(1) The Peninsula. (2) The Hobron Bungalow. (3) TheSnark, and the owner ashore.
(1) The Peninsula. (2) The Hobron Bungalow. (3) TheSnark, and the owner ashore.
No better opportunity could be found for observing this medley of all the human world than that afforded by the Mid-Pacific Carnival last February when the population turned out and held festival for a week. Nowhere within the territory of the United States could so exotic a spectacle be witnessed. And unforgettable were the flower-garlanded Hawaiians, the womenpa’uriders on their lively steeds with flowing costumes that swept the ground, toddling Japanese boys and girls, lantern processions straight out of old Japan, colossal dragons from the Flowery Empire, and Chinese school girls, parading two by two in long winding columns, bare-headed, their demure black braids down their backs, slimly graceful in the white costumes of their foremothers. At the same time, while the streets stormed with confetti and serpentines tossed by the laughing races of all the world, in the throne room of the old palace (now the Executive Building) was occurring an event as bizarre in its own way and equally impressive. Here, side by side, the two high representatives of the old order and the new held reception. Seated, was the aged Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning sovereign of Hawaii; standing beside her was Lucius E. Pinkham, New England born, the Governor of Hawaii. A quarter of a century before, his brothers had dispossessed her of her kingdom; and quite a feather was it in his cap for him to have her beside him that night, for it was the first time in that quarter of a century that any one had succeeded in winning her from her seclusion to enter the throne-room. And about them, among brilliantly uniformed army and navy officers from generals and admirals down, moved judges and senators, sugar kings and captainsof industry, the economic and political rulers of Hawaii, and many of them, they and their women, intermingled descendants of the old chief stocks and of the old missionary and merchant pioneers.
And what more meet than that in Hawaii, the true Aloha-land which has welcomed and loved all wayfarers from all other lands, that the Pan-Pacific movement should have originated. This had its inception in the mind of Mr. Alexander Hume Ford—he of Outrigger Club fame who resurrected the sports of surf-boarding and surf-canoeing at Waikiki. Hands-Around-the-Pacific, he calls the movement; and already these friendly hands are reaching out and clasping all the way from British Columbia to Panama, from New Zealand to Australia and Oceanica, and on to Java, the Philippines, China and Japan, and around and back again to Hawaii, the Cross-Roads of the Pacific and the logical heart and home and center of the movement.
Hawaii is a Paradise—and I can never cease proclaiming it; but I must append one word of qualification:Hawaii is a paradise for the well-to-do.It is not a paradise for the unskilled laborer from the mainland, nor for the person without capital from the mainland. The one great industry of the islands is sugar. The unskilled labor for the plantations is already here. Also, the white unskilled laborer, with a higher standard of living, cannot compete with coolie labor, and, further, the white laborer cannot and will not work in the canefields.
For the person without capital, dreaming to start on a shoestring and become a capitalist, Hawaii is the last place in the world. It must be remembered that Hawaii is very old... comparatively. When California was a huge cattle ranch for hides and tallow (the meat being left where it was skinned), Hawaiiwas publishing newspapers and boasting schools of higher learning. During the early years of the gold rush, before the soil of California was scratched with a plow, Hawaii kept a fleet of ships busy carrying her wheat, and flour, and potatoes to California, while California was sending her children down to Hawaii to be educated. The shoestring days are past. The land and industries of Hawaii are owned by old families and large corporations, and Hawaii is only so large.
But the homesteader may object, saying that he has read the reports of the millions of acres of government land in Hawaii which are his for the homesteading. But he must remember that the vastly larger portion of this government land is naked lava rock and not worth ten cents a square mile to a homesteader, and that much of the remaining land, while rich in soil values, is worthless because it is without water. The small portion of good government land is leased by the plantations. Of course, when these leases expire, they may be homesteaded. It has been done in the past. But such homesteaders, after making good their titles, almost invariably sell out their holdings in fee simple to the plantations. There is a reason for it. There are various reasons for it.
Even the skilled laborer is needed only in small, definite numbers. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote the warning circulated by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee: “No American is advised to come here in search of employment unless he has some definite work in prospect, or means enough to maintain himself for some months and to launch into some enterprise. Clerical positions are well filled; common labor is largely performed by Japanese or native Hawaiians, and the ranks of skilled labor are also well supplied.”
For be it understood that Hawaii is patriarchal rather than democratic. Economically it is owned and operated in a fashion that is a combination of twentieth century, machine-civilization methods and of medieval feudal methods. Its rich lands, devoted to sugar, are farmed not merely as scientifically as any land is farmed anywhere in the world, but, if anything, more scientifically. The last word in machinery is vocal here, the last word in fertilizing and agronomy, and the last word in scientific expertness. In the employ of the Planters’ Association is a corps of scientific investigators who wage unceasing war on the insect and vegetable pests and who are on the travel in the remotest parts of the world recruiting and shipping to Hawaii insect and micro-organic allies for the war.
The Sugar Planters’ Association and the several sugar factors or financial agencies control sugar, and, since sugar is king, control the destiny and welfare of the Islands. And they are able to do this, under the peculiar conditions that obtain, far more efficiently than could it be done by the population of Hawaii were it a democratic commonwealth, which it essentially is not. Much of the stock in these corporations is owned in small lots by members of the small business and professional classes. The larger blocks are held by families who, earlier in the game, ran their small plantations for themselves, but who learned that they could not do it so well and so profitably as the corporations, which, with centralized management, could hire far better brains for the entire operation of the industry, from planting to marketing, than was possessed by the heads of the families. As a result, absentee ownership or landlordship has come about. Finding the work done better for them than they could do it themselves, they prefer to live in their Honolulu and seaside and mountain homes, to travel much, and to develop acosmopolitanism and culture that never misses shocking the traveler or newcomer with surprise. All of which makes this class in Hawaii as cosmopolitan as any class to be found the world over. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this practice of absentee landlordism, and such men run their own plantations and corporations and are active as sugar factors and in the management of the Planters’ Association.
Yet will I dare to assert that no owning class on the mainland is so conscious of its social responsibility as is this owning class of Hawaii, and especially that portion of it which has descended out of the old missionary stock. Its charities, missions, social settlements, kindergartens, schools, hospitals, homes, and other philanthropic enterprises are many; its activities are unceasing; and some of its members contribute from twenty-five to fifty per cent of their incomes to the work for the general good.
But all the foregoing, it must be remembered, is not democratic nor communal, but is distinctly feudal. The coolie and peasant labor possesses no vote, while Hawaii is after all only a territory, its governor appointed by the President of the United States, its one delegate sitting in Congress at Washington but denied the right to vote in that body. Under such conditions, it is patent that the small class of large land-owners finds it not too difficult to control the small vote in local politics. Some of the large land-owners are Hawaiian or part Hawaiian, as are practically all the smaller land-owners. And these and the land-holding whites are knit together by a common interest, by social equality, and, in many cases, by the closer bonds of affection and blood relationship.
Interesting, even menacing, problems loom large for Hawaii in the not distant future. Let but one of these be considered, namely, the Japanese and citizenship.Granting that no Japanese immigrant can ever become naturalized, nevertheless remains the irrefragable law and fact that every male Japanese, Hawaii-born, by his birth is automatically a citizen of the United States. Since practically every other person in all Hawaii is Japanese, it is merely a matter of time when the Hawaii-born Japanese vote will not only be larger than any other Hawaiian vote, but will be practically equal to all other votes combined. When such time comes, it looks as if the Japanese will have the dominant say in local politics. If Hawaii should get statehood, a Japanese governor of the State of Hawaii would be not merely probable but very possible.
One feasible way out of the foregoing predicament would be never to strive for statehood but to accept a commission government, said commission to be appointed by the federal government. Yet would remain the question of control in local politics. The Japanese do not fuse any more than do they marry out of their race. The total vote other than Japanese is split into the two old parties. The Japanese would constitute a solid Japanese party capable of out-voting either the Republican or Democratic parties. In the meantime the Hawaii-born Japanese population grows and grows. In passing it may be significantly noted that while the Chinese, Filipinos, and Portuguese flock enthusiastically into the National Guard, the Japanese do not.
But a truce to far troubles. This is my Hawaiian aloha—my love for Hawaii; and I cannot finish it without stating a dear hope for a degree of honor that may some day be mine before I die. I have had several degrees in the past of which I am well proud. When I had barely turned sixteen I was named Prince of the Oyster Pirates by my fellow pirates. Since they were all men-grown and a hard-bitten lot, and since the term was applied in anything but derision, my lad’s pridein it was justly great. Not long after, another mighty degree was given me by a shipping commissioner in San Francisco, who signed me on the ship’s articles as A.B. Think of it! Able-bodied! I was not a landlubber, nor an ordinary seaman, but an A.B.! An able-bodied seaman before the mast! No higher could one go—before the mast. And in those youthful days of romance and adventure I would rather have been an able-bodied seaman before the mast than a captain aft of it.
When I went over Chilcoot Pass in the first Klondike Rush, I was called achechaquo. That was equivalent to new-comer, greenhorn, tenderfoot, short horn, or new chum, and as such I looked reverently up to the men who were sour-doughs. It was a custom of the country to call an old-timer a sour-dough. A sourdough was a man who had seen the Yukon freeze and break, traveled under the midnight sun, and been in the country long enough to get over the frivolities of baking powder and yeast in the making of bread and to content himself with bread raised from sour-dough.
I am very proud of my sour-dough degree. A few years ago I received another degree. It was in the West South Pacific. A kinky-headed, asymmetrical, apelike, head-hunting cannibal climbed out of his canoe and over the rail and gave it to me. He wore no clothes—positively no covering whatever. On his chest, from around his neck, was suspended a broken, white China plate. Through a hole in one ear was thrust a short clap pipe. Through divers holes in the other ear were thrust a freshly severed pig’s tail and several rifle cartridges. A bone bodkin four inches long was shoved through the dividing wall of his nose. And he addressed me as “Skipper.” Owner and master I was, the only navigator on board, without even a man I could trust to stand a mate’s watch; but it was thefirst time I had been called Skipper, and I was mighty proud of it.
I’d rather possess these several degrees of able seaman, sour-dough, and skipper than all university degrees from Bachelor of Arts to Doctor of Philosophy. They mean more to me, and I am prouder of them. But there is yet one degree I should like to receive, than which there is no other in the wide world for which I have so great a desire. It isKamaaina.
Kamaaina is Hawaiian. It contains five vowels, which, with the three consonants, compose five syllables. No syllable is accented, all syllables are pronounced, the vowels having precisely the same values as the Italian vowels. Kamaaina means not exactly old-timer or pioneer. Its original meaning is “a child of the soil,” “one who is indigenous.” But its meaning has changed, so that it stands to-day for “one who belongs”—to Hawaii, of course. It is not merely a degree of time or length of residence. It applies to the heart and the spirit. A man may live in Hawaii for twenty years and yet not be recognized as a kamaaina. He has remained alien in heart warmth and spirit understanding.
Nor can one assume this degree for oneself. Any man who has seen the seasons around in Alaska automatically becomes a sour-dough and can be the first so to designate himself. But here in Hawaii kamaaina must be given to one. He must be so named by the ones who do belong and who are best fitted to judge whether or not he belongs. Kamaaina is the proudest accolade I know that any people can lay with the love-warm steel of its approval on an alien’s back.
Pshaw! Were it a matter of time, I could almost be reckoned a kamaaina myself. Nearly a quarter of a century ago—to be precise, twenty-four years ago—I first saw these fair islands rise out of the sea. I havebeen back here numerous times. As the years pass, I return with increasing frequency and for longer stays. Of the past eighteen months I have spent twelve here.
Some day, some one of Hawaii may slap me on the shoulder and say, “Hello, old kamaaina.” And some other day I may chance to overhear some one else of Hawaii speaking of me and saying, “Oh, he’s a kamaaina.” And this may grow and grow until I am generally so spoken of and until I may at last say of myself: “I am a kamaaina. I belong.” And this is my Hawaiian Aloha:
Aloha nui oe, Hawaii Nei!
Jack London.
Puuwaawaa Ranch, Hawaii,
April 19, 1916.
Pearl Harbor, Oahu,
Territory of Hawaii,
Tuesday, May 21.
Come tread with me a little space of Paradise. Many pleasant acres have I trod hitherto, but never an acre like this. It is so beautiful and restful and green. Green upon green. With blue-depthed shadows imposed from green-depthed foliage of great trees upon thick deep lawn that cushions underfoot. Bare foot. For one somehow dissociates the idea of footwear with an acre of Elysium. It is one of the paradisal blessings of this new Sweet Home of ours that we may blissfully pace it unshod, and for the most part unobserved.
The street is a mere white, meandering, coral-powdered by-way; no thing less inquisitive than the birds abides in the adjoining garden, where a rustic dwelling shows but vaguely amidst a riot of foliage; and on our southern boundary is a tropic tangle of uninhabited wildwood, fronting upon a native fishpond—anelongated bit of bay inclosed by a low wall of masonry of such antiquity that no tradition of Hawaii can place its origin.
Bayward the outlook is a shadowy coral reef, swept by tepid pea-green tides; and to its outer rim extends a slender wooden jetty, at the end of which our ship’s boat can lie even at low tide.
An eighth of a mile beyond in the rippling chrysoprase flood of Pearl Harbor, “Dream Harbor” Jack loves to call it, swings our Boat of Dreams, our littleSnark, anchored in the first port of call on her mission of pure golden adventure—a gallant foolishness, perhaps, but if we be fools, let us be gallant ones. Whenever my eyes come to rest on her shining shape, I feel them growing big with visions of the coming years on her deck; and then, remembering vivid incidents of the voyage, drift back to the present with a pleased sense of several laps of adventure already run. Not the least of these is mere living in a shady nook of Paradise where one’s eyes must quest twice in the green gloom among the big trees to discover, near the waterside, the habitation—a very small, very rustic, very simple brown bungalow of three rooms.
Already, in swimming suits, we have ventured the reef at high tide, with unbounded delight in the sun-washed liquid silk. Our goal for to-morrow is the yacht, as there is scant danger from man-eating sharks in this sheltered harbor.
Beyond theSnark, across this arm of the sea, over low green volcanic hills lying southeast between Pearl Lochs and Honolulu, one is just able to glimpse the rosy bulk of Diamond Head, trembling in the fervent sunlight. To the north, over vast rice fields and upland plantations, shrug the rugged, riven Koolau Mountains, their heads lost in heavy cloud masses that everlastingly roll and shift above these tropic ranges.
Pearl Harbor embraces some twelve square miles, divided naturally into three lochs, or arms, by two peninsulas, on the eastern of which lies the village dignified by the suggestive name of Pearl City. Trust me for having already gleaned the information that the locality has been these many years filched of its jewels.
On the southeastern extremity of our particular “neck of the woods,” stray a few suburban homes of Honolulans, of which ours is one. Tochigi, Nipponese and poet-browed cabin boy of theSnark, is to live ashore with us and resume his erstwhile household service, while the rest of the yacht’s complement will retain their accommodations aboard. In these protected waters, the boat lies at least as steady as a house on wheels, as she swings to ebb and flow.
Strangely content are we in the unwonted tranquillity of motion and sound, lacking wish to venture afield, even to Honolulu, about twelve miles distant by the railroad. Enough just to rest and rest, and gaze around upon the beautiful, long-desired world of island. Scarcely can we glance athwart the apple-green water but there curves a span of rainbow between our eyes and the far hills, and like as not a double-span, with promise of a triple-bow; while frequent warm showers delicately veil the land’s vivid emerald with all melting tints of opal.
Very florid, all this, you will smile—a bit overdone, perhaps? Gird at my word-storms if you will. Then consider ... and take ship for this “fleet of islands” in the western ocean. It isn’t real; it can’t be—too sweet it is, the round twenty-four hours. Here but the one night and day, already we grope for new forms of expression, as will you an you follow the sinking sun.
The heat is not oppressive, even though the season is close to summer. But one must realize that Hawaii is only subtropical. To be precise, the group of eight inhabited islands occupies a central position in the North Pacific, and lies just within the northern tropic. For the benefit of any sailor who may run and read, Jack says I might as well be still more explicit, and record that theSnark, now anchored about 2000 sea miles southwest of her native shore, lies between 18° 54′ and 22° 15′ north latitude, and between 154° 50′ and 160° 30′ of longitude west of Greenwich. These islands are blessed with a lower temperature than any other country in the same latitude. The reasons are simple enough—the prevailing “orderly trades” that blow over a large extent of the ocean, and the ocean itself that is cooled by the return current from the region of Bering Straits. Pleasantly warm though we found the waters of Pearl Harbor this bright morning, yet are they less warm by ten degrees than the waters of other regions in similar latitudes.
And now, to go back a little and recount how we came to rest in this fair haven—Fair Haven, in passing, was the name bestowed upon Honolulu Harbor by one of her discoverers, Captain Brown, when, in 1794, in his schoonerJackal, accompanied by Captain Gordon in the sloopPrince Lee Boo, he entered the bay, and mixed in local affairs by selling arms and ammunition to King Kalanikupule of Oahu, who was resisting an invasion from the sovereign of the island of Maui, Kaeo. Right near us here, at Kalauao on the way to Honolulu, a red battle was waged, in which Kalanikupule, assisted by Captain Brown and his men, overthrew the powerful enemy. Poor Captain Brown was born unlucky, it would seem. Firing a salute the next day from theJackal, in honor of the victory, a wad from his guns went wild and killed Captain Kendrick,who was quietly dining aboard his own vessel, theLady Washington. The blameless skipper’s funeral, being of a different sort from the native ceremony, was looked upon by the Hawaiians as an act of sorcery to induce the death of Captain Brown. Kalanikupule paid the latter four hundred hogs for his assistance in the struggle with the vanquished Kaeo, and Brown, after the sailing of theLady Washingtonfor China, put his men to salting down the valuable pork at Kaihikapu, an ancient salt pond between Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.
One day while theJackal’smate, Mr. Lamport, and the sailors were gathering salt, Kamohomoho, uncle of Oahu’s king, boarded thePrince Lee Booand theJackal, and more than made good the “act of sorcery” by dispatching poor Brown as well as Gordon, imprisoning those of the crews not employed ashore. Lamport and his men were captured, but their lives spared. The gratitude of the royal family for favors rendered had been outbalanced by ambition for a modern navy with which to attack Kamehameha the Great on the “Big Island,” Hawaii. On the voyage, however, the white seamen regained possession of the vessels, sent the natives ashore in their own canoes which were being towed, and lost no time following theLady Washingtonto the Orient.
I become lost in the history of the men who blazed our trail to these romantic isles, forgetting that this is the chronicle of a more modern adventure, and return to this idyllic resting spot after the tumult of our first traverse on the bit of boat yonder.
And yet, casting back over those twenty-six days of ceaseless tossing, we are aware only of pleasure in the memory of every happening, disagreeable and agreeable alike. In fact the last week aboard was so cozy and homelike that more than often we caught ourselvesregretting the imminent termination of the cruise. Even at this moment of writing, despite blissful surroundings, did I not know that theSnark’sdear adventure were but just begun, I should be robbed indeed, so in love am I with sea andSnark:
“For the wind and waterways have stamped me with their seal.”
“For the wind and waterways have stamped me with their seal.”
We picked up a good slant of wind to make Honolulu yesterday morning—an immeasurable relief after the worrisome calm of the night before, during which we had taken our turns at the idle wheel and scanned the contrary compass with all emotions of anxiety; while the helpless yacht swung on every arc of the circle, with no slightest fan of air to fill her limp sails that flapped ponderously in the glassy offshore heave. Never shall I forget my own tense double-watch of four hours, straining eye and ear toward the all-too-nigh coral reefs off Koko Head, with Makapuu Point light blinking to the northeast. But when a dart of sun through a decklight woke me from brief sleep, we were spanking along smartly in a cobalt sea threshed white on every rushing wave, with the green and gold island of Oahu shifting its scenery like a sliding screen as we swept past tawny Diamond Head and palm-dotted Waikiki toward Honolulu Harbor. After an oddly fishless voyage of four weeks from San Francisco (called by the natives Kapalakiko—pronounced Kah-pah-lah-ke-ko), we were joyously excited over a school of big porpoises, “puffing-pigs,” intent as any flock of barnyard fowl to cross our fleeing forefoot. Undignified haste was their only resemblance to domestic poultry, for in general movement they were more like sportive colts hurdling in pasture with snort and puff—sleek sides glistening blue black in the brilliant sunlight.
To our land-eager eyes, the beautiful old city was the surpassing picture of her pictures, when, still outside, we came abreast of her wharves—the water front with ships and steamers moored beside the long sheds, and behind, the Pompeian-red Punch Bowl, so often described by early voyagers; the suburban heights of Tantalus; the purple-deep rifts of valleys and gorges; and the green-and-violet needled peaks upthrusting through dense dark cloud rack.
Barely had we finished Martin’s eggless breakfast, when a government launch frothed alongside, and the engineer’s cheery “Want a line, Jack—eh?” sounded classic assurance of Hawaii’s far-famed grace of hospitality. Despite my sanguine temperament, I had been conscious of a premonition that something unfortunate would happen upon our arrival, probably due to the impression left by the hasty ship chandler of San Francisco, who unjustly libeled theSnarkin Oak land and delayed our sailing; so this gracious “Want a line, Jack?” was music to my ears. You see, Jack London is not infrequently arrested, or nearly arrested, for one reason or another, whenever he sets his merry foot upon foreign soil (I have disquieting memories of Cuba, Japan, and Korea); and Hawaiiseemslike foreign soil, albeit annexed by the Stars and Stripes.
The morning paper, thePacific Commercial Advertiser, preceded Immigration Inspector and Customs Inspector over the rail, and they laughingly pointed to a conspicuously leaded item that theSnarkwas supposed to be lost with all on board—bright tidings already cabled to California and read by our horrified families and friends! We cannot help wishing we were early enough here to be handed the very first English newspaper published at Honolulu, in 1836—theSandwich Islands Gazette. And two years before that, the Hawaiiansheets,Kumu HawaiiandLama Hawaii, were the initial newspapers in the Pacific Ocean.
Speed is not the object of our junketing in the Seven Seas; but if we of theSnarkhad known any hurt vanity about the length of our passage, it would have been amply offset by a report the inspectors made of the big barkEdward May, arriving six days before, which beat our tardy record but forty-eight hours, after an equally uneventful voyage.
Meanwhile the pilot had come aboard, a line was passed for’ard to the launch, and we now ripped and zipped over a billowy swell to meet the port physician, whose snowy launch could be seen putting out from a wharf. That dignitary, once on deck, scanned our clean bill of health, asked a few routine questions—one of which was whether we carried any rats or snakes; and all three officials pronounced us free to enter the port of Honolulu. Whereupon Jack stated that we were bound for Pearl Lochs, to take possession of a cottage lent us by a friend. We were then told that the wharves of Honolulu were lined with her citizens, waiting to garland us in welcome; but too impelling behind our eyes was the fancied picture of the promised retreat by the still waters of Pearl Lochs, so we thanked our kind visitors, secured a launch, and towed resolutely past the hospitable city.
“It does seem a darned shame,” Jack mused regretfully. “But what can we do with all our plans made for Pearl Harbor?” “And anyway,” he added, “I don’t want the general public to see a boat of mine sail, looking as if she’s been half-built and then half-wrecked, the way this one does.... I’ve gotsomepride.”
Then all attention was claimed by the beauty of our westward way to the harbor entrance, as we skirted a broad shoreward reef where green breakers burst intofountains of tourmaline and turquoise, shot through with javelins of sun gold, and the air was filled with rainbow mist. Our boat slipped along in a world compounded of the very ravishment of suffused colors—land and sea, it was all of a piece; while off to the southeastern horizon ocean and sky merged in silvery azure, softly gloomed by shadowy shapes of other Promised Islands.
Turning almost due north into the narrow reef entrance to the Lochs, we could easily have sailed unassisted, even with the light breeze then remaining, so well marked is the channel which has been dredged, full thirty feet deep, to admit passage of the largest vessels into this land-locked harbor, invaluable acquisition to the American government—the finest naval station in the Pacific, if not in the world. Its low banks show both lava and coral formation, and vast cane plantations and gently terraced rice fields slope their green leagues back to the foothills of the Waianae Mountains. Scattered over the rice areas are picturesquely tattered Mongolians, who utter long resonant calls to frighten the marauding ricebirds, which, swarming up in black, disturbed clouds, are brought down with shotguns.
We two, with oneness in love of our watery roaming, were happy and vociferous as a pair of children, entering this our first port. Had we given it a thought, we could have wished for a less civilized landfall, with conscious missing of a native face or two. But I am sure this never entered our busy heads—not mine, at any rate; and my memory of Jack’s alert and beaming face precludes doubt of his contentment with things as they were.
Presently, as we wound along between the western peninsula and a little green islet, he called attention to the snowy bore of a tiny craft racing toward us. In short order a smart white launch was rounding upwith dash and style befitting the commodore of the Hawaiian Yacht Club, Mr. Clarence Macfarlane, who, with Mr. Albert Waterhouse, had learned by telephone from Honolulu of our arrival, and hurried out to make us welcome. Both of these “dandy fellows,” as Jack promptly rated them, sent a warm glow through us by the unassuming good will of their greeting eyes and hand-grasp, while the first word on their lips was the beautiful Hawaiian “Aloha!” (ah-lo-hah) that is epitome of hearty welcome, broad hospitality, and unquestioning friendship. No noise nor flurry was theirs, as they set foot on the deck of the much-bruitedSnark; only the kindest, quietest, make-yourself-at-home manner, as if we had all been acquainted for years, or else that it was the most usual thing in the world to receive a wild man and woman who had essayed to circumnavigate the globe in an absurd shallop of outlandish rig. But those keen sailor eyes missed jot nor tittle of the vessel’s lines and visible equipment, for to the mind of the world at large this boat, “the strongest of her size ever built,” to quote her owner, with convenient English dogger bank sail plan, is a somewhat questionable experiment. I intercepted Albert Waterhouse’s roving glance on its return from examining the stepping of the stout mizzenmast, which stepping constitutes the main difference between this imported ketch-rig and the more familiar yawl. The comprehending laugh in my own eyes called out a roguish, half-embarrassed twinkle in his. But “She’s some boat!” he appreciated, taking in the sturdy sticks and teak deck fittings.
Then he related how he had been commissioned to turn over the bungalow and do what he could to make us at home. His first neighborly service was to see theSnarkproperly anchored, the while I strainedeyes across the eighth mile of gray green water to glimpse our home amongst the plumy foliage.
Leaving the crew aboard to make everything snug, Jack and I were carried by launch farther up the Loch to a long foot pier that leads over the shallow shore reef to a spacious suburban home.
And here occurreth a teapotful of mischance. Let none question that negotiating several hundred feet of narrow, stationary, unrailed bridge above shifting water, by legs that for over three weeks have known only a pitching surface of forty-five by fifteen, is little short of tragedy for one who would make seemly entry into an hospitable strange land. I know how Jack looked; I can only tell how I felt. And he was distinctly unkind. He made no secret of his amusement at my gyrations, although to my jaundiced eye his own progress was open to criticism.
Repeatedly I had to apologize for the frantic dabs made at our friends to prevent myself from going headlong into the water. That interminable board walk would rise straight up until I felt obliged to lean acutely forward to the ascent, in terror of bumping a sunburnt nose—only to find that it had abruptly slanted downward, whereupon I must angle as giddily backward to preserve balance. From the rear, Jack, in difficulties of his own, tittered something about his wife’s “sad walk,” and I remember retorting with asperity that it was a pity he had never noticed it before. Then we all fell to laughing and, very much better acquainted, somehow gained the coral-graveled pathway that led into a garden of lawns, hedged by scarlet-blooming shrubbery, and shaded by great gnarled trees that would have delighted Doré’s tortured fancy.
In response to her husband’s shout of “Here they are, Gretchen!” Mrs. Waterhouse moved towards us on baresandaled feet across the broad veranda of the big cool house, a cool and unruffled vision of woman, stately in long unbroken lines of sheer muslin and lace.
“You poor child,” was her greeting to me, with arm-around hovering me into a white bathroom sweet-scented and piled with fluffy towels. “You must be nearly tired to death. Just come right in here and rest your bones in a good hot bath before lunch.”
Rightly she guessed our tired bones; and rightly she prescribed the beneficence of steaming water. But the ache was from violent stresses of accommodating our precious skeletons to a stable environment, rather than from any hardships of sea-buffeting. Fifteen minutes’ relaxation in that shining tub made me all new; and once more in my blue silk bloomer-suit, I joined the happy captain of my boat and heart. Likewise bathed and refreshed, his wet hair futilely brushed to snub the curling ends, sprawling in cool white ducks upon a very wide couch spread deep with fine-woven native mats, he was immersed in a magazine of later date than our sailing from California. No one was about for the moment, and we lay and looked around with wordless content in this, our first household of Hawaii. Everything was restfully shaded by vines, yet nothing dark, what of the light polished floors, light walls and handsome rattan furniture from Orient and Philippines. Roomy window seats, banked with cushions, lovely pictures, and a grand piano, furnished an air of city elegance to the equally refined summer rusticity.
Jack, watching under his long lashes, smiled indulgently.
“Funny way to make a living, Mate-Woman!” Often he thinks aloud about his selection of a means of livelihood, and ever grows more convinced that he chose the best of all ways for him—and me. “I carry my officein my head, and see the world while I earn the money to see it with.”
Entered Gretchen with her lovely babe, breathing beauty and comfort and cleanliness, followed by her husband who announced luncheon with a jolly: “Come on, you famished seafarers, and see what there is to eat!” But first we must be crowned, I with a wreath of small pink rosebuds, dainty as a string of coral, while around Jack’s neck was laid a wide circlet of limp green vine, glossy and fragrant. Commodore Macfarlane was decorated in the same charming way that the white dwellers of the Islands have adopted from the native custom.
The meal was furnished forth on a wide veranda, orlanai(lah-nah’-e—quickly lahn-I), screened with flowering vines, and our host and hostess were on tiptoe to see whether or not we would try the native dishes which form part of their daily menu. As Jack said afterward, they “let us down easy,” because, instead of experimenting on ourmalihini(newcomer) palates with straightpoi, some of the smooth pinkish gray paste was diluted with cold water and milk, and a pinch of salt was added. Served in a long thin glass, it was called a poi cocktail. I scarcely see how one could dislike it. The plain thick poi, unseasoned, would be debatable to those unfortunates who dread sampling anything “odd”; but we took to it instanter. It must have excellent food value, being as it is the staple of all Pacific native peoples who are lucky enough to have right conditions for its raising. They showed us how to combine the unseasoned poi with accessories—a spoonful of the cool gray mush with a bite of meat or salt dried fish. Eaten by itself, poi is somewhat flat in taste, like slightly fermented starch. I do not know whether they were joking, but our friends told us that it is used successfully for wall-paper paste! In thesedays it is manufactured by machinery in nice sanitary factories. Originally it was made by first roasting the tuber of the plant known throughout the South Seas astaro,Arum esculentum(kaloin the old Hawaiian), wrapped in leaves, among heated rocks in the ground, then pounding the malleable mass with stone pounders and manipulating it with the hands. It would be noteworthy if foot work had not also been utilized, as by the Italians in macaroni making.
Also we were regaled with the tuber itself fresh boiled—a very good vegetable, prepared like a potato, with butter, salt, and pepper. It would be hard to give an idea of the flavor, and so many writers have failed to describe foreign tastes that as yet I am not going to try, save to state that I feel sure taro would prove a palatable substitute for both bread and potatoes, if one were deprived of the old standbys.
Jack was interviewed by several perspiring newspaper men who had taken the first train to Pearl City after the elusiveSnarkhad passed out of sight; and in the mid-afternoon we were guided to our new dwelling, distant about ten minutes’ walk. We met the entire crew bound for the village to see what they could see. Tochigi, cabin-boy, alas, failed to return until evening, so that I was obliged to do the unpacking. For Jack had developed a vicious headache, due to smoking cigarettes after abstaining during the voyage, and I hastened to reduce all confusion and establish a serene home atmosphere; but I must confess that the really happy task was an uphill one, when it wasn’t downhill, due to the sad walk that led me devious ways and many extra steps, with frequent halts to orient a revolving brain.
By seven, with still no Tochigi, and not a scrap to eat, came a tap on the door. As if in answer to a wish, there stood a smiling woman bearing a tray ofenormous tomatoes and cucumbers, a napkined loaf of newly baked bread, and a generous pat of homemade butter. She is our nearest neighbor, Miss Frances Johnson, descendant of an old missionary family, with whom we have made arrangements to board.
No sooner had she gone, than another neighbor brought an offering ofpapaias(pah-py’-ahs)—wonderful green-and-yellow melon things that grow on trees—and asked what further he could do for us. The combination of old-world and new-world neighborliness was quite overwhelming, and I was more than grateful, for by now poor Jack had taken to the big white bed, although he weakly admitted that he might eat a tomato if urged.
At length, he fell sound asleep under the well-tucked cloud of fine bobinet that graces all Hawaiian beds and I breathed a sigh of relief.
My troubles had only begun.
When the crew passed through on their return to the yacht, I softly called Martin to look at the kitchen-sink faucet, which was not working properly. No sooner had he turned on the water, than up wriggled a truly appalling centipede all of five inches in length, the only thing comparable to a serpent in this Eden. The leathery toughness of the monstrous insect, which was as thick as my finger, made the slaying of it an eminently lively and disgusting tussle. Martin finally vanquished the leggy foe, but we kept a wary eye for its possible mate. Fate left it to me, alone in the bathroom—for I would not disturb Jack’s healing slumbers,—to deal with the bereft one. After scissoring off its ugly fanged head, I fled to bed, fervently trusting to dream of things with wings—birds, butterflies, angels. No remembered assurances of the very mild venomousness of this transplanted little dragon can ever lessen its hideous offensiveness. In my mind there is filedaway a word of protest for its every leg, of which, despite its name, I counted but seventy-four. The people here pay scant attention to this insect’s bite.
In the morning I summoned Tochigi to remove the mutilated remains. Oh, of course, before cremation they must be displayed to an admiring audience of husband. For even more fussy is he than I, about crawly things, and he could see, by involuntary reminiscent tremors, that my overworn nerves had been somewhat shaken by the encounter. Not having laughed at me, we could laugh in company later in the morning when, hair-brush in hand, he went right into the air with a “Great Scott!” before an ill-looking hairy gray spider, some four or five inches across, that dropped from the ceiling and clattered upon the bureau top. Was it Mark Twain who, disturbed at his writing by one of these, put the cuspidor upon it, claiming that a fringe of legs showed all around the vessel? Somewhere I have read that these spiders are descendants of the tarantula; but they have descended a long way, for tarantulas are meaty monsters compared with these paper-and-fuzz household gods of Hawaii, which harm nothing but mosquitoes and other dispensable vermin.
Jack had slept off the headache, and was able to enjoy his first luncheon at Miss Johnson’s. She served a most appetizing table for us seaworn pilgrims—a capital steak, done rare to a nicety, accompanied by taro which had been boiled and then sliced and fried lightly in fresh butter; cool platefuls of raw tomatoes and cucumbers, in oil and lemon; poi, with dried saltaku(ah-koo—bonita), papaias, and avocados—the almost prohibitively expensive alligator pears that we know in California, where they are sent by steamer and in shipping deteriorate; and bananas so luscious that we declared we had never before tasted bananas.These and sweet seedling oranges, as well as papaias, thrive in the fragrant garden of roses and hibiscus and palms, seen through Venetian blinds from where we sat at table, eating hothouse viands in the hothouse air.
We came away congratulating ourselves and each other upon such a feasting place within two minutes’ walk of our own little red gate; and the trio of ladies granted indulgence to drop over in any garmenture that pleases our mood, and also offered the piano for my use. Although even on this warm leeward side of Oahu the temperature is said to range only from 60° to 85°, with a mean of 74°, the humid quality of the atmosphere invites loose lines of apparel, of duck and summer lawn. In the dreamy green privacy of our lovely acre, it is kimono and kimono, with not much else to mention. And I am already planning certain flowing gowns of muslin and lace, on the pattern of Gretchen Waterhouse’s home attire, which flouncy robe is called aholoku(ho-lo-koo). It is a worthy development from the first clothing introduced by the missionaries, the simplest known design—like that cut by our childhood scissors for paper dolls, and calledmuumuu(moo-oo-moo-oo smoothly) by the Hawaiians. In time this evolved into the full-gathered Mother Hubbard atrocity; but in this year of grace it is a sumptuous, swinging, trailing model of its own, just escaping the curse of the Mother Hubbard and somehow eliding the significance of wrapper. Not all women would look as well in the holoku as does Mrs. Albert, who is straight and tall and walks as if with pride in her fine height and proportion, as large women should walk. A great measure of the holoku’s good looks depends upon its being carried well. The muumuu, in its pristine simplicity, is still used by native women for an under-garment, and, in all colors of calico, forswimming, although I have yet to learn how it could permit freedom of movement in the water.
Jack smiled to me just now, after I had read him the above: “I hope you will get some of those loose white things. I like them.”
Paucity of coast mail would indicate that relatives and friends have been chary of wasting energy on letters that might never be received by such reckless rovers. O ye of scant faith in theSnark’soaken ribs and her owner’s canny judgment!
The mail is brought by a tiny bobtail dummy and coach run by one, Tony, from Pearl City, a mile away, to a station near the end of the peninsula. Tony is a handsome little swarthy fellow, regarded by me with much interest, as my first Hawaiian on his native heath. Certain misgivings at sight of him rendered my surprise less to learn that he is full-blooded Portuguese. Alack, my first Hawaiian is a Portuguese—and of course Jack is hilarious.
Another caller crossed the springy turf of our garden—one who, having been told we were looking for saddle animals, came to suggest that we bring up our saddles the first of next week, and ride two of his horses back to the peninsula, where we are welcome to them as long as we please. Truly, the face of Hawaii hospitality is fair to see. What a place to live, with the gift of a roof from the rain, tree tops from the noonday sun, a peaceful space in which to work, strange pleasant foods irreproachably set forth, a warm vast bowl of jade for swimming, and fleet steeds for less than the asking! As this latest gift bringer departed, Jack, touched to huskiness, said:
“A sweet land, Mate, a sweet land.”
And now our green gloom purples into twilight where we have lain upon the sward the long afternoon; and twice my companion has hinted at a dip before dinner.