HUALALAI.July28th.
I very soon left the languid life of Kona for this sheep station, 6000 feet high on the desolate slope of the dead volcano of Hualalai, (“offspring of the shining sun,”) on the invitation of its hospitable owner, who said if I “could eat his rough fare, and live his rough life, his house and horses were at my disposal.” He is married to a very attractive native woman who eats at his table, but does not know a word of English, but they are both away at a wool-shed eight miles off, shearing sheep.
This house is in the great volcanic wilderness of which I wrote from Kalaieha, a desert of drouth and barrenness. There is no permanent track, and on the occasions when I have ridden up here alone, the directions given me have been to steer for an ox bone, and from that to a dwarfohia. There is no coming or going; it is seventeen miles from the nearest settlement, and looks across a desert valley to Mauna Loa. Woody trailers, harsh hard grass in tufts, the Asplenium trichomanes in rifts, the Pellea ternifolia in sand, and someohiaandmamanéscrub in hollow places sheltered from the wind, all hard, crisp, unlovely growths, contrast with the lavish greenery below. A brisk cool wind blows all day; every afternoon a dense fog brings the horizon within 200 feet, but it clears off with frost at dark, and the flames of the volcano light the whole southern sky.
My companions are an amiable rheumatic native woman, and a crone who must have lived a century, much shrivelled and tattooed, and nearly childish. She talks to herself in weird tones, stretches her lean limbs by the fire most of the day, and in common with most of the old people has a prejudice against clothes, and prefers huddling herself up in a blanket to wearing the ordinary dress of her sex. There is also a dog, but he does not understand English, and for some time I have not spoken any but Hawaiian words. I have plenty to do, and find this a very satisfactory life.
I came up to within eight miles of this house with a laughing, holiday-making rout of twelve natives, who rode madly along the narrow forest trail at full gallop, up and down the hills, through mire and over stones, leaping over the trunks of prostrate trees, and stooping under branches with loud laughter, challenging me to reckless races over difficult ground, and when they found that thewahine haolewas not to be thrown from her horse they patted me approvingly, and crowned me withleisofmailé. I became acquainted with some of these at Kilauea in the winter, and since I came to Kona they have been very kind to me.
I thoroughly like living among them, taking meals with them on their mats, and eating “two fingered”poias if I had been used to it all my life. Their mirthfulness and kindliness are most winning; their horses, food, clothes, and time are all bestowed on one so freely, and one lives amongst them with a most restful sense of absolute security. They have many faults, but living alone among them in their houses as I have done so often on Hawaii, I have never seen or encountered a disagreeable thing. But the more I see of them the more impressed I am with their carelessness and love of pleasure, their lack of ambition and a sense of responsibility, and the time which they spend in doing nothing but talking and singing as they bask in the sun, though spasmodically and under excitement they are capable of tremendous exertions in canoeing, surf-riding, and lassoing cattle.
While down below I joined three natives for the purpose of seeing this last sport. They all rode shod horses, and had lassoes of ox hide attached to the horns of their saddles. I sat for an hour on horseback on a rocky hill while they hunted the woods; then I heard the deep voices of bulls, and a great burst of cattle appeared, with hunters in pursuit, but the herd vanished over a dip of the hill side, and the natives joined me. By this time I wished myself safely at home, partly because my unshod horse was not fit for galloping over lava and rough ground, and I asked the men where I should stay to be out of danger. The leader replied, “Oh, just keep close behind me!” I had thought of some safe view-point, not of galloping on an unshod horse with a ruck of half maddened cattle, but it was the safest plan, and there was no time to be lost, for as we rode slowly down, we sighted the herd dodging across the open to regain the shelter of the wood, and much on the alert.
Putting our horses into a gallop we dashed down the hill till we were close up with the chase; then another tremendous gallop, and a brief wild rush, the grass shaking with the surge of cattle and horses. There was much whirling of tails and tearing up of the earth--a lasso spun three or four times round the head of the native who rode in front of me, and almost simultaneously a fine red bullock lay prostrate on the earth, nearly strangled, with his foreleg noosed to his throat. The other natives dismounted, and put two lassoes round his horns, slipping the first into the same position, and vaulted into their saddles before he was on his legs.
He got up, shook himself, put his head down, and made a mad blind rush, but his captors were too dexterous for him, and in that and each succeeding rush he was foiled. As he tore wildly from side to side, the natives dodged under the lasso, slipping it over their heads, and swung themselves over their saddles, hanging in one stirrup, to aid their trained horses to steady themselves as the bullock tugged violently against them. He was escorted thus for a mile, his strength failing with each useless effort, his tongue hanging out, blood and foam dropping from his mouth and nostrils, his flanks covered with foam and sweat, till blind and staggering, he was led to a tree, where he was at once stabbed, and two hours afterwards a part of him was served at table. The natives were surprised that I avoided seeing his death, as the native women greatly enjoy such a spectacle. This mode of killing an animal while heated and terrified, doubtless accounts for the dark colour and hardness of Hawaiian beef.
Numbers of the natives are expert with the lasso, and besides capturing with it wild and half wild cattle, they catch horses with it, and since I came here my host caught a sheep with it, singling out the one he wished to kill, from the rest of the galloping flock with an unerring aim. It takes a whole ox hide cut into strips to make a good lasso.
One of my native friends tells me that a native man who attended on me in one of my earlier expeditions has since been “prayed to death.” One often hears this phrase, and it appears that the superstition which it represents has by no means died out. There are persons who are believed to have the lives of others in their hands, and their services are procured by offerings of white fowls, brown hogs, andawa, as well as money, by any one who has a grudge against another. Several other instances have been told me of persons who have actually died under the influence of the terror and despair produced by being told that thekahunawas “praying them to death.” I cannot learn whether these over-efficacious prayers are supposed to be addressed to the true God, or to the ancient Hawaiian divinities. The natives are very superstitious, and the late king, who was both educated and intelligent, was much under the dominion of a sorceress.
I have made the ascent of Hualalai twice from here, the first time guided by my host and hostess, and the second time rather adventurously alone. Forests ofkoa, sandal-wood, andohia, with an undergrowth of raspberries and ferns clothe its base, the fragrantmailé, and the graceful sarsaparilla vine, with its clustered coral-coloured buds, nearly smother many of the trees, and in several places the heavyiéforms the semblance of triumphal arches over the track. This forest terminates abruptly on the great volcanic wilderness, with its starved growth of unsightly scrub. But Hualalai, though 10,000 feet in height, is covered with Pteris aquilina,mamané, coarse bunch grass, andpukeavéto its very summit, which is crowned by a small, solitary, blossomingohia.
For two hours before reaching the top, the way lies over countless flows and beds of lava, much disintegrated, and almost entirely of the kind calledpahoehoe. Countless pit craters extend over the whole mountain, all of them covered outside, and a few inside, with scraggy vegetation. The edges are often very ragged and picturesque. The depth varies from 300 to 700 feet, and the diameter from 700 to 1,200. The walls of some are of a smooth grey stone, the bottoms flat, and very deep in sand, but others resemble the tufa cones of Mauna Kea. They are so crowded together in some places as to be divided only by a ridge so narrow that two mules can scarcely walk abreast upon it. The mountain was split by an earthquake in 1868, and a great fissure, with much treacherous ground about it, extends for some distance across it. It is very striking from every point of view on this side, being a complete wilderness of craters, and over 150 lateral cones have been counted.
The object of my second ascent was to visit one of the grandest of the summit craters, which we had not reached previously owing to fog. This crater is bordered by a narrow and very fantastic ridge of rock, in or on which there is a mound about 60 feet high, formed of fragments of black, orange, blue, red, and golden lava, with a cavity or blow-hole in the centre, estimated by Brigham as having a diameter of 25 feet, and a depth of 1800. The interior is dark brown, much grooved horizontally, and as smooth and regular as if turned. There are no steam cracks or signs of heat anywhere. Superb caves or lava-bubbles abound at a height of 6000 feet. These are moist with ferns, and the drip from their roofs is the water supply of this porous region.
Hualalai, owing to the vegetation sparsely sprinkled over it, looks as if it had been quiet for ages, but it has only slept since 1801, when there was a tremendous eruption from it, which flooded several villages, destroyed many plantations and fishponds, filled up a deep bay 20 miles in extent, and formed the present coast. The terrified inhabitants threw living hogs into the stream, and tried to propitiate the anger of the gods by more costly offerings, but without effect, till King Kamehameha, attended by a large retinue of priests and chiefs, cut off some of his hair, which was considered sacred, and threw it into the torrent, which in two days ceased to run. This circumstance gave him a greatly increased ascendancy, from his supposed influence with the deities of the volcanoes.
I have explored the country pretty thoroughly for many miles round, but have not seen anything striking, except the remains of an immenseheiauin the centre of the desert tableland, said to have been built in a day by the compulsory labour of 25,000 people: a lonely white man who lives among the lava, and believes he has discovered the secret of perpetual motion: and the lava-flow from Mauna Loa, which reached the sea 40 miles from its exit from the mountain.
I was riding through the brushwood with a native, and not able to see two yards in any direction, when emerging from the thick scrub, we came upon the torrent of 1859 within six feet of us, a huge, straggling, coal-black river, broken up into streams in our vicinity, but on the whole, presenting an iridescent uphill expanse a mile wide. We had reached one of the divergent streams to which it had been said after its downward course of 9000 feet, “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further,” while the main body had pursued its course to the ocean. Whatever force impelled it had ceased to act, and the last towering wave of fire had halted just there, and lies a black arrested surge 10 feet high, with tender ferns at its feet, and a scarcely singedohiabending over it. The flow, so far as we scrambled up it, is heaped in great surges of a fierce black, fiercely reflecting the torrid sun, cracked, and stained yellow and white, and its broad glistening surface forms an awful pathway to the dome-like crest of Mauna Loa, now throbbing with internal fires, and crowned with a white smoke wreath, that betokens the action of the same forces which produced this gigantic inundation. Close to us the main river had parted above and united below a smallmamanétree with bracken under its shadow, and there are several oases of the same kind.
I have twice been down to the larger world of the wool-shed, when tired of strips of dried mutton and my own society. The hospitality there is as great as the accommodation is small. The first time, I slept on the floor of the shed with some native women who were up there, and was kept awake all night by the magnificence of the light on the volcano. The second time, several of us slept in a small, dark grass-wigwam, only intended as a temporary shelter, the lowliest dwelling in every sense of the word that I ever occupied. That evening was the finest I have seen on the islands; there was a less abrupt transition from day to night, and the three great mountains and the desert were etherealised and glorified by a lingering rose and violet light. When darkness came on, our great camp fire was hardly redder than the glare from the volcano, and its leaping flames illuminated as motley a group as you would wish to see; the native shearers, who, after shearing eighty sheep each in a day, washed, and changed their clothes before eating; a negro goatherd with a native wife and swarthy children, two native women, my host and myself, all engaged in the rough cooking befitting the region, toasting strips of jerked mutton on sticks, broiling wild bullock on the coals, bakingkalounder ground, and rolls in a rough stone oven, and all speaking that base mixture of English and Hawaiian which is current coin here. The meal was not less rude than the cookery. We ate it on the floor of the wigwam, with an old tin, with some fat in it, for a lamp, and a bit of rope for a wick, which kept tumbling into the fat and leaving us in darkness.
The next day I came up here alone, driving a pack-horse, and with a hind-quarter of sheep tied to my saddle. It is really difficult to find the way over this desert, though I have been several times across. When a breeze ripples the sand between the lava hummocks, the footprints are obliterated, and there are few landmarks except the “ox bone” and the “smallohia.” It is a strange life up here on the mountain side, but I like it, and never yearn after civilization. The one drawback is my ignorance of the language, which not only places me sometimes in grotesque difficulties, but deprives me of much interest. I don’t know what day it is, or how long I have been here, and quite understand how possible it would be to fall into an indolent and aimless life, in which time is of no account.
THE RECTORY, KONA.August1st.
I left Hualalai yesterday morning, and dined with my kind host and hostess in the wigwam. It was the last taste of the wild Hawaiian life I have learned to love so well, the last meal on a mat, the last exercise of skill in eating “two-fingered”poi. I took leave gratefully of those who had been so truly kind to me, and with the friendlyalohafrom kindly lips in my ears, regretfully left the purple desert in which I have lived so serenely, and plunged into the forest gloom. Half way down, I met a string of my native acquaintances, who, as the courteous custom is, threw over meleisofmailéand roses, and since I arrived here, others have called to wish me goodbye, bringing presents of figs, cocoa-nuts and bananas.
This is one of the stations of the “Honolulu Mission,” and Mr. Davies, the clergyman, has, besides Sunday and daily services, a day-school for boys and girls. The Sunday attendance at church, so far as I have seen, consists of three adults, though the white population within four miles is considerable, and at another station on Maui, the congregation was composed solely of the family of a planter. Clerical reinforcements are expected from England shortly; but from what I have seen and heard everywhere, I do not think that the coming clergy, even if inspired by the same devotion and disinterestedness as Bishop Willis, will make any sensible progress among the people.
In truth, I believe that the “HonoluluMission,” from the first, has been a mistake. As such, strictly speaking, there is no room for it, for all the natives are nominal Christians, and are connected more or less with the Congregational denomination. To attempt to proselytize them to the English Church, or to unsettle their religious relations in any way, would, on the whole, be a hopeless, as well as an invidious task, and would not improbably result in driving some among them into the greater apparent unity of the Church of Rome. Those who believe in the oneness of the invisible church, and that all who hold “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” are within the pale of salvation, may well hesitate before expending energy, men, money, and time on proselytizing efforts.
Among the whites who have sunk into the mire of an indolent and godless, if not an openly immoral life, there is an undoubted field for Evangelistic effort; but it is very doubtful, I think, whether this class can be reached by services which appeal to higher culture and instincts than it possesses, and, indeed, generally, the island Episcopalians are not in sympathy with the “symbolism” and “high ritual” which from the first have been outstanding features of this “mission.” The education of the young in the principles of the Prayer Book is aimed at by the Bishop and his coadjutors, but in spite of zeal and devotion, I doubt whether the English Church on these islands can ever be anything but a pining and sickly exotic.
Kona looks supremely beautiful, a languid dream of all fair things. Yet truly my heart warms to nothing so much as to a row of fat English cabbages which grow in the rectory garden, with a complacent, self-asserting John Bullism about them. It is best to leave the islands now. I love them better every day, and dreams of Fatherland are growing fainter in this perfumed air and under this glittering sky. A little longer, and I too should say, like all who have made their homes here under the deep banana shade,--
“We will return no more,. . . . our island homeIs far beyond the wave, we will no longer roam.”I.L.B.
HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU.August6th.
My fate is lying at the wharf in the shape of the Pacific Mail SteamerCosta Rica, and soon to me Hawaii-nei will be but a dream. “Summer isles of Eden!” My heart warms towards them as I leave them, for they have been more like home than any part of the world since I left England. The moonlight is trickling through misty algarobas, and feathery tamarinds and palms, and shines on glossy leaves of breadfruit and citron; a cool breeze brings in at my open doors the perfumed air and the soft murmur of the restful sea, and this beautiful Honolulu, whose lights are twinkling through the purple night, is at last, as it was at first, Paradise in the Pacific, a bright blossom of a summer sea.
I shall be in the Rocky Mountains before you receive my hastily-written reply to your proposal to come out here for a year, but I will add a few reasons against it, in addition to the one which I gave regarding the benefit which I now hope to derive from a change to a more stimulating climate. The strongest of all is, that if we were to stay here for a year, we should just sit down “between the sun and moon upon the shore,” and forget “our island home,” and be content to fall “asleep in a half dream,” and “return no more!”
Of course you will have gathered from my letters that there are very many advantages here. Indeed, the mosquitoes of the leeward coast, to whose attacks one becomes inured in a few months, are the only physical drawback. The open-air life is most conducive to health, and the climate is absolutely perfect, owing to its equability and purity. Whether the steady heat of Honolulu, the languid airs of Hilo, the balmy breezes of Onomea, the cool bluster of Waimea, or the odorous stillness of Kona, it is always the same. The grim gloom of our anomalous winters, the harsh malignant winds of our springs, and the dismal rains and overpowering heats of our summers, have no counterpart in the endless spring-time of Hawaii.
Existence here is unclogged and easy, a small income goes a long way, and the simplicity, refinement, kindliness, and sociability of the foreign residents, render society very pleasant. The life here is truer, simpler, kinder, and happier than ours. The relation between the foreign and native population is a kindly and happy one, and the natives, in spite of their faults, are a most friendly and pleasant people to live among. With a knowledge of their easily-acquired language, they would be a ceaseless source of interest, and every white resident can have the satisfaction of helping them in their frequent distresses and illnesses.
The sense of security is a very special charm, and one enjoys it as well in lonely native houses, and solitary days and nights of travelling, as in the foreign homes, which are never locked throughout the year. There are no burglarious instincts to dread, and there is no such thing as “a broken sleep of fear beneath the stars.” The person and property of a white man are everywhere secure, and a white woman is sure of unvarying respect and kindness.
There are no inevitable hardships. The necessaries, and even the luxuries of civilization can be obtained everywhere, and postal communication with America is now regular and rapid.
When I began this letter, a long procession of counterbalancing disadvantages passed through my mind, but they become “beautifully less” as I set them down in black and white. If I put gossip first, it is because I seriously think that it is the canker of the foreign society on the islands. Its extent and universality are grotesque and amusing to a stranger, but to live in it, and share in it, and learn to enjoy it, would be both lowering and hurtful, and you can hardly be long here without being drawn into its vortex. BygossipI don’t mean scandal or malignant misrepresentations, or reports of petty strifes, intrigues, and jealousies, such as are common in all cliques and communities, butnuhou, mere tattle, the perpetual talking about people, and the picking to tatters of every item of personal detail, whether gathered from fact or imagination.
A great deal of this is certainly harmless, and in some measure arises from the intimate friendly relations which exist between the scattered families, but over-indulgence in it destroys the privacy of individual existence, and is deteriorating in more ways than one. From the north of Kauai to the south of Hawaii, everybody knows every other body’s affairs, income, expenditure, sales, purchases, debts, furniture, clothing, comings, goings, borrowings, lendings, letters, correspondents, and every thing else: and when there is nothing new to relate on any one of these prolific subjects, supposed intentions afford abundant matter for speculation. All gossip is focussed here, being imported from every other district, and re-exported, with additions and embellishments, by every inter-island mail. The ingenuity with whichnuhouis circulated is worthy of a better cause.
Some disadvantages arise from the presence on the islands of heterogeneous and ill-assorted nationalities. The Americans, of course, predominate, and even those who are Hawaiian born, have, as elsewhere, a strongly national feeling. The far smaller English community hangs together in a somewhat cliquish fashion, and possibly cherishes a latent grudge against the Americans for their paramount influence in island affairs. The German residents, as everywhere, are cliquish too. Then, since the establishment of the Honolulu Mission, church feeling has run rather high, and here, as elsewhere, has a socially divisive tendency. Then there are drink and anti-drink, pro and anti-missionary, and pro and anti-reciprocity-treaty parties, and various other local naggings of no interest to you.
The civilization is exotic, and owing to various circumstances, the government and constitution are too experimental and provisional in their nature, and possess too few elements of permanence to engross the profound interest of the foreign residents, although for reasons of policy they are well inclined to sustain a barbaric throne. In spite of a king and court, and titles and officials without number, and uniforms stiff with gold lace, and Royal dinner parties withmenusprinted on white silk, Americans, Republicans in feeling, really “run” the government, and in state affairs there is a taint of that combination of obsequious and flippant vulgarity, which none deplore more deeply than the best among the Americans themselves.
It is a decided misfortune to a community to be divided in its national leanings, and to have no great fusing interests within or without itself, such as those which knit vigorous Victoria to the mother country, or distant Oregon to the heart of the Republic at Washington. Except sugar and dollars, one rarely hears any subject spoken about with general interest. The downfall of an administration in England, or any important piece of national legislation, arouses almost no interest in American society here, and the English are ostentatiously apathetic regarding any piece of intelligence specially absorbing to Americans. The papers pick up every piece of gossip which drifts about the islands, and snarl with much wordiness over local matters, but crowd into a small space the movements which affect the masses of mankind, and in the absence of a telegraph one hardly feels the beat of the pulses of the larger world. Those intellectual movements of the West which might provoke discussion and conversation are not cordially entered into, partly owing to the difference in theological beliefs, and partly from an indolence born of the climate, and the lack of mental stimulus.
After all, the gossip and the absence of large interests shared in common, are the only specialities which can be alleged against Hawaii, and I have never seen people among whom I should so well like to live. The ladies are most charming; essentially womanly, and fulfil all domestic and social duties in a way worthy of imitation everywhere. The kindness and hospitality, too, are unbounded, and these cover “a multitude of sins.”
There are very few strangers here now. It is the “dead season.” I have met with none except Mr. Nordhoff, who is writing on the islands forHarper’s Monthly, and his charming wife and children. She is a most expert horsewoman, and has adopted the Mexican saddle even in Honolulu, where few foreign ladies ride “cavalier fashion.”
My friends all urge me to write on Hawaii, on the ground that I have seen the islands and lived the island life so thoroughly; but possibly they expect more indiscriminate praise than I could conscientiously bestow!
Honolulu is in the midst of the epidemic of letter writing which sets in on the arrival of the steamer from “the coast,” and people walk and drive as if they really had business on hand: and the farewell visits to be made and received, the pleasant presence of Mr. Thompson, and Mr. and Mrs. Severance, of Hilo, and the hasty doing of things which have been left to the last, make me a sharer in the spasmodic bustle, which, were it permanent, would metamorphose this dreamy, bowery, tropical capital. The undeserved and unexpected kindness shown me here, as everywhere on these islands, renders my last impressions even more delightful than any first. The people are as genial as their own sunny skies, and in more frigid regions I shall never sigh for the last without longing for the first. . . . .
up to hereS.S. COSTA RICA.August7th.
We sailed for San Francisco early this afternoon. Everything looked the same as when I landed in January, except that many of the then strange faces among the radiant crowd are now the faces of friends, that I know nearly everyone by sight, and that the pathos of farewell blended with every look and word. The air still rang with laughter andalohas, and the rippling music of the Hawaiian tongue; bananas and pineapples were still piled in fragrant heaps; the drifts of surf rolled in, as then, over the barrier reef, canoes with outriggers still poised themselves on the blue water; the coral divers still plied their graceful trade, and the lazy ripples still flashed in light along the palm-fringed shore. The head-ropes were let go, we steamed through the violet channel into the broad Pacific, Lunalilo, who came out so far with Chief Justice Allen, returned to the shore, and when his kindlyalohawas spoken, the last link with the islands was severed, and half an hour later Honolulu was out of sight. . . . .
. . . . The breeze is freshening, and theCosta Rica’shead lies nearly due north. The sun is sinking, and on the far horizon the summit peaks of Oahu gleam like amethysts on a golden sea. Farewell for ever, my bright tropic dream!Aloha nuito Hawaii-nei!I.L.B.
A few facts concerning the Hawaiian islands may serve to supplement the deficiencies of the foregoing letters. The group is an hereditary and constitutional monarchy. There is a house of nobles appointed by the Crown, which consists of twenty members. The House of Representatives consists of not less than twenty-four, or more than forty members elected biennially. The Legislature fixes the number, and apportions the same. The Houses sit together, and constitute the Legislative Assembly. The property qualification for a representative is, real estate worth $500, or an annual income of $250 from property, and that for an elector is an annual income of $75. The Legislators are paid, and the expense of a session is about $15,000. There are three cabinet ministers appointed by the Crown, of the Interior, Finance, and Foreign Affairs respectively, and an Attorney-General, who may be regarded as a minister of justice. There is a Supreme Court with a Chief Justice and two associate justices, and there are circuit and district judges on all the larger islands, as well as sheriffs, prisons, and police. There is a standing army of sixty men, mainly for the purposes of guard duty, and rendering assistance to the police.
The question of “how to make ends meet” sorely exercises the little kingdom. All sorts of improvements involving a largely increased outlay are continually urged, while at the same time the burden of taxation presses increasingly heavily, and there is a constant clamour for the removal of some of the most lucrative imposts. Indeed, the Hawaiian dog, with his tax and his “tag,” is seldom out of the Legislative Assembly.
What may be termed theper capitataxes are, an annual poll tax of one dollar levied on each male inhabitant between the ages of seventeen and sixty, an annual road tax of two dollars upon all persons between seventeen and fifty, and an annual school tax of two dollars upon all persons between twenty-one and sixty. There is a direct tax upon property of ½ per cent. upon its valuation, and specific taxes of a dollar on every horse above two years old, and a dollar and a half on each dog. Of the $206,000 raised by internal taxes during the last biennial period, the horses paid $50,000, the mules $6,000, and the dogs $19,000!
The indirect taxation in the shape of customs’ duties amounted to $350,000 in the same period. The poor Hawaiian does not know the blessing of a “Free Breakfast Table.”
The islands are large importers. The value of imported goods paying duties was $1,437,000 in 1873, on which the Hawaiian Treasury received $198,000 as customs’ duties. Twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of ale, porter, and light wines, and thirty thousand dollars’ worth of spirits, show that the foreign population of 6,000 is more than sufficiently bibulous. The Chinamen, about 2,000 in number, are, or ought to be, responsible for $13,000 worth of opium; and the $34,000 worth of tobacco and cigars is doubtless distributed pretty equally over all the nationalities. Twenty-one thousand gallons of spirits were imported in 1873. The licences to sell spirits brought $18,000 dollars into the treasury in the last biennial period, but those for the sale ofawaand opium brought in $55,000 during the same time. These licences are confined to Honolulu.
There are two interesting items of customs receipts, a sum of $924, the proceeds of aper capitatax of two dollars levied on passengers landing on the islands, for the support of the Queen’s Hospital, and a sum of $1,477, the proceeds of a tax levied on seamen for the support of the Marine Hospital. There is a sum of $700 for passports, as no Hawaiian or stranger can leave the kingdom without an official permit.
There are 58 vessels registered under the Hawaiian flag, of which 40 are coasters, and 18 engaged in foreign freighting and whaling.
The value of domestic exports in 1873 was $1,725,507. Among these are bananas, pineapples,pulu, cocoanuts, oranges, limes, sandal-wood, tamarinds, betel leaves, shark’s fins,paiai, whale oil, sperm oil, cocoanut oil, and whalebone. Among other commodities there was exported, of coffee 262,000 lbs., of fungus 57,000lbs., of pea nuts 58,000 lbs., of cotton 8,000 lb., of rice 941,000 lbs., of paddy 507,000 lbs., of hides 20,000 packages, of goat skins 66,000, of horns 13,000, and of tallow 609,000 lbs.
The expense of “keeping things going” on the islands for the two years ending March 1st, 1874, amounted to $1,193,276, but this included the funeral expenses of two kings, as well as of two extra sessions of the Legislature, which amounted to $42,000. The decrease in the revenue for the same period amounted to $45,000. The items of Hawaiian expenditure were as follows:--
For Civil List. $47,689.73“ Permanent Settlements, Queen Emma. 12,000.00“ Legislature and Privy Council. 15,288.50“ Extra Legislative Expenses. 19,011.87“ Department of the Judiciary. 72,245.64“ “ of Foreign Affairs and War. 78,145.85“ “ of the Interior. 389,009.08“ “ of Finance. 202,117.05“ “ of the Attorney-General 97,097.00“ Bureau of Public Instruction. 89,432.40“ Miscellaneous Expenditures. 170,474.67
The balance on hand in the Treasury,March 31st, 1874. 764.57
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$1,193,276.36
That, under the head Finance, includes the interest on borrowed money. The funded national debt is $340,000. Of this sum a portion bears no stated interest, only such as may arise from the very dubious profits of the Hawaiian hotel. The interest charges are 12 per cent. on $25,000, and 9 per cent. on $272,000. The estimates for the present biennial period involve a large increase of debt. The present financial position of the kingdom is, an increasing expenditure and a decreasing revenue.
The statistics of the Judiciary Department for the last two years present a few features of interest. There were 4,000 convictions out of 5,764 cases brought before the courts, equal to a fourteenth part of the population. The total number of offences in the category is 125. Of these some are decidedly local. Thus, for “furnishing intoxicating liquors to Hawaiians” 92 persons were punished; for “exhibition ofHula,” 10; for “sellingawawithout licence,” 12; for “selling opium without licence,” 24. It is not surprising to those who know the habits of the people, that the convictions for violations of the marriage tie, though greatly diminished, should reach the number of 384, while under the head “Deserting Husbands and Wives,” 67 convictions are recorded. For “practising medicine without a licence,” 56 persons were punished; for “furious riding,” 197; for “cruelty to animals,” 37; for “gaming,” 121; for “gross cheating,” 32; for “violating the Sabbath,” 61. We must remember that the returns include foreigners and Chinamen, or else the reputation for “harmlessness” which Hawaiians possess would suffer seriously when we read that within the last two years there were 178 convictions for “assault,” 248 for “assault and battery,” 12 for “assaults with dangerous weapons,” 49 for “affray,” 674 for “drunkenness,” 87 for “disturbing quiet of the night,” and 13 for “murder.” Yet the number of criminal cases has largely diminished, and taking civil and criminal together, there has been a decrease of 656 for the last biennial period, as compared with that immediately preceding it.
The administration of justice is confessedly one of the most efficient departments of Hawaiian affairs. Chief Justice Allen, both as a lawyer and a gentleman, is worthy to fill the highest position in his native country (America), and the Associate Justices, as well as the native and foreign judges throughout the islands, are highly esteemed for honour and uprightness. I never heard an uttered suspicion of venality or unfairness against anyone of them, and apparently the Judiciary Department of Hawaii deserves the same confidence which we repose in our own.
The Educational System has been carefully modelled, and is carried out with tolerable efficiency. Eighty-seven per cent. of the whole school population are actually at school, and the inspector of schools states that a person who cannot read and write is rarely met with. Each common school is graded into two, three, or four classes, according to the intelligence and proficiency of the pupils, and the curriculum of study is as follows:--
CLASS I.--Reading, mental and written arithmetic, geography, penmanship, and composition.
CLASS II.--Reading, mental arithmetic, geography, penmanship.
CLASS III.--Reading, first principles of arithmetic, penmanship.
CLASS IV.--Primer, use of slate and pencil.
The youngest children are not classified until they can put letters together in syllables.
Vocal music is taught wherever competent teachers are found.
The total sum expended on education, including the grants to “family” and other schools, is about $40,000 a year.{453}
It has been remarked that the rising race of Hawaiians has an increased contempt for industry in the form of manual labour, and it is proposed by the Board of Education that such labour shall be made a part of common school education, so that on both girls and boys a desire to provide for their own wants in an honest way shall be officially inculcated. There is a Government Reformatory School, and industrial and family schools for both girls and boys are scattered over the islands. The supply of literature in the vernacular is meagre, and few of the natives have any intelligent comprehension of English.
The group has an area of about 4,000,000 acres, of which about 200,000 may be regarded as arable, and 150,000 as specially adapted for the culture of sugar-cane. Sugar, the great staple production, gives employment in its cultivation and manufacture to nearly 4,000 hands. Only a fifteenth part of the estimated arable area is under cultivation. Over 6,000 natives are returned as the possessors ofKuleanasor freeholds, but many of these are heavily mortgaged. Many of the larger lands are held on lease from the crown or chiefs, and there are difficulties attending the purchase of small properties.
Almost all the roots and fruits of the torrid and temperate zones can be grown upon the islands, and the banana,kalo, yam, sweet potato, cocoanut, breadfruit, arrowroot, sugar-cane, strawberry, raspberry, whortleberry, and native apple, are said to be indigenous.
The indigenousfaunais small, consisting only of hogs, dogs, rats, and an anomalous bat which flies by day: There are few insects, except such as have been imported, and these, which consist of centipedes, scorpions, cockroaches, mosquitoes, and fleas, are happily confined to certain localities, and the two first have left most of their venom behind them. A small lizard is abundant, but snakes, toads, and frogs have not yet effected a landing.
The ornithology of the islands is scanty. Domestic fowls are supposed to be indigenous. Wild geese are numerous among the mountains of Hawaii, and plovers, snipe, and wild ducks, are found on all the islands. A handsome owl, called the owl-hawk, is common. There is a paroquet with purple feathers, another with scarlet, a woodpecker with variegated plumage of red, green, and yellow, and a small black bird with a single yellow feather under each wing. There are few singing birds, but one of the few has as sweet a note as that of the English thrush. There are very few varieties of moths and butterflies.
Thefloraof the Hawaiian Islands is far scantier than that of the South Sea groups, and cannot compare with that of many other tropical as well as temperate regions. But all the islands are rich in cryptogamous plants, of which there is an almost infinite variety.
Hawaii is still in process of construction, and is subject to volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tidal waves. Hurricanes are unknown, and thunderstorms are rare and light.
Under favourable circumstances of moisture, the soil is most prolific, and “patch cultivation” in glens and ravines, as well as on mountain sides, produces astonishing results. AKalopatch of forty square feet will support a man for a year. An acre of favourably situated land will grow a thousand stems of bananas, which will produce annually ten tons of fruit. The sweet potato flourishes on the most unpromising lava, where soil can hardly be said to exist, and in good localities produces 200 barrels to the acre. On dry light soils the Irish potato grows anyhow and anywhere, with no other trouble than that of planting the sets. Most vegetable dyes, drugs, and spices can be raised. Forty diverse fruits present an overflowing cornucopia. The esculents of the temperate zones flourish. The coffee bush produces from three to five pounds of berries the third year after planting. The average yield of sugar is two and a half tons to the acre. Pineapples grow like weeds in some districts, and water melons are almost a drug. The bamboo is known to grow sixteen inches in a day. Wherever there is a sufficient rainfall, the earth teems with plenty.
Yet the Hawaiian Islands can hardly be regarded as a field for emigration, though nature is lavish, and the climate the most delicious and salubrious in the world. Farming, as we understand it, is unknown. The dearth of insectivorous birds seriously affects the cultivation of a soil naturally bounteous to excess. The narrow gorges in which terraced “patch cultivation,” is so successful, offer no temptations to a man with the world before him. The larger areas require labour, and labour is not to be had. Though wheat and other cereals mature, attacks of weevil prevent their storage, and all the grain and flour consumed are imported from California.
Cacao, cinnamon, and allspice, are subject to an apparently ineradicable blight. The blight which has attacked the coffee shrub is so severe, that the larger plantations have been dug up, and coffee is now raised by patch culture, mainly among the guava scrub which fringes the forests. Oranges suffer from blight also, and some of the finest groves have been cut down. Cotton suffers from the ravages of a caterpillar. The mulberry tree, which, from its rapid growth, would be invaluable to silk growers, is covered with a black and white blight. Sheep are at present successful, but in some localities the spread of a pestilent “oat-burr” is depreciating the value of their wool. The forests, which are essential to the well-being of the islands, are disappearing in some quarters, owing to the attacks of a grub, as well as the ravages of cattle.
Cocoanuts, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes,kalo, and breadfruit, the staple food of the native population, are free from blight, and so are potatoes and rice. Beef cattle can be raised for almost nothing, and in some districts beef can be bought for the cent or two per pound which pays for the cutting up of the carcase. Every one can live abundantly, and without the “sweat of the brow,” but few can make money, owing to the various forms of blight, the scarcity of labour, and the lack of a profitable market.
There is little healthy activity in any department of business. The whaling fleet has deserted the islands. A generalpilikiaprevails. Settlements are disappearing, valley lands are falling out of cultivation, Hilo grass and guava scrub are burying the traces of a former population. The natives are rapidly diminishing,{457}the old industries are abandoned, and the inherent immorality of the race, the great outstanding cause of its decay, still resists the influence of Christian teaching and example.
An exotic civilization is having a fair trial on the Hawaiian Islands. With the exception of the serious maladies introduced by foreigners in the early days, and the disastrous moral influence exercised by worthless whites, they have suffered none of the wrongs usually inflicted on the feebler by the stronger race. The rights of the natives were in the first instance carefully secured to them, and have since been protected by equal laws, righteously administered. The Hawaiians have been aided towards independence in political matters, and the foreigners, who framed the laws and constitution, and have directed Hawaiian affairs, such as Richards, Lee, Judd, Allen, and Wyllie, were men above reproach; and missionary influence, of all others the most friendly to the natives, has predominated for fifty years.
The effects of missionary labour have been scarcely touched upon in the foregoing letters, and here, in preference to giving any opinion of my own, I quote from Mr. R. H. Dana, an Episcopalian, and a barrister of the highest standing in America, well known in this country by his writings, who sums up his investigations on the Sandwich Islands in the following dispassionate words:
“It is no small thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board, that in less than forty years they have taught this whole people to read and to write, to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible, and works of devotion, science, and entertainment, etc. They have established schools, reared up native teachers, and so pressed their work, that now the proportion of inhabitants who can read and write is greater than in New England. And whereas they found these islanders a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on the sand, eating raw fish, fighting among themselves, tyrannized over by feudal chiefs, and abandoned to sensuality, they now see them decently clothed, recognizing the law of marriage, knowing something of accounts, going to school and public worship more regularly than the people do at home, and the more elevated of them taking part in conducting the affairs of the constitutional monarchy under which they live, holding seats on the judicial bench and in the legislative chambers, and filling posts in the local magistracies.”
If space permitted, the testimony of “Mark Twain,” given in “Roughing It,” might be added to the above, and the remaining missionaries may well point to the visible results of their labours, with the one wordCircumspice!