single House. The present king has promised to
call together two Houses, of which but one will be elected. The other
consists of "Nobles," who are nominated or created by the king for life,
but have no title nor salary unless they are called to office. By the
Constitution the reigning king appoints his successor, but his nomination
must be confirmed by the Nobles. As, however, he may at pleasure increase
the number of Nobles, the appointment virtually rests with him. If he dies
without naming a successor, the Parliament has the right and duty to elect
a new sovereign.
There is a slight property qualification for voters, and a heavier one for
members of Parliament.
The revenue of the Government, which amounts to about half a million
per annum, is derived from the various sources specified in the official
returns of the Minister of Finance, which I copy below. It must be
understood that this report covers two years:
The balance in the Treasury at the close of the last
fiscal period (March 31, 1870) was . . . . . . . . $61,580.20
And there has been received from Foreign Imports 396,418.15
" " " Fines, Penalties, and Costs 47,289.13
" " " Internal Commerce 98,982.51
" " " Taxes 215,962.51
" " " Fees and Perquisites 22,194.45
" " " Government Realizations 124,071.37
" " " Miscellaneous Sources 60,038.23
----------- $964,956.35
-----------
$1,026,536.55
The expenditures during two years are detailed thus in the same report:
For Civil List . . . . . . . . $50,000.00
" Permanent Settlements . . . . 18,000.00
" Legislature and Privy Council . . 15,281.63
" Department of Judiciary . . . . 73,562.61
" " Foreign Affairs and War 98,028.24
" " Interior . . . . 396,806.41
" " Finance . . . . 141,345.29
" " Attorney-general . 88,412.17
" Bureau of Public Instruction . . 88,347.79
----------- $969,784.14
Balance on hand March 31, 1872 . . . . . . . $56,752.41
------------
$1,026,536.55
The internal taxes include the property tax, which is quite low, one and
a half per cent. Every male adult pays a poll tax of one dollar, a school
tax of two dollars, and a road tax of two dollars. The following is the
detail of the internal taxes for the two years 1870-72:
Real Estate and Personal Property $97,685.11
Horses . . . . . . . . . 53,006.00
Dogs . . . . . . . . . . 22,271.40
Mules . . . . . . . . . . 6,140.00
Carriages . . . . . . . . 3,125.00
Poll . . . . . . . . . . 27,841.00
Native Seamen . . . . . . . 5,894.00
-----------
$215,962.51
Among the licenses the monopoly of opium selling brings the Government
$22,248, a prodigious sum when it is considered that there are but
2500 Chinese in the Islands; these being the chief, though not the only
consumers. There is, besides, a duty of ten per cent. on the opium when
imported, and the merchant must make his profit. I had the curiosity
to look a little into the opium consumption. It is said that its use is
slowly spreading among the natives, particularly where these are employed
with Chinese on the plantations. But the quantity used by the Chinese
themselves is prodigious. I was shown one man, a cook, whose wages,
fourteen dollars per month, were entirely spent on opium; and whose master
supplied the poor creature with clothes, because he had nothing left out
of his pay. In other cases the amount spent was nearly as great.
Eight thousand two hundred and sixty-five dollars were also realized for
awa licenses. Awa is a root the use of which produces a frightful kind
of intoxication, in which the victim falls into stupor, his features
are contorted, and he has seizures resembling epilepsy. The body of the
habitual awa drinker becomes covered with white scales; and it is said
that awa drinking predisposes to leprosy. The manner of preparing awa
is peculiarly disgusting. The root is chewed by women, and they spit out
well-chewed mouthfuls into a calabash. Here it settles, and the liquor is
then drunk. It is said that in old times the chiefs used to get together
the prettiest young girls to chew awa for them.
The king receives a salary of $22,500 per annum; the cabinet ministers and
the chief-justice receive $5000, and the two associate justices $4000
per annum. These are the largest salaries paid; and in general the public
service of the Islands is very cheaply as well as ably and conscientiously
conducted. There is an opportunity for retrenchment in abolishing some of
the offices; but the saving which could thus be effected would after all
not be great. The present Government means, I have been told, to undertake
some reforms; these will probably consist in getting the king to turn the
crown lands into public lands, to be sold or leased for the benefit of the
treasury. They are now leased, and the income is a perquisite of the king,
a poor piece of policy, for the chiefs from among whom a sovereign is
selected are all wealthy; the present king, for instance, has an income
of probably $25,000 per annum from private property of his own. It is also
proposed to lessen the number of cabinet ministers; but this will scarcely
be done. They are but four in number now, having charge of Foreign
Affairs, Finance, and the Interior and Law Departments.
There is a debt of about $300,000 which is entirely held within the
kingdom; and the public property is of value sufficient to pay three times
this sum. It is probable, however, that, like many other governments,
the Hawaiian ministry will have to deal with a deficit when the next
Legislature meets; and this will probably bring reform and retrenchment
before them. There is not much hope of increasing the revenue from new and
still untouched sources, for there are but few such.
The taxable industries and wealth of the Islands can not be very greatly
increased. Finding yourself in a tropical country, with a charming and
equable climate, and with abundant rains, you are apt to think that, given
only a little soil, many things would grow and could be profitably raised.
It is one of the surprises of a visitor to the Hawaiian group to discover
that in reality very few products succeed here.
Coffee was largely planted, and promised to become a staple of the
Islands; but a blight attacked the trees and proved so incurable that
the best plantations were dug up and turned into sugar; and the export of
coffee, which has been very variable, but which rose to 415,000 pounds
in 1870, fell to 47,000 pounds in the next year, and to 39,276 pounds in
1872.
Sea-island cotton would yield excellent crops if it were not that a
caterpillar devours the young plants, so that its culture has almost
ceased. Only 10,000 pounds were exported in 1872. The orange thrives in so
few localities on the Islands that it is not an article of commerce: only
two boxes were exported last year, though San Francisco brings this fruit
from Otaheite by a voyage of thirty days. A burr worse than any found
in California discourages the sheep-raiser in some of the Islands. The
cacao-tree has been tried, but a blight kills it. In the garden of Dr.
Hillebrandt, near Honolulu, I saw specimens of the cinnamon and allspice
trees; but again I was told that the blight attacked them, and did not
allow them to prosper. Wheat and other cereals grow and mature, but they
are subject to the attacks of weevil, so that they can not be stored or
shipped; and if you feed your horse oats or barley in Honolulu, these have
been imported from California. Silk-worms have been tried but failed. Rice
does well, and its culture is increasing.
Moreover, there is but an inconsiderable local market. A farmer on
Maui told me he had sent twenty bags of potatoes to Honolulu, and so
overstocked the market that he got back only the price of his bags. Eggs
and all other perishable products, for the same reason, vary much in
price, and are at times high-priced and hardly attainable. It will not do
for the farmer to raise much for sale. The population is not only divided
among different and distant islands, but it consists for much the largest
part of people who live sufficiently well on taro, sweet-potatoes, fish,
pork, and beef--all articles which they raise for themselves, and which
they get by labor and against disadvantages which few white farmers would
encounter.
For instance, the Puna coast of Hawaii is a district where for thirty
miles there is so little fresh water to be found that travelers must bring
their own supplies in bottles; and Dr. Coan told me that in former days
the people, knowing that he could not drink the brackish stuff which
satisfied them, used to collect fresh water for his use when he made the
missionary tour, from the drippings of dew in caves. Wells are here out
of the question, for there is no soil except a little decomposed lava, and
the lava lets through all the water which comes from rains. There are
few or no streams to be led down from the mountains. There are no fields,
according to our meaning of the word.
Formerly the people in this district were numbered by thousands: even
yet there is a considerable population, not unprosperous by any means.
Churches and schools are as frequent as in the best part of New England.
Yet when I asked a native to show me his sweet-potato patch, he took me
to the most curious and barren-looking collection of lava you can imagine,
surrounded, too, by a very formidable wall made of lava, and explained
to me that by digging holes in the lava where it was a little decayed,
carrying a handful of earth to each of these holes, and planting there in
a wet season, he got a very satisfactory crop. Not only that, but being
desirous of something more than a bare living, this man had planted a
little coffee in the same way, and had just sold 1600 pounds, his last
crop. He owned a good wooden house; politely gave up his own mats for me
to sleep on; possessed a Bible and a number of other works in Hawaiian;
after supper called his family together, who squatted on the floor while
he read from his Scriptures, and, after singing a hymn, knelt in family
prayers; and finally spent half an hour before going to bed in looking
over his newspaper. This man, thoroughly respectable, of good repute,
hospitable, comfortable in every way so far as I could see, lived,
and lived well, on twenty or thirty acres of lava, of which not even a
Vermonter would have given ten cents for a thousand acres; and which was
worthless to any one except a native Hawaiian.
Take next the grazing lands. In many parts they are so poorly supplied
with water that they can not carry much stock. They also are often
astonishingly broken up, for they frequently lie high up on the sides of
the mountains, and in many parts they are rocky and lava-covered beyond
belief. On Hawaii, the largest island, lava covers and makes desolate
hundreds of thousands of acres, and on the other and smaller islands,
except, perhaps, Kauai, there is corresponding desolation. Thus the area
of grazing lands is less than one would think. But on the other hand,
cattle are very cheaply raised. They require but little attention; and the
stock-owners, who are now boiling down their cattle and selling merely
the hides and tallow, are said to be just at this time the most prosperous
people on the Islands. Sheep are kept too, but not in great flocks except
upon the small island of Niihau, which was bought some years ago by two
brothers, Sinclair by name, who have now a flock of fifteen or eighteen
thousand sheep there, I am told; on Molokai and part of Hawaii; and upon
the small island of Lanai, where Captain Gibson has six or eight thousand
head.
One of the conspicuous trees of the Hawaiian forests is the Kukui or
candle-nut. Its pale green foliage gives the mountain sides sometimes a
disagreeable look; though where it grows among the Ko trees, whose leaves
are of a dark green, the contrast is not unpleasant. From its abundance
I supposed the candle-nut might be made an article of export; but the
country is so rough that the gathering of the nuts is very laborious; and
several persons who have experimented in expressing the oil from the nut
have discovered that it did not pay cost. Only two thousand pounds
of Kukui nuts were exported in 1872.
Sandal-wood was once a chief article of export. It grows on the higher
mountain slopes, and is still collected, for 20,232 pounds were exported
in 1872, and a small quantity is worked up in the Islands. The cocoa-nut
is not planted in sufficient quantities to make it an article of commerce.
Only 950 nuts were exported last year. Of pulu 421,227 pounds were
shipped; this is a soft fuzz taken from the crown of a species of fern;
it is used to stuff bedding, and is as warm, though not as durable, as
feathers. Also 32,161 pounds of "fungus," a kind of toad-stool which grows
on decaying wood, and is used in China as an article of food.
There has been no lack of ingenuity, enterprise, or industry among the
inhabitants. The Government has imported several kinds of trees and
plants, as the cinnamon, pepper, and allspice, but they have not
prospered. Private effort has not been wanting either. But nature does not
respond. Sugar and rice are and must it seems continue to be the staples
of the Islands; and the culture of these products will in time be
considerably increased.
This, it appears to me, decides the future of the Islands and the
character of their population. A sugar or rice plantation needs at most
three or four American workmen aside from the manager. The laboring
force will be Hawaiians or Chinese; for they alone work cheaply, and will
content themselves in the situation of plantation laborers. It is likely,
therefore, that the future population of the Islands will consist largely,
as it does now, of Hawaiians and Chinese, and a mixture of these two
races; and, no doubt, these will live very happily there.
[Illustration: NATIVE HAY PEDDLER.]
For farming, in the American sense of the word, the Islands are, as these
facts show, entirely unfit. I asked again and again of residents this
question: "Would you advise your friend in Massachusetts or Illinois, a
farmer with two or three thousand dollars in money, to settle out here?"
and received invariably the answer, "No; it would be wrong to do so."
Transportation of farm products from island to island is too costly; there
is no local market except Honolulu, and that is very rapidly and easily
overstocked; Oregon or California potatoes are sold in the Islands at
a price which would leave the local farmer without a profit. In short,
farming is not a pursuit in the Islands. A farmer would not starve, for
beef is cheap, and he could always raise vegetables enough for himself;
but he would not get ahead. Moreover, perishable fruits, like the banana,
have but a limited chance for export. The Islands, unluckily, lie to
windward of California; and a sailing vessel, beating up to San Francisco,
is very apt to make so long a passage that if she carries bananas they
spoil on the way. Hence but 4520 bunches were shipped from the Islands in
1872--which was all the monthly steamer had room for.
These circumstances seem to settle the question of annexation, which is
sometimes discussed. To annex the Islands would be to burden ourselves
with an outlying territory too distant to be cheaply defended; and
containing a population which will never be homogeneous with our own; a
country which would neither attract nor reward our industrious farmers and
mechanics; which offers not the slightest temptation to emigration, except
a most delightful climate, and which has, and must by its circumstances
and natural formation continue to have, chiefly a mixed population of
Chinese and other coolies, whom it is assuredly not to our interest to
take into our family. I suppose it is a proper rule that we should not
encumber ourselves with territory which by reason of unchangeable natural
causes will repel our farmers and artisans, and which, therefore, will not
become in time Americanized. If this is true, we ought not to annex the
Hawaiian Islands.
Moreover, there is no excuse for annexation, in the desire of the people.
The present Government is mild, just, and liked by the people. They can
easily make it cheaper whenever they want to. The native people are very
strongly opposed to annexation; they have a strong feeling of nationality,
and considerable jealousy of foreign influence. Annexation to our own or
any other country would be without their consent.
As to the residents of foreign birth, a few of them favor annexation to
the United States; but only a few. A large majority would oppose it as
strenuously as the native people. Most of the planters see that it would
break up their labor system, demoralize the workmen, and probably for
years check the production of sugar.
One thing is certain, however. If the Islands ever offer themselves to any
foreign power, it will be to the United States. Their people, foreign as
well as native, look to us as their neighbors and friends; and the king
last summer blurted out one day when too much wine had made him imprudent,
this truth: that if annexation came, it must be to the United States.
As I write a negotiation has been opened with the United States
Government, for the purpose of offering us Pearl River in exchange for a
reciprocity treaty. Pearl River is an extensive, deep, and well-protected
bay, about ten miles from Honolulu. It would answer admirably for a naval
station; and if the United States were a second-rate power likely to be
bullied by other nations, we might need a naval station in the Pacific
Ocean. In our present condition, when no single power dares to make war
with us, and when, unless we become shamelessly aggressive, no alliance of
European powers against us for purposes of war is possible, the chief use
of distant naval stations appears to me to be as convenient out-of-the-way
places for wasting the public money. Pearl River would be an admirable
spot for a dozen pleasant sinecures, and the expenditure of three or four
millions of money. It seems to me, therefore, that it would be a dear
bargain. For the accommodation of merchant steamers and ships and their
repair, Honolulu offers sufficient facilities. There are ingenious
American mechanics there who have even taken a frigate upon a temporary
dry-dock, and repaired her hull.
[Illustration: HULA-HULA, OR DANCING-GIRLS.]
But justice, kindly feeling, and a due regard for our future interests in
the Pacific Ocean ought to induce us to establish at once a reciprocity
treaty with the Hawaiian Government. We should lose but little revenue;
and should make good that loss by the greater market which would be opened
for our own products, in the Islands. Such a treaty would bring more
capital to the Islands, increase their prosperity, and, at the same time,
bind them still more closely and permanently to us. It would pave the way
to annexation, if that should ever become advisable.
The politics of the Hawaiian Kingdom are not very exciting. In those
fortunate Isles the Legislature troubles itself chiefly about the horse
and dog tax. The late king, who was of an irascible temper, did not always
treat his faithful Commons with conspicuous civility. He sometimes told
them that they had talked long enough and had better adjourn; and they
usually took his advice. The present king, who belonged to "his majesty's
opposition" during the late reign, has yet to develop his qualities as a
ruler. He has shown sound judgment in the nomination of his cabinet;
and he is believed to have the welfare of the people at heart. He is
unmarried; but is not likely to marry; and he will probably nominate a
successor from one of the chief or ruling families still remaining. The
list from which he can choose is not very long; and it is most probable,
as this is written, that he will nominate to succeed him Mrs. Bernice
Pauahi Bishop, wife of the present Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mrs.
Bishop is a lady of education and culture, of fine presence, every way fit
to rule over her people; and her selection would be satisfactory to the
foreign residents as well as to the best of the Hawaiian people.
[Illustration: HAWAIIAN STYLE OF DRESS.]
CHAPTER VII.
THE LEPER ASYLUM ON MOLOKAI.
So much has been said and written of late about the disease called leprosy
and its ravages in the Sandwich Islands that I had the curiosity to visit
the asylum for lepers at Molokai, where now very nearly all the people
suffering from this disease have been collected, under a law which directs
this seclusion.
The steamer _Kilauea_ left Honolulu one evening at half-past five o'clock,
and dropped several of us about two o'clock at night into a whale-boat
near a point on the lee side of Molokai. Here we were landed, and
presently mounted horses and rode seven or eight miles to the house of a
German, Mr. Meyer, who is the superintendent of the leper settlement, and
also, I believe, of a cattle farm which belongs to the heirs of the late
king.
Mr. Meyer has lived on Molokai since 1853. He is married to a Hawaiian,
and has a large family of sons and daughters who have been carefully and
excellently brought up, I was told. Mrs. Meyer, who presided at breakfast,
is one of those tall and grandly proportioned women whom you meet among
the native population not infrequently, who enable you to realize how it
was that in the old times the women exercised great influence in Hawaiian
politics. She seemed born to command, and yet her benevolent countenance
and friendly smile of welcome showed that she would probably rule gently.
From Mr. Meyer's we rode some miles again, until at last we dismounted at
the top or edge of the great precipice, at the foot of which, two thousand
feet below, lies the plain of Kalawao, occupied by the lepers. At the
top we four dismounted, for the trail to the bottom, though not generally
worse than the trail into the Yosemite Valley, has some places which would
be difficult and, perhaps, dangerous for horses.
From the edge of the Pali or precipice the plain below, which contains
about 16,000 acres, looks like an absolute flat, bounded on three sides by
the blue Pacific. Horses awaited us at the bottom, and we soon discovered
that the plain possessed some considerable elevations and depressions. It
is believed to have been once the bottom of a vast crater, of which the
Pali we clambered down formed one of the sides, the others having sunk
beneath the ocean, leaving a few traces on one side. It has yet one
considerable cone, a hill two hundred feet high, a well-preserved
subsidiary crater, on whose bottom grass is now growing, while a
little pool of salt water, which rises and falls with the tide, shows a
connection with the ocean. A ride along the shore showed me also several
other and smaller cones.
The whole great plain is composed of lava stones, and to one unfamiliar
with the habits of these islanders would seem to be an absolutely
sterile desert. Yet here lived, not very many years ago, a considerable
population, who have left the marks of an almost incredible industry in
numerous fields inclosed between walls of lava rock well laid up; and in
what is yet stranger, long rows of stones, like the windrows of hay in a
grass field at home, evidently piled there in order to secure room in the
long, narrow beds thus partly cleared of lava which lay between, to plant
sweet-potatoes. As I rode over the trails worn in the lava by the horses
of the old inhabitants, I thought this plain realized the Vermonter's
saying about a piece of particularly stony ground, that there was not room
in the field to pile up the rocks it contained.
Yet on this apparently desert space, within a quarter of a century more
than a thousand people lived contentedly and prosperously, after their
fashion; and this though fresh water is so scarce that many of them must
have carried their drinking water at least two or even three miles. And
here now live, among the lepers, or rather a little apart from them at
one side of the plain, about a hundred people, the remnant of the former
population, who were too much attached to their homes to leave them, and
accepted sentence of perpetual seclusion here, in common with the lepers,
rather than exile to a less sterile part of the island.
When we had descended the cliff, a short ride brought us to the house of
a luna, or local overseer, a native who is not a leper; and of this house,
being uncontaminated, we took possession.
By a law of the kingdom it is made the duty of the Minister of the
Interior, and under him of the Board of Health, to arrest every one
suspected of leprosy; and if a medical examination shows that he has the
disease, to seclude the leper upon this part of Molokai.
Leprosy, when it is beyond its very earliest stage, is held to be
incurable. He who is sent to Molokai is therefore adjudged civilly dead.
His wife, upon application to the proper court, is granted a decree of
absolute divorce, and may marry again; his estate is administered upon
as though he were dead. He is incapable of suing or being sued; and his
dealings with the world thereafter are through and with the Board of
Health alone.
In order that no doubtful cases may be sent to Molokai there is a hospital
at Kalihi, near Honolulu, where the preliminary examinations are made, and
where Dr. Trousseau, the skillful physician of the Board of Health, son of
the famous Paris physician of the same name, retains people about whom he
is uncertain.
The leper settlement at Molokai was begun so long ago as 1865; but the law
requiring the seclusion of lepers was not enforced under the late king,
who is believed to have been himself a sufferer from this disease, and
who, at any rate, by constantly granting exemptions, discouraged the
officers of the law. Since the accession of the present king, however, it
has been rigidly enforced, and it is this which has caused the sudden and
great outcry about leprosy, which has reached even to the United States,
and has caused many people, it seems, to fear to come to the Islands, as
though a foreigner would be liable to catch the disease.
You must understand that the native people have no fear of the disease.
Until the accession of the present king lepers were commonly kept in the
houses of their families, ate, drank, smoked, and slept with their own
people, and had their wounds dressed at home. If the disease were
quickly or readily contagious, it must have spread very rapidly in such
conditions; and that it did not spread greatly or rapidly is one of
the best proofs that it is not easily transmitted. When I remember how
commonly, among the native people, a whole family smokes out of the same
pipe, and sleeps together under the same tapa, I am surprised that so few
have the disease.
There are at this time eight hundred and four persons, lepers, in the
settlement, besides about one hundred non-lepers, who prefer to remain
there in their ancient homes. Since January, 1865, when the first leper
was sent here, one thousand one hundred and eighty have been received,
of whom seven hundred and fifty-eight were males and four hundred and
twenty-two females. Of this number three hundred and seventy-three
have died, namely, two hundred and forty-six males and one hundred and
twenty-seven females. Forty-two died between April 1 and August 13 of the
present year. The proportion of women to men is smaller than I thought;
and there are about fifty leper children, between the ages of six and
thirteen. Lepers are sterile, and no children have been born at the
asylum.
So great has been the energy and the vigilance of the Board of Health and
its physician, Dr. Trousseau, that there are not now probably fifty lepers
at large on all the islands, and these are persons who have been hidden
away in the mountains by their relatives. In fact if there was ever any
risk to foreign visitors from leprosy, this is now reduced to the minimum;
and as the disease is not caused by the climate, and can be got, as
the widest experience and the best authorities agree, only by intimate
contact, united with peculiar predisposition of the blood, there is not
the least ground for any foreign visitor to dread it.
When a leper is sent to Molokai, the Government provides him a house, and
he receives, if an adult, three pounds of paiai or unmixed poi, per day,
and three pounds of salt salmon, or five pounds of fresh beef, per week.
Beef is generally preferred.
They are allowed and encouraged to cultivate land, and their products are
bought by the Health Board; but the disease quickly attacks the feet and
hands, and disables the sufferers from labor.
There are two churches in the settlement, one Protestant, with a native
pastor, and one Catholic, with a white priest, a young Frenchman, who has
had the courage to devote himself to his co-religionists.
There is a store, kept by the Board of Health, the articles in which are
sold for cost and expenses. The people receive a good deal of money from
their relatives at home, which they spend in this store. The Government
also supplies all the lepers with clothing; and there is a post-office.
The little schooner which carried me back to Honolulu bore over two
hundred letters, the weekly mail from the leper settlement.
For the bad cases there is a hospital, an extensive range of buildings,
where one hundred patients lay when I visited it. These, being helpless,
are attended by other lepers, and receive extra rations of tea, sugar,
bread, rice, and other food.
Almost every one strong enough to ride has a horse; for the Hawaiians can
not well live without horses. Some of the people live on the shore and
make salt, which you see stored up in pandanus bags under the shelter of
lava bubbles. When I was there a number were engaged in digging a ditch
in which to lay an iron pipe, intended to convey fresh water to the denser
part of the settlement.
Such is the life on the leper settlement of Molokai; a precipitous cliff
at its back two thousand feet high; the ocean, looking here bluer and
lovelier than ever I saw it look elsewhere on three sides of it; the soft
trade-wind blowing across the lava-covered plain; eternal sunshine; a mild
air; horses; and the weekly excitement of the arrival of the schooner from
Honolulu with letters. There is sufficient employment for those who can
and like to work--and the Hawaiian is not an idle creature; and altogether
it is a very contented and happy community. The Islander has strong
feelings and affections, but they do not last long, and the people here
seemed to me to have made themselves quickly at home. I saw very few sad
faces, and there were mirth and laughter, and ready service and pleasant
looks all around us, as we rode or walked over the settlement.
And now, you will ask, what does a leper look like? Well, in the first
place, he is not the leper of the Scriptures; nor, I am assured, is the
disease at all like that which is said to occur in China. Indeed, the
poor Chinese have been unjustly accused of bringing this disease to the
Islands. With the first shipload of Chinese brought to these Islands
came two lepers "white as snow," having, that is to say, a disease very
different from that which now is called leprosy here. They were not
allowed to land, but were sent back in the ship which brought them out.
The Hawaiian leprosy, on the other hand, has been known here for a quarter
of a century, and men died of it before the first Chinese were brought
hither. The name Mai-Pakeh was given it by an accident, a foreigner saying
to a native that he had a disease such as they had in China. There are but
six Chinese in the Molokai leper settlement, and there are three white men
there.
The leprosy of the Islands is a disease of the blood, and not a skin
disease. It can be caught only, I am told, by contact of an abraded
surface with the matter of the leprous sore; and doubtless the familiar
habit of the people, of many smoking the same pipe, has done much to
disseminate it.
Its first noticeable signs are a slight puffiness under the eyes, and a
swelling of the lobes of the ears. To the practiced eyes of Dr. Trousseau
these signs were apparent where I could not perceive them until he laid
his finger on them. Next follow symptoms which vary greatly in different
individuals; but a marked sign is the retraction of the fingers, so that
the hand comes to resemble a bird's claw. In some cases the face swells
in ridges, leaving deep furrows between; and these ridges are shiny and
without feeling, so that a pin may be stuck into one without giving pain
to the person. The features are thus horribly deformed in many instances;
I saw two or three young boys of twelve who looked like old men of sixty.
In some older men and women, the face was at first sight revolting and
baboon-like; I say at first sight, for on a second look the mild sad eye
redeemed the distorted features; it was as though the man were looking out
of a horrible mask.
At a later stage of the disease these rugous swellings break open into
festering sores; the nose and even the eyes are blotted out, and the body
becomes putrid.
In other cases the extremities are most severely attacked. The fingers,
after being drawn in like claws, begin to fester. They do not drop off,
but seem rather to be absorbed, the nails following the stumps down; and I
actually saw finger-nails on a hand that had no fingers. The nails were on
the knuckles; the fingers had all rotted away.
The same process of decay goes on with the toes; in some cases the whole
foot had dropped away; and in many the hands and feet were healed over,
the fingers and toes having first dropped off. But the healing of the sore
is but temporary, for the disease presently breaks out again.
Emaciation does not seem to follow. I saw very few wasted forms, and those
only in the hospitals and among the worst cases. There appears to be an
astonishing tenacity of life, and I was told they mostly choke to death,
or fall into a fever caused by swallowing the poison of their sores when
these attack the nose and throat.
Those diseased give out soon a very sickening odor, and I was much obliged
to a thoughtful man in the settlement, who commanded the lepers who had
gathered together to hear an address from the doctor to form to leeward
of us. I expected to be sickened by the hospitals; but these are so well
kept, and are so easily ventilated by the help of the constantly blowing
trade-wind, that the odor was scarcely perceptible in them.
You will, perhaps, ask how the disease is contracted. I doubt if any one
knows definitely. But from all I heard, I judge that there must be some
degree of predisposition toward it in the person to be contaminated. I
believe I have Dr. Trousseau's leave to say that the contact of a wounded
or abraded surface with the matter of a leprous sore will convey the
disease; this is, of course, inoculation; and he seemed to think no other
method of contamination probable. I was careful to provide myself with a
pair of gloves when I visited the settlement, to protect myself in case I
should be invited to shake hands; but I noticed that the doctor fearlessly
shook hands with some of the worst cases, even where the fingers were
suppurating and wrapped in rags.
There are several women on the Islands, confirmed lepers, whose husbands
are at home and sound; one, notably, where the husband is a white man. On
the other hand, a woman was pointed out to me who had had three husbands,
each of whom in a short time after marrying her became a leper. There
are children lepers, whose parents are not lepers; and there are parents
lepers, whose children are at home and healthy.
There are three white men on the island, lepers, two of them in a very bad
state. So far as I could learn the particulars of their previous history,
they had lived flagitiously loose lives; such as must have corrupted their
blood long before they became lepers. In some other cases of native lepers
I came upon similar histories; and while I do not believe that every case,
or indeed perhaps a majority of cases, involves such a previous career of
vice, I should say that this is certainly a strongly predisposing cause.
As to the danger of infection to a foreign visitor, there is absolutely
none, unless he should undertake to live in native fashion among the
natives, smoking out of their pipes, sleeping under their tapas, and
eating their food with them; and even in such an extreme case his risk
would be very slight now, so thoroughly has the disease been "stamped out"
by the energetic action of Mr. Hall, the Minister of the Interior, Mr.
Samuel G. Wilder, the head of the Board of Health, and Dr. Trousseau, its
physician. In short, there is no more risk of a white resident or traveler
catching leprosy in the Hawaiian Islands than in the city or State of New
York.
[Illustration: NATIVE PIPE. NECKLACE OF HUMAN HAIR.]
I have heard one reason given why this disease has been more frequent in
the last ten years. Ten or twelve years ago the Islands were visited by
smallpox. This disease made terrible ravages, and the Government at once
ordered the people to be vaccinated. There seems to be no doubt that the
vaccine matter used was often taken from persons not previously in sound
health; this was perhaps unavoidable; but intelligent men, long resident
in the Islands, believe that vaccination thus performed with impure matter
had a bad effect upon the people, leaving traces of a resulting corruption
of their blood.
The choice of the plain of Kalawao as the spot on which to seclude the
lepers from all the Islands was very happy. It can not be said that to an
agile native the place is inaccessible, for there are, no doubt, several
points in the great precipice where men and women could make their
way down or up; and there are instances of women swimming around the
precipitous and surf-beaten shore, seven or eight miles, to reach husbands
or friends in the settlement to whom they were devotedly attached. But
it is easily guarded, and, for all practical purposes, the seclusion is
perfect.
A singular tradition, related to me on the island, points to its use for
such a purpose and gives a sad significance to the leper settlement. It is
said that in the time of the first Kamehameha, the conqueror and hero of
his race, upon an occasion when he visited Molokai, an old sorceress or
priestess sent him word that she had made a garment for him--a robe of
honor--which she desired him to come and get. He returned for answer a
command that she should bring it to him; and when the old hag appeared,
the king desired her to tell him something of the future. She replied that
he would conquer all the Islands, and rule over them but a brief time;
that his own posterity would die out; and that finally all his race would
be gathered together on Molokai; and that this small island would be large
enough to hold them all.
It is probable, of course, that this tale is of recent origin, and that no
priestess of Kamehameha the First possessed so fatal and accurate a gift
of prophecy; but the tale, told me in the midst of the leper asylum,
pointed to the gloomy end of the race with but too plain a finger. The
Hawaiians, once so numerous as to occupy almost all the habitable parts
of all the Islands, have so greatly decreased that they might almost find
their support on the little island of Molokai alone. Happily the decrease
has now ceased.
The great Pali of Molokai, one of the most remarkable and picturesque
sights of the Islands, stretches for a dozen miles along its windward
coast. It is a sheer precipice, in most parts from a thousand to two
thousand feet high, washed by the sea at its base, and having, in most
parts, not a trace of beach. This vast wall of rock is an impressive
sight; here the shipwrecked mariner would be utterly helpless; but would
drown, not merely in sight of land, but with his hands vainly grasping for
even a bush, or root, or a projecting rock.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA:
ITS AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS, DAIRIES, FORESTS,
FRUIT-FARMS, ETC.
[Illustration: NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.]
[Illustration: A CALIFORNIA VINEYARD.]
CHAPTER I.
THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY: A GENERAL VIEW, WITH HINTS TO TOURISTS AND
SPORTSMEN.
The State of California extends over somewhat more than ten degrees of
latitude. If it lay along the Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast,
its boundaries would include the whole shore-line from Cape Cod to Hilton
Head, and its limits would take in the greater portion of ten of the
original States.
It contains two great mountain ranges--the Sierra Nevada and the Coast
Range. These, running parallel through the State, approach each other so
closely at the south as to leave only the narrow Tejon Pass between them;
while at the north they also come together, Mount Shasta rearing its
splendid snow-covered summit over the two mountain chains where they are
joined.
Inclosed within these mountain ranges lies a long, broad, fertile valley,
which was once, no doubt, a great inland sea. It still contains in the
southern part three considerable lakes--the Tulare, Kern, and Buena
Vista--and is now drained from the south by the San Joaquin River, flowing
out of these lakes, and from the north by the Sacramento, which rises near
the base of Mount Shasta. These two rivers, the one flowing north, the
other south, join a few miles below Sacramento, and empty their waters
into the bay of San Francisco.
That part of the great inland plain of California which is drained by the
Sacramento is called after its river. It is more thickly inhabited than
the southern or San Joaquin Valley, partly because the foot-hills on its
eastern side were the scene of the earliest and longest continued, as well
as the most successful, mining operations; partly because the Sacramento
River is navigable for a longer distance than the San Joaquin, and thus
gave facilities for transportation which the lower valley had not; and,
finally, because the Sacramento Valley had a railroad completed through
its whole extent some years earlier than the San Joaquin Valley.
The climate of the Sacramento Valley does not differ greatly from that of
the San Joaquin, yet there are some important distinctions. Lying further
north, it has more rain; in the upper part of the valley they sometimes
see snow; there is not the same necessity for irrigation as in the lower
valley; and though oranges flourish in Marysville, and though the almond
does well as far north as Chico, yet the cherry and the plum take the
place of the orange and lemon; and men build their houses somewhat more
solidly than further south.
The romance of the early gold discovery lies mostly in the Sacramento
Valley and the adjacent foot-hills. Between Sacramento and Marysville lay
Sutter's old fort, and near Marysville is Sutter's farm, where you may
still see his groves of fig-trees, under whose shade the country people
now hold their picnics; his orchards, which still bear fruit; and his
house, which is now a country tavern.
Of all his many leagues of land the old man has, I believe, but a few
acres left; and of the thousands who now inhabit and own what once was
his, not a dozen would recognize him, and many probably scarcely know
his name. His riches melted away, as did those of the great Spanish
proprietors; and he who only a quarter of a century ago owned a territory
larger than some States, and counted his cattle by the thousands--if,
indeed, he ever counted them--who lived in a fort like a European noble of
the feudal times, had an army of Indians at his command, and occasionally
made war on the predatory tribes who were his neighbors, now lives upon a
small annuity granted him by the State of California. He saved little, I
have heard, from the wreck of his fortunes; and of all who were with him
in his earlier days, but one, so far as I know--General Bidwell, of Chico,
an able and honorable gentleman, once Sutter's manager--had the ability to
provide for the future by retaining possession of his own estate of twenty
thousand acres, now by general consent the finest farm in California.
As you go north in California the amount of rain-fall increases. In San
Diego County they are happy with ten inches per annum, and fortunate if
they get five; in Santa Barbara, twelve and a half inches insure their
crops; the Sacramento Valley has an average rain-fall of about twenty
inched, and eighteen inches insure them a full crop on soil properly
prepared. In 1873 they had less, yet the crops did well wherever the
farmers had summer-fallowed the land. This practice is now very general,
and is necessary, in order that the grain may have the advantage of the
early rains. When a farmer plows and prepares his land in the spring, lets
it lie all summer, and sows his grain in November just as the earliest
rain begins, he need not fear for his crop.
There is less difference in climate than one would suppose between
the Sacramento and the San Joaquin valleys. Cattle and sheep live
out-of-doors, and support themselves all the year round in the Shasta
Valley on the north as constantly as in Los Angeles or any other of the
southern counties. The seasons are a little later north than south, but
the difference is slight; and as far north as Red Bluff, in the interior,
they begin their harvest earlier than in Monterey County, far south but
on the coast. Snow rarely lies on the ground in the northern counties more
than a day. The best varieties of the foreign grapes are hardy everywhere.
Light frosts come in December; and in the flower-gardens the geranium
withers to the ground, but springs up from the roots again in March. The
eucalyptus flourishes wherever it has been planted in Northern California;
and as far north as Redding, at the head of the valley, the mercury very
rarely falls below twenty-five degrees, and remains there but a few hours.
[Illustration: WINE VATS.]
As you travel from Marysville, either northward or southward, you will see
before and around you a great wide plain, bounded on the west by the blue
outlines of the Coast Range, and on the east by the foot-hills of the
Sierra: a great level, over which as far as your eye can reach are
scattered groves of grand and picturesque white oaks, which relieve the
solitude of the plain, and make it resemble a well-planted park. Wherever
the valley is settled, you will see neat board fences, roomy barns, and
farm-houses nestling among trees, and flanked by young orchards. You will
not find a great variety of crops, for wheat and barley are the staple
products of this valley; and though the farms here are in general of 640
acres or less, there are not wanting some of those immense estates for
which California is famous; and a single farmer in this valley is said to
have raised on his own land last year one-twentieth of the entire wheat
crop of the State.
Northwest of Marysville the plain is broken by a singularly lovely range
of mountains, the Buttes. They rise abruptly from the plain, and their
peaks reach from two to three thousand feet high. It is an extremely
pretty miniature mountain range, having its peaks, passes, and cañons--all
the features of the Sierra--and it is well worth a visit. Butte is a word
applied to such isolated mountains, which do not form part of a chain, and
which are not uncommon west of the Mississippi. Shasta is called a butte;
Lassen's Peaks are buttes; and the traveler across the continent hears the
word frequently applied to mountain. It is pronounced with the _u_ long.
Along the banks of the Sacramento there are large quantities of land which
is annually overflowed by the river, and much of which is still only used
for pasturage during the dry season, when its grasses support large herds
of cattle and sheep, which are driven to the uplands when the rains begin
to fall. But much of this swamp and tule land has been drained and diked,
and is now used for farm land. It produces heavy crops of wheat, and
its reclamation has been, and continues to be, one of the successful
speculations in land in this State. It will not be long before the shores
of the Sacramento and its tributaries will be for many miles so diked that
these rivers will never break their bounds, and thus a very considerable
area will be added to the fertile farming lands of the State.
Already, however, the Yuba, the Feather, and the American rivers,
tributaries of the Sacramento, have been leveed at different points for
quite another reason. These rivers, once clear and rapidly flowing within
deep banks, are now turbid, in many places shallow, and their bottoms have
been raised from twenty to thirty feet by the accumulation of the washings
from the gold mines in the foot-hills. It is almost incredible the
change the miners have thus produced in the short space of a quarter of a
century. The bed of the Yuba has been raised thirty feet in that time; and
seeing what but a handful of men have effected in so short a period, the
work of water in the denudation of mountains, and the scouring out
or filling up of valleys during geological periods becomes easily
comprehensible.
All our Northern fruits thriftily in the Sacramento Valley, and also
the almond, of which thousands of trees have been planted, and a few
considerable orchards are already in bearing. The cherry and the plum do
remarkably well, the latter fruit having as yet no curculio or blight; and
the canning and drying of peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, and pears
are already, as I shall show in detail farther on, a considerable as well
as very profitable business. Dried plums, in particular, sell at a price
which makes the orchards of this fruit very valuable. Excellent raisins
have also been made, and they sell in the open market of San Francisco
for a price very little less than that of the best Malaga raisins. The
climate, with its long dry summer, is very favorable to the drying and
curing of every fruit: no expensive houses, no ovens or other machinery,
are needed. The day is not distant when the great Sacramento plain will
be a vast orchard, and the now unoccupied foot-hills will furnish a large
part of the raisins consumed in the United States. For the present the
population is scant, and cattle, horses, and especially sheep, roam
over hundreds of thousands of acres of soil which needs only industrious
farmers to make it bloom into a garden.
[Illustration: TRAINING A VINE.]
The farmer in this State is a person of uncommon resources and ingenuity.
I think he uses his brains more than our Eastern farmers. I do not mean to
say that he lives better, for he does not. His house is often shabby, even
though he be a man of wealth, and his table is not unfrequently without
milk; he buys his butter with his canned vegetables in San Francisco, and
bread and mutton are the chief part of his living, both being universally
good here. But in managing his land he displays great enterprise, and has
learned how to fit his efforts to the climate and soil.
The gathering of the wheat crop goes on in all the valley lands with
headers, and you will find on all the farms in the Sacramento Valley the
best labor-saving machinery employed, and human labor, which is always the
most costly, put to its best and most profitable uses. They talk here of
steam-plows and steam-wagons for common roads, and I have no doubt the
steam-plow will be first practically and generally used, so far as the
United States are concerned, in these Californian valleys, where I have
seen furrows two miles long, and ten eight-horse teams following each
other with gang-plows.
Withal, they are somewhat ruthless in their pursuit of a wheat crop. You
may see a farmer who plows hundreds of acres, but he will have his wheat
growing up to the edge of his veranda. If he keeps a vegetable garden, he
has performed a heroic act of self-denial; and as for flowers, they must
grow among the wheat or nowhere.
Moreover, while he has great ingenuity in his methods, the farmer of the
Sacramento plain has but little originality in his planting. He raises
wheat and barley. He might raise a dozen, a score, of other products, many
more profitable, and all obliging him to cultivate less ground, but it
is only here and there you meet with one who appreciates the remarkable
capabilities of the soil and climate. Near Tehama some Chinese have in
the last two years grown large crops of pea-nuts, and have, I was told,
realized handsome profits from a nut which will be popular in America,
I suppose, as long as there is a pit or a gallery in a theatre; but the
pea-nut makes a valuable oil, and as it produces enormously here, it will
some day be raised for this use, as much as for the benefit of the
old women who keep fruit-stands on the street corners. It would not be
surprising if the Chinese, who continue to come over to California in
great numbers, should yet show the farmers here what can be done on small
farms by patient and thorough culture. As yet they confine their culture
of land mainly to vegetable gardens.
To the farmer the valley and foot-hill lands of the Sacramento will be the
most attractive; and there are still here thousands of acres in the hands
of the Government and the railroad company to be obtained so cheaply
that, whether for crops or for grazing, it will be some time before the
mountainous lands and the pretty valleys they contain, north of Redding,
the present terminus of the railroad, will attract settlers. But for the
traveler the region north of Redding to the State line offers uncommon
attractions.
The Sacramento Valley closes in as you journey northward; and at
Red Bluff, which is the head of navigation on the river, you have a
magnificent view of Lassen's Peaks on the east--twin peaks, snow-clad, and
rising high out of the plain--and also of the majestic snow-covered crag
which is known as Shasta Butte, which towers high above the mountains to
the north, and, though here 120 miles off, looks but a day's ride away.
Redding, thirty miles north from Shasta, lies at the head of the
Sacramento Valley. From there a line of stage-coaches proceeds north
into Oregon, through the mass of mountains which separates the Sacramento
Valley in California from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The stage-road
passes through a very varied and picturesque country, one which few
pleasure travelers see, and which yet is as well worth a visit as any part
of the western coast. The Sacramento River, which rises in a large
spring near the base of Mount Shasta, has worn its way through the high
mountains, and rushes down for nearly a hundred miles of its course an
impetuous, roaring mountain stream, abounding in trout at all seasons,
and in June, July, and August filled with salmon which have come up here
through the Golden Gates from the ocean to spawn. The stage-road follows
almost to its source the devious course of the river, and you ride along
sometimes nearly on a level with the stream, and again on a road-bed cut
out of the steep mountain side a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above
the river; through fine forests of sugar-pines and yellow pines many of
which come almost up to the dimensions of the great sequoias.
The river and its upper tributaries abound in trout, and this region is
famous among Californian sportsmen for deer and fish. Many farm-houses
along the road accommodate travelers who desire to stay to enjoy the fine
scenery, and to hunt and fish; and a notable stopping-place is Fry's Soda
Spring, fourteen hours by stage from Redding, kept by Isaac Fry and his
excellent wife--a clean, comfortable little mountain inn, where you get
good and well-cooked food, and where you will find what your stage ride
will make welcome to you--a comfortable bath. The river is too cold for
bathing here in the mountains because of the snow-water of which it is
composed. About ten miles south of Fry's lies Castle Rock, a remarkable
and most picturesque mountain of white granite, bare for a thousand feet
below its pinnacled summit, which you see as you drive past it on the
stage.
Fry's lies in a deep canon, with a singular, almost precipitous, mountain
opposite the house, which terminates in a sharp ridge at the top, one of
those "knife-edge" ridges of which Professor Whitney and Clarence King
often speak in their descriptions of Sierra scenery. If you are a mountain
climber, you have here an opportunity for an adventure, and an excellent
guide in Mr. Fry, who told me that this ridge is sharp enough to straddle,
and that on the other side is an almost precipitous descent, with a fine
lake in the distance. If you wish to hunt deer or bear, you will find
in Fry an expert and experienced hunter. He has a tame doe, which, I was
told, is better than a dog to mark game on a hunt, its sharp ears and
nose detecting the presence of game at a great distance. If you are
a fisherman, there are within three minutes' walk of the house pools
abounding in trout, and you may fish up and down the river as far as you
please, with good success everywhere. In June and July, when the salmon
come up to spawn, they, too, lie in the deepest pools, and with salmon
eggs for bait you may, if you are expert enough with your rod, take many a
fat salmon.
[Illustration: A BOTTLING-CELLAR.]
It is astonishing to see how the salmon crowd the river at the spawning
season. The Indians then gather from a considerable distance, to spear and
trap these fish, which they dry for winter use; and you will see at this
season many picturesque Indian camps along the river. They set a crotch of
two sticks in a salmon pool, and lay a log from the shore to this crotch.
Upon this log the Indian walks out, with a very long spear, two-pronged at
the end and there armed with two bone spear-heads, which are fastened to
the shaft of the spear by very strong cord, usually made of deer's sinews.
The Indian stands very erect and in a really fine attitude, and peers into
the black pool until his eye catches the silver sheen of a salmon. Then
he darts, and instantly you see a commotion in the water as he hauls up
toward the surface a struggling twenty-five or thirty pound fish. The
bone spear heads, when they have penetrated the salmon, come off from the
spear, and the fish is held by the cord. A squaw stands ready on the shore
to haul him in, and he is beaten over the head with a club until he ceases
to struggle, then cleaned, and roasted on hot stones. When the meat is
done and dry it is picked off the bones, and the squaws rub it to a fine
powder between their hands, and in this shape it is packed for future use.
From one of these pools a dozen Indian spearmen frequently draw out four
hundred salmon in a day, and this fish forms an important part of their
food. Of course they kill a great many thousand female salmon during the
season; but so far, I believe, this murderous work has not been found to
decrease the number of the fish which annually enter the river from the
ocean, and go up to its head waters to spawn.
If you visit this region during the last of June or in July, you may watch
the salmon spawning, a most curious and remarkable sight. The great fish
then leave the deep pools in which they have been quietly lying for some
weeks before, and fearlessly run up on the shallow ripples. Here, animated
by a kind of fury, they beat the sand off the shoals with their tails,
until often a female salmon thus labors till her tail fins are entirely
worn off. She then deposits her eggs upon the coarse gravel, and the
greedy trout, which are extravagantly fond of salmon eggs, rush up to eat
them as the poor mother lays them. They are, I believe, watched and beaten
off by the male salmon, which accompanies the female for this purpose.
When the female salmon has deposited her eggs, and the male salmon has
done his part of the work, the two often bring stones of considerable size
in their mouths to cover up the eggs and protect them from the predatory
attacks of the trout.
And thereupon, according to the universal testimony of the fishermen of
these waters, the salmon dies. I was assured that the dead bodies often
cumber the shore after the spawning season is over; and the mountaineers
all assert that the salmon, having once spawned up here, does not go down
to the ocean again. They hold that the young salmon stay in the upper
waters for a year, and go to sea about eighteen months after hatching; and
it is not uncommon, I believe, for fishermen hereabouts to catch grilse
weighing from two to four pounds. These bite sometimes at the fly. The
salmon bite, too, when much smaller, for I caught one day a young salmon
not more than six inches long. This little fellow was taken with a bait
of salmon eggs, and his bright silvery sides made him quite different from
the trout which I was catching out of the same pool. His, head, also
had something of the fierce, predatory, hawk-like form which the older
salmon's has.
Fry is an excellent fisherman himself, and knows all the best pools within
reach of his house, and, if you are a mountaineer, will take you a dozen
miles through the woods to other streams, where you may fish and hunt for
days or weeks with great success, for these woods and waters are as yet
visited by but few sportsmen.
And if you happen to come upon Indian fishermen on your way--they are all
peaceful hereabouts--you may get the noble red man's opinion of the
great Woman Question. As I stood at the road-side one day I saw an Indian
emerging from the woods, carrying his rifle and his pipe. Him followed,
at a respectful distance, his squaw, a little woman not bigger than a
twelve-year-old boy; and _she_ carried, first, a baby; second, three
salmon, each of which weighed not less than twenty pounds; third, a wild
goose, weighing six or eight pounds; finally, a huge bundle of some kind
of greens. This cumbrous and heavy load the Indian had lashed together
with strong thongs, and the squaw carried it on her back, suspended by a
strap which passed across her forehead.
When an Indian kills a deer he loads it on the back of his squaw to carry
home. Arrived there, he lights his pipe, and she skins and cleans the
animal, cuts off a piece sufficient for dinner, lights a fire, and cooks
the meat. This done, the noble red man, who has calmly or impatiently
contemplated these labors of the wife of his bosom, lays down his pipe and
eats his dinner. When he is done, the woman, who has waited at one side,
sits down to hers and eats what he has left.
"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." Miss Anthony and
Mrs. Cady Stanton have good missionary ground among these Indians. One
wonders in what language an Indian brave courts the young squaw whom he
wishes to marry; what promises he makes her; what hopes he holds out;
with what enticing views of wedded bliss he lures the Indian maiden to the
altar or whatever may be the Digger substitute for that piece of church
furniture. One wonders that the squaws have not long ago combined and
struck for at least moderately decent treatment; that marriages have not
ceased among them; that there has not arisen among the Diggers, the Pit
River Indians, and all the Indian tribes, some woman capable of leading
her sex in a rebellion.
But, to tell the truth, the Indian women are homely to the last degree.
"Ugly," said an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of
squaws--"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was
right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized,
thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young
or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and
at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights
movement has succeeded, and when women, dressed like frights in such
Bloomer costume as may then be prescribed, go out to their daily toil like
men, and on an equality with men--when they have cast off the beauty which
is so scornfully spoken of in the conventions, and have secured their
rights--whether they will be any better off than these squaws. When you
have thoughtfully regarded the Indian woman perhaps you will agree with
Gail Hamilton that it is woman's first duty to be useless; for it is plain
that here, as in a higher civilization, when women consent to work as men,
they are sure to have the hardest work and the poorest pay.
[Illustration: INDIAN RANCHERIA.]
As you ascend the Sacramento you near Mount Shasta, and when you reach
Strawberry Valley, a pretty little mountain vale, you are but a short ride
from its base. It is from this point that tourists ascend the mountain.
You can hire horses, guides, and a camp outfit here, and the adventure
requires three days. You ride up to the snow-line the first day, ascend to
the top the following morning, descend to your camp in the afternoon, and
return to the valley on the third day. Mount Shasta has a glacier, almost,
but not quite, the only one, I believe, within the limits of the United
States. The mountain is an extinct volcano. Its summit is composed of
lava, and if your eye is familiar with the peculiar shape of volcanic
peaks, you can easily trace the now broken lines of this old crater as you
view the mountain from the Shasta plain on the north.
There are many extremely pretty valleys scattered through these mountains,
and these are used by small farmers, and by sheep and cattle owners who
in the winter take their stock into the lower valleys, but ascend into the
mountains in May, and remain until October. This is also a timber region,
and as it is well watered by permanent streams you see frequent saw-mills,
and altogether more improvement than one expects to find. But, proceeding
further north you come upon a large plain, the Shasta Valley, in which
lies the considerable town of Yreka, notable during the last winter and
spring as the point from which news came to us about the Modoc war.
From Yreka you may easily visit the celebrated "lava beds," where the
Indians made so stubborn and long-continued a defense against the United
States troops; and at Yreka you may hear several opinions upon the merits
of the Modocs and their war. You will hear, for instance, that the Indians
were stirred up to hostilities by mischievous and designing whites, that
white men were not wanting to supply them with arms and ammunition, and
that, had it not been for the unscrupulous management of some greedy and
wicked whites, we should not have been horrified by the shocking incidents
of this costly Indian trouble, in which the United States Government for
six months waged war against forty-six half-starved Modocs.
The Shasta Valley is an extensive plain, chiefly used at present as
a range for cattle and sheep. But its soil is fertile, and the valley
contains some good farms. Beyond Yreka gold mining is pursued, and,
indeed, almost the whole of the mountain region north of Redding yields
"the color;" and at many points along the Upper Sacramento and the
mountain streams which fall into it, gold is mined profitably. One day,
at the Soda Spring, several of us asked Mr. Fry whether he could find
gold near the river. He took a pan, and digging at random in his orchard,
washed out three or four specks of gold; and he related that when he was
planting this orchard ten years ago he found gold in the holes he dug for
his apple-trees. But he is an old miner, and experience has taught him
that a good apple orchard is more profitable, in the long run, than a poor
gold mine.
A large part of the Sacramento Valley is still used for grazing purposes,
but the farmers press every year more and more upon the graziers; and the
policy of the Government in holding its own lands within what are called
"railroad limits"--that is to say, within twenty miles on each side of the
railroad--for settlement under the pre-emption and homestead laws, as well
as the policy of the railroad company in selling its lands, the alternate
sections for twenty miles on each side of the road, on easy terms and with
long credit to actual settlers, prevents land monopoly in this region.
There is room, and cheap and fertile land, for an immense population
of industrious farmers, who can live here in a mild climate, and till
a fertile soil, and who need only intelligence and enterprise to raise
profitably raisins, orchard fruits, castor-oil, peanuts, silk, and a
dozen other products valuable in the world's commerce, and not produced
elsewhere in this country so easily. It is still in this region a time of
large farms poorly tilled; but I believe that small farms, from 160 to 320
acres, will prove far more profitable in the end.
The progress of California in material enterprises is something quite
wonderful and startling. A year brings about changes for which one can
hardly look in ten years. It is but eighteen months ago that the idea of a
system of irrigation, to include the whole of the San Joaquin Valley, was
broached, and then the most sanguine of the projectors thought that to
give their enterprise a fair start would require years, and a great number
of shrewd men believed the whole scheme visionary. But a few experiments
showed to land-owners and capitalists the enormous advantages of
irrigation, and now this scheme has sufficient capital behind it, and
large land-holders are offering subsidies and mortgaging their lands
to raise means to hasten the completion of the canal. Two years ago
the reclamation of the tule lands, though begun, advanced slowly,
and arguments were required to convince men that tule land was a safe
investment. But this year eight hundred miles of levee will be completed,
and thousands of acres will bear wheat next harvest which were overflowed
eighteen months ago. Two years ago the question whether California could
produce good raisins could not be answered; but last fall raisins which
sold in the San Francisco market beside the best Malagas were cured by
several persons, and it is now certain that this State can produce--and
from its poorest side-hill lands--raisins enough to supply the whole
Union. Not a year passes but some new and valuable product of the soil is
naturalized in this State; and one who has seen the soil and who knows the
climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or, at most,
ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed, and all
their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, seen how wide is
the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to
have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future
of California.
But, in truth, it is not easy to exaggerate, for the soil in the great
valleys is deep and of extraordinary fertility; there are no forests to
clear away, and farms lie ready-made to the settlers' hands; the range of
products includes all those of the temperate zone and many of the torrid;
the climate is invigorating, and predisposes to labor; and the seasons are
extraordinarily favorable to the labors of the farmer and gardener. The
people have not yet settled down to hard work. There are so many chances
in life out there that men become overenterprising--a speculative spirit
invades even the farm-house; and as a man can always live--food being
so abundant and the climate so kindly--and as the population is as yet
sparse, men are tempted to go from one avocation to another, to do many
things superficially, and to look for sudden fortunes by the chances of
a shrewd venture, rather than be content to live by patient and continued
labor. This, however, is the condition of all new countries; it will pass
away as population becomes more dense. And, meantime California has gifts
of nature which form a solid substratum upon which will, in a few years,
be built up a community productive far beyond the average of wealthy or
productive communities. This is my conclusion after seeing all parts of
this State more in detail than perhaps any one man has taken the trouble
to examine it.
[Illustration: PIEDRAS BLANCAS.]