XXXVIGOING TO HONOLULU
Remember to pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with “bone,” not with “on.” But, above all, remember, when you are there, never to speak of coming from the United States or from America—you are in the United States. Call your home “the mainland.” I was once giving a lecture in California and I thoughtlessly began a sentence this way: “When I get back to America”—I never finished that sentence. It was owing only to the sense of humour possessed by the audience that I was able to finish the lecture.
People who have travelled all over the world say there are only two places that may accurately be called paradise; they are the Hawaiian Islands and Ceylon. If the wind is right, you get the spicy perfume from Ceylon before the island is visible, as it is written in the missionary hymn. I have never seen Ceylon, but Hawaii will do very well as an earthly paradise. The most vivid and alluring description of it came from the pen of Mark Twain and is to be found at the end of that work of genius,RoughingIt. In a certain sense, Mark was always homesick for these islands. He saw them in his youth and he remembered them in his old age.
In honor of Lord Sandwich, Captain Cook in 1778 named them the Sandwich Islands. The next year he was killed there and a native chief affirmed that he had eaten the Captain’s heart. I hope it gave him indigestion.
The islands were conquered by the native king, Kamehameha I, who died in 1819. He was a great man, a combination of warrior and statesman, like William the Conqueror.
In 1820 the American missionaries arrived. They found the natives amiable, like many of the children of the sun, but without religion, morality or education. Just the most blessed state imaginable, say many of our modern writers, whose highest ideal for humanity is animalism. The advantage of such an ideal is that one does not have to struggle to reach it—hence its popularity.
These missionaries were heroic. They came around Cape Horn in sailing vessels and they had to send their children back to the mainland for education by the same route. All ministers of the gospel believe in education and make sacrifices for it.
King Kalakaua was a picturesque and easy-temperedmonarch, who loved liquor. His trip around the world was an illuminating excursion in every sense of the word. When he was at the British court, a terrific question of etiquette arose which puzzled the wise men. Should he, in going into dinner after Queen Victoria, precede or follow Edward, Prince of Wales? The matter was settled by the tact and wit of the Prince. “The man is either a king and should precede me, or he should go into the dining-room with a napkin over his arm.”
In 1893 Queen Liliuokalani tried to get a new Constitution giving more power to the throne. An American revolution—the third in our history—took place, and a republic was established, with the late Sanford B. Dole as President. In 1898 the republic was annexed to the United States and in 1900 became the Territory of Hawaii. It will some day become a State.
The voyage thither from San Francisco usually takes six days. Leaving the Golden Gate in a cold fog, one sees hump-backed whales, and thirty miles out the only land, the Farallone Islands, a desolate, melancholy place for school teachers. But school teachers are used to getting the worst of it. The weather is cold for two days, then mild, then warm; plenty of flying fish by day, strange phosphorescence in the seaby night, and overhead unfamiliar stars. The Southern Cross appears, a subject for dispute.
The climate is celestial—much too good for this world. Never hot, never cold in Honolulu. The year round it usually has a minimum of 70, a maximum of 83. The constant northeast trade winds make the climate suitable for civilised man, but they also bring frequent showers. The inhabitants will not admit that these showers are rain—they call them liquid sunshine. They are indeed liquid. On one elevation the wind blows so hard that it is difficult to stand upright and on top of one mountain I saw a waterfall up instead of down, the wind catching it just as it left the rock. But on the small island Oahu, containing Honolulu, one can find an immense variety of wind and weather. Those who dislike showers can live where it practically never rains; other places have genial, windless heat, and still others have the cooling, beneficent breeze.
It is an international place and the brethren dwell together in unity. The streets are filled with Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, English, Germans and other folks, who seem to get along together very well indeed. Punahou College was founded in 1841 and is the oldest American college or university west ofthe Mississippi. There I saw a remarkable historical pageant, attended by ex-President Dole and ex-Queen Lil. One of the natives made a long address to the Queen, which I wish I could have understood. Her face was grave and impassive and when I was presented to her, I was deeply impressed by her anachronistic expression. She seemed to be living in the past.
I visited many of the schools. At Kaiulaui School there were among the pupils fifty-eight varieties of nationalities—I remember the exact number, as it was one more than the mystic fifty-seven. The United States flag was brought out; the children sang The Star-Spangled Banner. Then they recited part of Longfellow’sBuilding of the Ship. In the primary grade of another school, the teacher was a Japanese lady. The children seem entirely free from the bigotry of nationalism. The word “foreigner” is not an epithet and the children exhibit that rarest of all human things—democracy.
The natural wonders on the biggest island of the group, Hawaii, beggar description. You must go there yourselves. But I have always been more interested in human nature than in nature. I have seldom seen the latter and never the former show to better advantage than in these delectable oases of the ocean.