Six Months in the Sandwich Islands 9780824884932

Citation preview

SIX

MONTHS

IN T H E

SANDWICH

ISLANDS

Isabella L. Bird

SIX MONTHS IN THE

m»

SANDWICH

ISLANDS

U N I V E R S I T Y O F H A W A I I P R E S S F O R F R I E N D S O F T H E L I B R A R Y O F H A W A I I , H O N O L U L U , 1966

Copyright 196U L ^ V N J First printing,

by the University of Hawaii

196b; second printing,

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. Manufactured

in Honolulu,

Press

1966 64-25669

Hawaii, by The Mission

Press

TO M Y

SISTER,

TO W H O M T H E S E WERE THEY

LETTERS

ORIGINALLY

ARE NOW

WRITTEN,

AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

PREFACE

Within the last century the Hawaiian islands have been the topic of various works of merit, and some explanation of the reasons which have led me to enter upon the same subject is necessary. I was travelling for health, when circumstances induced me to land on the group, and the benefit which I derived from the climate tempted me to remain for nearly seven months. During that time the necessity of leading a life of open air and exercise as a means of recovery, led me to travel on horseback to and fro through the islands, exploring the interior, ascending the highest mountains, visiting the active volcanoes, and remote regions which are known to few even of the residents, living among the natives, and otherwise seeing Hawaiian life in all its phases. At the close of my visit, my Hawaiian friends urged me strongly to publish my impressions and experiences, on the ground that the best books already existing, besides being old, treat chiefly of aboriginal customs and habits now extinct, and of the introduction of Christianity and subsequent historical events. They also represented that I had seen the islands more thoroughly than any foreign visitor, and the volcano of Mauna Loa under specially favourable circumstances, and that I had so completely lived the island life, and acquainted myself with the existing state of the country, as to be rather

a kamaina* than a stranger, and that consequently I should be able to write on Hawaii with a degree of intimacy as well as freshness. My friends at home, who were interested in my narratives, urged me to give them to a wider circle, and my inclinations led me in the same direction, with a sort of longing to make others share something of my own interest and enjoyment. The letters which follow were written to a near relation, and often hastily and under great difficulties of circumstance, but even with these and other disadvantages, they appear to me the best form of conveying my impressions in their original vividness. With the exception of certain omissions and abridgments, they are printed as they were written, and for such demerits as arise from this mode of publication, I ask the kind indulgence of my readers. ISABELLA L . B I R D .

January,

1875.

* A native word used to signify an old resident

vii

HONOLULU

PREFACE

Frank A. Hecht, chairman

Alice Kiewit Pauline N. King

Thomas M. C. Chang

Mrs. Ray

A. Grove Day

Thomas Nicker son

Morris

Mrs. Charles J. Henderson

Mrs. Steele F. Stewart

Mrs. Sam Jackson

Robert E. Van Dyke

Friends of The Library of Hawaii was organized by a public-

Albert F. Judd

John T.

spirited group of citizens in 1938. Eight years later it merged

Harold W. Kent

John

with the Honolulu Library and Reading Room

Association.

Since then it has been active on many levels in promoting the best interests of Hawaii's free library In 1963 the Friends furthered

Waierhouse

Wright

The Committee's principal support of the community

system.

its aim to "increase the

function will be to enlist the

in the inauguration

Sandwich Islands Publications

of a series of

under the sponsorship of the

facilities of the Library of Hawaii by the securing of materials

Friends. Donors to the Series will be listed in the limited

beyond the command of the ordinary library budget" when

editions.

they purchased the valuable James of Hawaiiana,

now permanently

Tice Phillips

Collection

on display in the Library.

It was recognized that there exist in this and other such

The initial selection was a happy one—the first edition of "Six Months in the Sandwich Murray

Islands" published by John

of London in 1875. To this text have been added

collections out-of-print books about Hawaii which because of

photographs of the Islands as Miss Bird saw them,

their scarcity and high price are not readily available to the

made available by Robert E. Van Dyke from his outstanding

general public. Mrs. Steele F. Stewart, a member of the board

collection. Alfons Korn, professor of English at the University

of directors of the Friends, drew attention to one such book—

of Hawaii and a member of the Hawaiian Historical

Isabella L. Bird's "Six Months in the Sandwich

has written

Islands."

the introduction.

kindly

Society,

The book was designed

by

Her suggestion that this lively and authentic travel book is

Norman S. Ives, University of Hawaii visiting professor of

highly deserving of perpetuation was enthusiastically

art from Yale University. It is the good fortune of the Friends

Accordingly,

a Publications

the chairmanship

endorsed.

Committee was formed

under

of Frank A. Hecht, vice-president of the

board of directors of the Friends, to assume leadership in such an undertaking.

under the guidance of Thomas Nickerson, Aldyth V. Morris, its managing

It includes a nucleus of board members and

a group of community leaders deeply interested in viii

to have the book published by the University of Hawaii

Hawaiiana.

editor.

THOMAS M.

March 19, 196k

Press

its director, and

c.

CHANG,

president

Friends of the Library of Hawaii

INTRODUCTION

despite mutilations

and contradictions,

promises

to survive as a supremely

less and

less lovely world.

Hawaiian," "The

a recent British

environment

American

Hawaii

attractive portion

"Hawaii

remains

states, Hawaii

visitor to the islands tells us.

has the most piquant

The Victorian reader of travel books was not easily frightened,

history, and through all the sulphur,

fat of tourism, she retains a . . . fragrance of

knowledge particularly—exact

geographical information,

tanical

overtones—these

lore, anthropological

bo-

were a sub-

of a

resiliently

is coming out on lop. . . .

by promises of intellectual improvement. Knowledge,

scientific

as a whole

Whatever else Isabella Bird's

Of all the

and

pungent

saccharine and

frying

Polynesia."*

book is about, it is full of

that lingering fragrance. And it is a book of superb

landscapes.

stantial part of what Miss Bird's contemporaries were looking

It is, above all, an account of the physical allure of the islands,

for: much more than mere autobiographical

reminiscence.

their beauty of ocean and air, mountain and valley, as Isabella

Bui there was something else besides mental profit the late

Bird saw them, became entranced by them, and recorded them

19th-century reader was seeking in a new book about

some ninety years ago in the series of letters—thirty-one

Was it beauty? A vision of human happiness?

Hawaii.

Whatever it

was, it was something elusive and notoriously hard to define:— Summer

isles of Eden

Probably no one today would think of describing

image of Hawaii

"Locksley

as an earthly paradise

between January

and August,

to her sister in

Hawaii's

Hall"—the

trite

and the home of

Henrietta Henrietta

at Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, off the

coast of western Scotland.

Her travels, when not confined to

other parts of the Hebrides, consisted in going to and back. Isabella's journeys Extending

as

Scotland

1873.

Bird shared a passion for Highlands and Islands. settled permanently

Yet the suggestion of the title-page

verses borrowed from Tennyson's

in this volume—written

One of their friends once said that Isabella and

lying

In dark purple spheres of sea . . .

varied seas as dark purple.

numbered

Edinburgh

were on a truly heroic scale.

over fifty years of her long lifetime, they took her

summer eternal—is part of an Arcadian myth that should not

not only to America and to Hawaii, but eventually to Japan,

be laid aside as an irrelevant dream of the

the Malay Peninsula,

It is sad but true that Honolulu

late-Victorians.

is becoming each day more

and more, to the eye at least, just another mid-century can city, thanks to the bulldozed hillside, the four-lane and the versatile advantages of ferro-concrete.

Ameri-

upper

the Diamond Mountains

Yangtze River, Kirmanshah

plains of Urmi, the Vale of Kashmir

of Korea, the

and the hills above the and the tablelands of

highway,

Nevertheless,

* James Morris, Coast to Coast (London: 1962).

ix

Tibet. Her "destiny" both as a woman and a traveler, as she came to think of it, was nothing if not complex.

II Born at Boroughbridge Hall, Yorkshire, England, in 1831, she was already middle-aged when she set forth in the autumn of 1872 on a journey to Australia and New Zealand, then to Hawaii—in Britain still known as the Sandwich Islands— and afterwards to the Bocky Mountains. Her object on this eighteen-month pilgrimage, much of it passed at sea, was to restore herself to health. From childhood she had been troubled by some form of spinal disease; an operation at the age of eighteen ("in the neighbourhood of the spine"), though it appeared to alleviate, certainly never cured her chronic complaint. Her doctors first began regularly prescribing a sea voyage when she was in her early twenties: a standard remedy of the day for various organic disorders, especially those accompanied by "nerves." At her fathers suggestion, Isabella Bird visited Prince Edward Island, several of the cities of eastern Canada, and parts of the United States as far west as Chicago; and she wrote her spirited and still readable An Englishwoman in America (1856), her first published book. In 1858 she again visited the United States, again in accord with her father's suggestion, this time to study the activities of the churches. The Beverend Edward Bird, an Anglican clergyman with intense evangelical convictions, hoped to compile a report on the great religious revival in America. His x

sudden death in 1858, not long after Isabella's return from the United States, might have ended his plans had it not been for his daughter's devotion. Though almost overcome by grief, she was able within a few months after his death to complete her second book, Aspects of Religion in the United States (1859), written in fulfillment of his last wish. Edward Bird had been a strong believer in the strict observance of the Sabbath. In fact, it was owing to difficulties with his Cheshire parishioners on the subject of cheesemaking on Sunday that he had been transferred to a city church in Birmingham. Since about 1850, during the later years of his life, he had been in the habit of taking his wife and two daughters on an annual holiday to Scotland, where Sabbath observance was traditional and complete. After his death, Mrs. Bird and Isabella and Henrietta settled permanently in Scotland. Edinburgh served as their home base, but they spent much time in the West Highlands and the Western Isles, especially at Tobermory on Mull. The purpose of these visits, in addition to reviving memories of the past, was partly charitable. For long periods the two sisters lived among the western fisherfoik and crofters. They helped to organize emigration parties leaving the Hebrides for Canada (1862-1866), and Isabella herself went out to Canada to see how they were gelling on. Her philanthropy had a romantic cast also, foreshadowing that virginal yearning for a simple and solitary life that stirred her so deeply in Hawaii. "I never before realized my ideal of quiet and pure primitive life," she wrote of one of her trips through the Western Isles. "It was delicious. It seemed as if a heavenly balm stole in at every menial pore,

and as if the invisible, usually shut out very near." According to Miss Bird's the pathos of that dear Celtic remnant mystical world, where past and future unseen."*

by the material, came biographer, she "felt . . . in touch with a reached out into the

The death of her mother in 1867 came as a shock, plunging Isabella Bird again into despondency, similar to that of eight years earlier at the time of the death of her father. Yet she was able to proceed with studies of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and complete a small book exposing the horrifying slum conditions of Edinburgh's Old Town. During the next several years her health continued to decline. Again the doctors ordered a life outdoors, even if no farther away than the Western Isles—she should sleep on a ground floor "and be out in a boat most of the day." By 1870 her spinal disorder had deteriorated so much that she was required to wear a steel net to support the back of her head. The cause of her suffering, her medical advisors agreed, was "the weight of her head on a diseased spine." The climate of Scotland is notably unadapted to the needs of delicate females who require year-round active exercise out in the open. On doctors' orders, Miss Bird made a cruise of Mediterranean ports in Italy, Algeria, and Spain, but was disappointed by the therapeutic results. She immediately signed up for a much more extensive cruise, this time to Australia and the Pacific, allowing herself to be separated from Henrietta and Edinburgh and Tobermory for a full * A n n a M . S t o d d a r t , The Life of Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop) m u c h i n d e b t e d t o thia book f o r m a n y b i o g r a p h i c a l d e t a i l s .

( L o n d o n : 1906). I a m

eighteen months. Though at first uncomfortable and depressed, she improved both in health and spirits as soon as her ship crossed the Line. Melbourne bored her and Dunedin proved thoroughly disagreeable because of the dust and the heal (it was the New Zealand winter) together with "the drunkenness everywhere." However, by the time she sailed for the Sandwich Islands on New Year's Day, 1873, she felt already transformed: At last I am in love [she confided playfully in a letter to a sympathetic friend] and the old sea-god has so stolen my heart and penetrated my soul that I seriously feel that hereafter, though I must be elsewhere in body, I shall be with him in spirit!... I have imbibed the very spirit of the sea. When Miss Bird landed at Honolulu on January 25, 1873, she was prepared to look at the world through the eyes of a bride. Of course, there was to be a vast difference.

Ill From her earliest glimpse of the islands, Isabella Bird was aware of their aura of unreality. Beneath the surface of much that seemed so alluring lay a dark layer of decepliveness and contradiction. In the distance Oahu took on the quality of a mirage: "owing to the clear atmosphere, we seemed only five miles o f f , but in reality we were twenty." Even when her ship was entering the harbor, Honolulu "had almost to be taken on trust." From the deck of the Nevada nothing much of the famous town was visible at all—only a pair of wooden church xi

spires, a few grey roofs, a scattering of grass huts with deep

reminded her variously of Cumberland, Kent, the French A Ips,

verandahs, and a screen of "palms and bananas on soft green

and parts of northern

sward, margined by the bright sea sand."

During

Though seductive to the eye, the commercial Hawaiian

hub of the

Kingdom and its uneasy political center proved a

disappointment

to Miss Bird: not so bad as Dunedin,

still a disappointment. the monarchy

The Hawaiian

but

Hotel, an enterprise of

devised to promote tourism, encourage

and bolster up the ailing Hawaiian

aloha,

economy, achieved an

usually

her months

Wisconsin. on these neighbor islands,

she was

the guest of one or another of the early haole—the

foreign—families,

especially those of missionary

background

and connection.

The names of her closest friends

recur im-

portantly in the entire history of Hawaii, as a native

monarchy,

a U.S. territory, and (since 1959) a state of the Union: the Damons of Honolulu;

the Coans and Lymans

and

Austins

elegance unexpected in so remote a part of the globe; but at a

of Hawaii; the Rices and Smiths on Kauai. Of all these good

public cost of $120,000, "a sum which forms a considerable

people, whose enormous respectability

part of that token of an advanced civilization,

their hospitality,

Debt."

a

National

"I dislike health resorts, abhor this kind of

Miss Bird announced

in her second letter home,

residence."

She eventually

Miss

transferred

her dis-

a benighted people who received the Gospel " 'breaking

Paradise

them', to use their own phrase, Hike light in morning'

Honolulu

attempts

sailing August,

off to another

island.

Between

Kilauea Crater; to Judge Austin's the windward "hidden"

only three days before late January

1873, she made successive excursions

also on Hawaii;

and

to Hilo; to

extensive sugar

plantation

and to various more remote regions

coast of Hawaii,

valleys of Waipio

loured the great "Dead

Students

especially

and Waimanu.

Volcano"

to the

on

wonderful

In March she

of Haleakala

on

Maui.

interpretation of Hawaiian

the old

"anti-missionary"

history. But such conclusions

have to be laboriously distilled from the author's implications

upon "?

who pick up this book may find in it here and

there some useful matter to fortify

in Honolulu

Jesus"—to

" The

effort."

Bird slopped

awe: had they not helped to bring

a more

taste for the subsidized hotel to all Honolulu: to be, Hilo is without

a veneration approaching

imagine

of the Pacific" had been oversold. "What

profound

regard. Indeed, two or three of the patriarchs she viewed with the tidings of na loa ia Iesu—"endless life through

that "for those who like both, I cannot fascinating

life,"

conceding

was only exceeded by

Miss Bird invariably speaks with

or omissions,

unconscious

rather than from her

forthright,

and usually glowing, statements. Her ardent evangelical blended with her imagination, of her father's pulpit,

will

and with the rhetorical

faith

tradition

in such a way as to cast Father Coan

and Brother Lyman into the role of tribal heroes of

Christian

Hawaii: bringers of the true fire who in their prime had been

Later still she spent over a month on the less visited island of

not only powerful preachers but mighty doers of the work of

Kauai.

the Lord. Miss

xii

Kauai's

pastoral serenity in its many

modulations

Bird's

apocalyptic

description

of

historic

eruptions of Kilauea and tidal waves on Hawaii, inspired by fascinating reminiscences of Dr. Titus Coan and the Lymans, strikes a high note of elegy in Letter XII:— I look on these venerable people as I should on people who have seen the Deluge, or the burial of Pompeii, and wonder that they eat and dress and live like other mortals! . . . There were years in which there was no day in which the smoke of underground furnaces was out of their sight, or night that was not lurid with flames. . . . We see a clothed and finished earth; they see the building of an island. Conceived in epic dimensions, Miss Bird's early American missionaries form part of a revised creation myth, as her imagination becomes warmed by the spectacle of the prehistoric yet living volcanoes of Hawaii. For Miss Bird and the majority of her contemporaries, Kilauea's tongues of mighty flame still spoke a language of Revelation: "It burns for the Creator's eye alone, for no foot of mortal can approach it." IV Her roving experience of the Hawaiian scene thus ranged from the happy valley and the summer sea to the mysterious furnace of the Apocalypse. But what she excelled in observing, and wrote of with greatest freshness and spontaneity, was everyday Hawaii oul-of-doors. Her most memorable letters are those in which she evokes a vanished, or now vanishing, Hawaiian landscape: a place and its atmosphere at a point in time—but often an atmosphere that has marvelously survived, though in a diminished way, and so become "historic"—together with a few human figures peopling the foreground.

The most lively and telling of the human figures are those who, as a rule, appear most often in crowds or groups, and only very seldom as individuals—the Hawaiian natives. But sometimes the human perspective includes haole settlers among Hawaiians, such as the Sinclairs of Niihau and Kauai, folk living by formal choice an oddly mixed style of life. Then, as a central figure in the landscape, there is Isabella Bird, very much of an individual—too much of an eccentric perhaps to be simply typified. She may qualify nevertheless as a splendid early example of one type of tourist, the temporarily Hawaiianized lady-visitor, with an eager mind and a latent for imparting her exotic experience. Her regular outfit, when tramping in the forest or negotiating Hawaii's formidable up-and-down gulches on horseback, was a kind of bloomer costume of sturdy flannel—like "a Newport bathing dress." A colorful flannel, much fancied by the Hawaiian women for their holokus, Miss Bird's was a true tartan pattern in the green and scarlet MacGregor plaid. It was in her "Rob Roy costume" that she adopted the Hawaiian equivalent of the Mexican saddle, and soon mastered the triumphant but unladylike art of riding astride. Her models were the admirable Hawaiian women who "rode as square and easy as a hussar." I am beginning to hope that I am not too old, as I feared 1 was, to learn a new mode of riding. . . . I wish you could see me in my Rob Roy riding dress, with leather bell and pouch, a lei of the orange seeds of the pandanus round my throat, jingling Mexican spurs, blue saddle blanket, and Rob Roy blanket strapped on behind the saddle! Well before the end of her stay in Hawaii, Isabella Bird xiii

had fully qualified herself as an expert horsewoman. Probably no visitor of her period or ours, certainly no other haole author of the frailer sex, ever spent a more strenuous six months of outdoor life in Hawaii, or wrote of thai experience with a comparable sense of adventure and self-mastery and well-earned pride. She had won her Mexican spurs on the treacherous slopes of Mauna Kea and the breathtaking coastal ledges of windward Hawaii; by the time she reached Kauai's gentler trails the natives of that island hailed the wahine Rob Roy as a true member, though an oddly dressed one, of the paniola breed:— . . . and we all rode down at a tremendous, and, as I should once have thought, a breakneck speed, when one of the women patted me on the shoulder, exclaiming, "maikai! maikai! paniola!" I thought they said "spaniola," taking me for a Spaniard, but on reaching Lihue, and asking her the meaning of the word, Mrs. Rice said, "Oh, lassoing cattle, and all that kind of thing." Though she was a perceptive as well as energetic student of some features of the Hawaiian scene, Isabella Bird never wholly divested herself of the usual Anglo-Saxon notions of propriety. The reader is not told, but can only surmise, exactly what customs she may have had in mind when she primly observed: "It is a strange life going about with natives, whose ideas, as shown by their habits, are, to say the least, very peculiar." One's discovery of traces of unconscious humor in her writing, as well as full recognition of its "period" charm, depends sometimes on keeping well in mind the fact that the Amazonian author was about five feel high, like xiv

Queen Victoria, and infallibly enclosed—even when she bathed under a waterfall—in the durable armor of her MacGregor plaid. Her "classical" allusions, as in the following fresco of naiads and fauns and hamadryads, partly serve the same delicate purpose as fig leaves:— I enjoyed a delicious bath, relying on the sun and wind to dry my clothes, and then reluctantly waded down the river. At its confluence with another stream, still arched by ohias, a man and two women appeared rising out of the water, like a vision of the elder world in the days of Fauns, and Naiads, and Hamadryads. The water was up to their waists, and leis of ohia blossoms and ferns, and masses of unbound hair fantastically wreathed with moss, fell over their faultless forms, and their rich brown skin gleamed in (he slant sunshine.

V Isabella Bird's finest picture of the everyday life of Hawaiians of the 1870's, o/kua-aina or "back-country" folk in particular, is contained in three of her most absorbing letters, X, XI, and XVI. These tell of trips on horseback to two secluded, almost inaccesible valleys on windward Hawaii: a visit to Waipio in mid-February and a return visit to Us even more hidden neighbor valley, Waimanu, in March. It is believed that Isabella Bird was the second foreign woman to have seen Waimanu. These successive journeys, two in number but one in spirit, represent the climax of her search in Hawaii for some secret

garden of bewilchmeni and eternal dream. She succeeds in communicating not only the beauty of the landscape but also something of its uncanny power, "more solitary than solitude," to haunt and play tricks on the mind. From the overhanging pali—"where the trail struck off into space" —Waimanu, 2,500 feel below, seemed like some lost planet poised in a universe of its own:— It was a scene of loneliness to which Waipio seems the world. In a second the eye took in the twenty grass lodges of its inhabitants, the five cascades, which dive into the dense forests of its upper end, its river like a silver ribbon, and its meadows of living green. In ten seconds a bird could have spanned the ravine . . . but we could only tip over the dizzy ridge that overhangs the valley, and laboriously descend into its heat and silence. Human perception moves into something like fantasy when one image transforms itself into another without normal warning or sign. Miss Bird does not say this in so many words. But by her concern to capture her impressions, to explore faithfully her trance-like vision of Hawaiian landscape, we are able to share her mood and participate in her dream, even if her sense of magic—to say nothing of her frequent mode of travel—is no longer quite our own:— When, after an hours fighting we arrived in sight of the cascade [Waipio Falls], but not of the basin into which it falls, our . . . guide declined to go further, saying that the wind was rising and that stones would fall and kill us; but being incredulous on this point, I left them, and with great difficulty and many bruises, got up the river to its exit from the basin, and there, being unable to climb the

rocks on either side, stood up to my throat in the still, tepid water till the scene became real to me. Isabella Bird does not omit the less delightful features of her two most hazardous journeys. Grubby details are by no means suppressed but are even developed, sometimes for their humor, always for the sake of their truth. On the trip to Waipio she found herself traveling on horseback along with two handsome guides, two cousins, a girl and a boy, Deborah aged seventeen, and Kaluna aged sixteen. The three spent their first night on the road at one Bola Bola's, in his miserable shack perched on the sides of a gulch: "a dilapidated frame-house, altogether forlorn, standing unsheltered on a slope of the mountain with one or two yet more forlorn piggeries." Counterparts of Bola Bola's would not be impossible to find in Hawaii today. But the nearby village at its bad worst—and there were loo many such villages in the late 19th century—belongs to its own unhappy era: "A number of disastrous-looking native houses . . . clustered under some very tall palms in the open part of the gulch, but it is a most wretched situation; the roar of the surf is deafening, the scanty supply of water is brackish, there are rumours that leprosy is rife." Whether the general setting be squalid or idyllic, the human figures encountered on these two journeys possess a similar clarity and truth. Without the training and tools of the anthropologist, Isabella Bird was inclined to describe what she saw as if she were an artist with a sketch-pad or someone copying an old watercolor or print. (Some of her best passages, it should be observed, are in the present tense and read as if they were written not only "in the field" but also on the spot.) xv

Miss Bird never aitempls to portray Ihe Hawaiian woman full-lenglh,

and only rarely does she depict a

man or Hawaiian

as an individual apart from the group or crowd. Aside three or four Lunalilo

interesting

most

Hawaiian

meetings

notably;

Bill

with

haolified

Emma—Isabella

Bird's

Ragsdale,

the elegant

and anglophile conversations

performance

—Kaluna proved of no use to the ladies at all. His

during his own easy passage was, as ever, absolutely

dazzling.

personages—King

orator who had so much fascinated

Ihe exceedingly

from

went I loo must go, and in the mare went with a blind plunge"

Mark

VI

Twain;

Dowager

with

part-

"the

Queen natives"

from

Waimanu,

ship for Honolulu.

While the

affairs,

barriers of language and profound

temperamental

gulfs on

shadowy glimpse

both sides. The nearest she comes to a dynamic

character

afar: but "only enchanting in the distance, for its blue petals

as in her vivid but purely

portrait of Kaluna, Deborah's sixteen-year-old

external

boy-cousin, of

Ihe remarkable eyes "even in this country of splendid "Kaluna antics,

eyes."

is not," wrote Miss Bird with deliberation,

a .strenuous

by

after her return journey

proved to be somewhat frustrating

sketch is by indirection,

handicapped

In late March,

Miss Bird took the interisland

after

day on the trail made no easier by the boy's

"a nonentity."

the young Hawaiian

The middle-aged

Miranda

portrays

Caliban with more than ordinary

care.

The heroine of this book is Isabella Bird.

It is a story

without even the shadow of a hero, containing

not a single

beachboy, though Kaluna's

absurd acrobatic presence in the

offing lends a piquant interest to one or two of the best episodes, as when Miss

Bird at Bola Bola's was awakened

in the

Kilauea was stopping

at Lahaina,

of Molokai,

Maui,

she caught a

lovely and wraith-like

enfold 800 lepers doomed to endless isolation."

from

Five months

later when she sailed for the United States, Miss Bird left the islands with no great regrets. Too much of the famed beauty of Hawaii,

she was by then convinced, was only a

distracting disguise: an opiate actually, lulling and drugging the mind

to reality and its pain.

pain was Molokai: the "infinite

And the symbol of that

curse which has come upon

this race, and with Molokai in sight the Hesperides

vanished,

and I ceased to believe that the Fortunate Isles exist here or anywhere else on this weary earth." During

her last weeks in Honolulu,

Isabella

wondered

whether it might not be a fine idea for Henrietta to come out to

middle of the night by an invasion of cats, and "next I saw

Hawaii from Scotland.

Kaluna's

curtain."

groves for a year, and so escape Ihe "grim gloom of our

On their dangerous return journey from Waipio, when ivhile

anomalous winters, Ihe harsh malignant winds of our springs,

crossing the torrent at Scotchman's

and the dismal rains and overpowering heals of our summers?"

magnificent eyes peering al us under the

Gulch, Miss Bird and

Why not join her among the palm

Deborah might well have lost both their horses and their lives

"No, don't come," was her final advice to Henrietta.

— "il was horrible to know thai into the chasm as the others

the climale

xvi

was superb—"absolutely

perfect,

True,

owing to its

(She meant that among its other

the neighbors, and "the absence of large interests shared in

virtues there was no smog.) Also, Hawaii was a cheap place

common," do not perhaps make a very grave bill of indictment.

to live: "Existence here is unclogged and easy, a small income

Perhaps one was being too hard on the little country which had

equability

and purity."

goes a long way." But otherwise the disadvantages, the very

been so lavish with its aloha and was in many ways "more like

definite drawbacks of the islands as a place to stay for any

home than any other part of the world." "I have never seen

great while, clearly outweighed Hawaii's

people among whom I should belter like to live,"

advantages.

For one thing, the whole social and political fabric of the kingdom was an uncertain and flimsy

affair. It was a

kind of patchwork country. There were loo many loo many haole factions,

foreigners,

VII

too many "heterogeneous and ill-

assorted

nationalities"—the

cliquish

English,

predominant

the even more cliquish

Americans, Germans.

the None

Six Months in the Sandwich Islands was published by John

seemed to want to compose their differing aims and interests

Murray,

for the sake of a common good: "and it is a decided misfortune

Isabella Bird made her Hawaiian

to a community

Isabella

finally decided. However, she never returned to Hawaii.

to be divided in its national leanings, and to

have no great fusing interests within or without itself, such as

one of the great British publishers, two years after trip. The first edition in

1875 was a success, and when Mr. Murray

needed a new

edition in 1876, Isabella Bird was pleased to have the oppor-

those which bind Victoria to the mother country, or distant

tunity to correct some of the figures, to keep them up-to-date,

Oregon to the heart of the Republic at

and insert a few revisions. It is only one of many books of

Furthermore, Hawaii

Washington."

although there were ways in which life in

was "truer, simpler, and happier than ours," not

only did indolence prevail almost everywhere (thanks to that lovely climate), but the social atmosphere generally was pervaded by an ingrained slovenliness of mind. And this absence

travel by Isabella Bird. But it is among her best, along with its entertaining

successor A Lady's Life in the Rocky

Mountains (1879), her account of her lour of the

"Wild

West" made during the autumn and early winter of 1873, on her way back from Hawaii to England.

sugar

At home again, she returned to her old devotion to philan-

and dollars, one rarely hears a subject spoken about with

thropic causes, earnest private studies, and poor health. She

general interest."

helped found a "Cabman's

of intellectual stimulus

could be stultifying:

"Except

This shallowness of attitude was common

even among the nicest people, as reflected in their for nuhou—trivial news—that "canker of the foreign

passion society."

But, after all, the appetite of human nature for gossip about

Edinburgh;

Rest and Restaurant

Room"

and she look up the microscope. Working

Dr. John Bishop, her own and Henrietta's

in with

medical advisor,

a former assistant to Dr. Joseph Lister, she specialized

in xvii

microscopic cryptogamic botany. (One is not surprised, reading the lists of plants in her book on Hawaii.)

after

She and

Dr. Bishop also gave much time and effort to help establish the "National

Livingstone Memorial,"

a project to provide a

non-sectarian college for the teaching of medical

missionaries.

Finally, in 1881, four years after he had first proposed to her, she and Dr. Bishop were married. "He behaved

major physical breakdown. She died in Edinburgh in 1904 in her seventy-third

year.

Viewed as a whole, notwithstanding

her marriage to Dr.

Bishop or her union of Christian philanthropy

with exotic

adventure, her life cannot be called a very joyous one. There had surely been a lime when she had known

happiness,

beautifully,"

intermittent moments of revelation and rapture. However, the

Isabella reported, after the first time she refused him. At any

character of her later life after the mid-18707s, both as a woman

rate, for several years before their marriage, they were able to

and a writer, was deeply colored by three sombre events. These

continue their friendship

were the deaths in succession of a beloved friend,

uninterrupted,

and "without

em-

barrassment."

then of

Henrietta, and finally of Dr. Bishop: the three persons who,

Dr. Bishop as friend and physician encouraged Isabella in her need to get away from home and Scotland for long intervals

after her father and mother, had been closest to her heart. The first to go was James Nugent of Colorado, the

of travel. In 1878 she spent seven months in Japan and five

tain Jim"

in the Malay Peninsula.

with Isabella Bird adds a quality of hidden

Her earliest books treating the Far

of her Rocky Mountain

East, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880), and T h e Golden

drama to that volume—indeed

book, whose

"Mounfriendship

psychological

a kind of buried love-story—

Chersonese and the Way Thither (1883), are accounts of

quite unlike the more diffuse, at times

these two journeys. Her further oriental travels included visits

emotional atmosphere generated here and there in her book

to India and Tibet, Persia, Kurdistan,

about

and Morocco. In her

sixties she toured Japan again, but spent more time in Korea and China. She was in Korea at the time of the

over-self-conscious,

Hawaii.

Then, in 1880, came the death of her sister, after months of

Japanese

wasting illness, the fatal effects of a siege of typhoid fever.

take-over and wrote valuable on-the-spot articles for a leading

After (he death of Henrietta, Isabella felt herself to be unfit for

British periodical. Though her basic health always

human love: "/ ventured all that I had to give upon her life,

remained

delicate, she demonstrated again and again those powers of physical

and exhausted my power of absorbing love from her."

endurance and cool bravery in the face of danger

Isabella Bird's marriage to her old friend Dr. Bishop in her

which, in the eyes of her Edinburgh doctors, made her some-

fiftieth year (he was her junior by a decade) provided her a

thing of a medical anomaly—indeed

a marvel. It was only

tender comradeship lasting five years. .4 s a result of performing

after her last return to London from Morocco in 1901 that

an operation on a sailor from an erysipelas ward, Dr. Bishop

she permanently

developed an infection. After a lingering illness

xviii

collapsed, and suffered, not long after, a

(diagnosed

finally as pernicious anemia) he died at Cannes in 1886, with Isabella at his bedside. During the years of his steady decline, Isabella made no more solitary journeys. But had he lived she would undoubtedly have continued her independent travels as a wife, if not on quite so extensive a scale. A man of humorous insights, as chivalrous as he was wise, Dr. Bishop once said of Isabella, "/ have only one formidable rival in Isabella's heart and that is the high tableland of Tibet." For Isabella Bird Bishop a love of nature and the contemplation of natural beauties could never compensate for the world's evil. After the death of her husband, according to her biographer, "She was aware of that tendency to be attracted by the disturbing magnetism of humanity, and she longed for a definite sphere in which to concentrate her forces for active work." In 1888 she arranged for herself a special baptism in a Baptist chapel, but one not requiring her to become a member of the Baptist Church: "It cost me a good deal to take the step and the night and the chapel and the dress were all so fearfully cold that it truly seemed 'burial'. To walk in newness of life is my great desire." Early in her widowhood she also attended St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, where she look nurses' training. She spent most of her time in the casually wards and the operating theatres. We are told that her later journeys, especially in India, where she established the John Bishop Memorial Hospital at Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, and in Persia, China, and Korea, were "as much opportunities for healing, nursing, and teaching, as for incident and adventure." Yet there had been a time, as she herself

admitted in her many public lectures on the great need for medical missions, when she "would have made a detour of twenty miles to avoid a mission station." "There are few who manage their life on evangelical lines, for evangelical destinies," she told an old friend in the last year of her life. "/ have tried, but it is very difficult." Perhaps at no time in her long life, except possibly in the Rockies, had she been more happy and carefree than during her six months in Hawaii: "/ . . . abandon myself wholly to the fascination of this new existence." And when she left Hawaii in August, 1873, she could say, with few reservations and no regret: "My eyes were satisfied with seeing." Her friends in Edinburgh were charmed and puzzled and perhaps sometimes exasperated by her contradictory ways. One of these friends, an eminent Scottish physician, writing in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, attributed her strangely inspired character to "the varied response of a single personality under varied conditions." Isabella Bird was, he said, indeed "one of those subjects who are dependent to the last degree upon their environment to bring out their possibilities." The invalid at home and the Samson abroad do not form a very usual combination, yet in her case these two ran tandem for many years. . . . When she took the stage as pioneer and traveller, she laughed at fatigue, she ivas indifferent to the terror of danger, she was careless of what a day might bring forth in the matter of food: but stepping from the boards into the wings of life, she immediately became the invalid, the timorous, delicate, gentle-voiced woman thai we associate with the Mrs. Bishop of Edinburgh. July 31, 196b

ALFONS L. KORN

xix

CONTENTS

LETTER

LETTER INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER

Where is Hawaii? — Explanations

LETTER

and thanks

I

A South Sea hurricane — Black water at last — Oddities of the "Nevada" — Insupportable heat — Our grotesque list

LETTER

II

First view of Honolulu — Sorry rawboned nags —Fantastic fish — Tropical luxuriance — Lush Nuuanu Valley — Enchanted dreamland — The perfection of an hotel — Kindness and bonhommie — Perfumed night

LETTER

III

The last of the "Nevada" — A golden opportunity — Dear old ill-found craft — A remarkable arrangement — The red rocks of Maui — Snow-capped domes — A magnificent coast-line — Luxuriant Hilo — Missionary influence — This is all Polynesia

xx

IV

43

The plumy coco-palm — The versatile pandanus — Preternatural green — Riding cavalier fashion — Social customs

V

49

Equestrian problems — A tropical forest — A sea of lava — Pain and exhaustion — A great darkness — Place of everlasting burnings — Iridescent rolls of lava — Hale-Mau-Mau crater — Fiery stalactites — Glories of Hale-Mau-Mau — A very picturesque inn — An irresponsible vapour bath

LETTER

VI

"Too much chief eat up people" —

LETTER

65 Lomi-Lomi

VII

67

An intimate community — Home life in Hilo — No thought for the morrow — Polynesian cookery — "Kanaka" objectionable — Surf-board riding

LETTER

VIII

73

Onomea, Hawaii — The Mexican saddle — A busy season — Vacuum pans and centrifugals — The sugar interest

LETTER

IX

An arcadian life — A forest paradise — The ferns of Onomea

79

LETTER X

83

L E T T E R X cont. Majestic — "Mr.

surroundings — The joy of full Wallace" — A cruel monster

93

98

A surf-deafened village — The strange "wahine haole" — Boiled fowl and kalo — Into the roaring torrent — The dizzy horrors of the tide — Swimming for life — An exigent lasso — The peril over

LETTER XII

Lahaina once more — A notice to lepers — "family school" — Trials of the sisters

107

A visit from a king — A Polynesian sovereign — American vulgarisms — The last of Upa

147 Lahaina

LETTER XVIII

115

167

The Hawaiian woman — A revolting monster — Bright-coloured fish — "Annexation and Reciprocity" — "Manifest destiny"

LETTER 125

151

"The cousins' society" — A perfect climate — Lions of Honolulu — Queen Emma's garden parly — Band concert, ices, and tea — A perishing nation — Stores and goods — American influence

LETTER XIX

King Lunalilo — A royal Procession — "The kind chief' — The hookupu — An enthusiastic reception — The gift bearers — Old-time reverence — The king's speech

LETTER XIY

135

A palpable and living dream — Native curiosity — Waimea by sunrise — Atop Waipio pali — Above Waimanu — Waimanu Valley — Entrancing waters — Five flashing cascades — A moonlight stroll — Up to the valley head — A terrifying descent

L E T T E R X Y 11

The Hilo missionaries — A great baptism — Tale of a tidal wave — A high priest and priestess — The power of Pele — Kapiolani's challenge — The earthquake of 1868 — A direful day

LETTER XIII

128

LETTER XVI

gallop

LETTER XI

L E T T E R XV Kawaihae Bay — A trans-island tour — Scorched earth — An inhospitable interrogation — A sink of iniquity — The early settlers

Off for Waipio — A native school — A mannerless kanaka — Windward Hawaii — Perilous fords — A precipitous Pali — A native repast — Nocturnal diversions — A man of property — Luxury in a gulch

XX

173

The schooner "Jenny" — A miserable passage — Physical features of Kauai — Soft tranquil beauty — The Hawaiian liquor laws — A Polynesian narcotic — The effects of awa — A "family school" xxi

LETTER XXI

181

LETTER XXII A fern forest — Native altitudes — matters

"See Hanalei and die" — "Maikai, — Mauna Kalalea

189

193 Paniola!"

LETTER XXIV

196

Maaleia to Wailuku — An island sahara — Crater of Haleakala — Interior of the crater — Unutterable isolation — Pete's revenge — Patient hospitality

L E T T E R XXV

206

The blue lakelet of Puna — The Molokai settlement — Leprosy in Hawaii-nei — The island of exile — "Governor Ragsdale" — Diet and instruction — A living grave — Scenes in the hospital xxii

228

Descent into Kilauea — The two lakes of fire — A fiery engulfment — The "blowing cones" — Horrors of Halemaumau — "The fire's gone out" — Rough accommodations — A picturesque scene

L E T T E R X X I X cont.

237

The ascent begins — A waste of lava — Sickening terror — The crater of Mokuaweoweo — Wonder after wonder — A world of fire — My solitary vigil — Eternal solitudes serene — A painful descent — An earthquake shock — A magnificent view — Hilo once more

248

Characteristics of Kona — A wonderful dreamland — Life on Hualalai — Death of a bullock — "Praying to death" — Last eruption of Hualalai — Rough living — Kona, languid dream

LETTER XXXI 212

Bullock horse Kahélé — Kahéles sociability — Dear beautiful Hilo

LETTER XXVII

226

LETTER XXX

The light on Mauna Loa — An intolerable fascination — An Hawaiian sheep station — Ascent of Mauna Kea — An ancient quarry — A foggy descent

LETTER XXVI

XXVIII

LETTER XXIX

Missionary

LETTER XXIII

LETTER

Excited preparations

Koloa, epitome of paradise — A patriarchal home at Makaueli — The Niihau story — A joyous party — Hanapepe falls — Inhumanity to horses — The blessing of plenty

The cliques — Small bright tropic dream

258 criticisms

—

Farewell,

HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS 216

265

Taxation — Exports and imports — The educational system — Land use — Agricultural crops — Prospects of the islands

HAWAIIAN HISTORY Recent Hawaiian history

271

SIX

MONTHS

IN THE S A N D W I C H

ISLANDS

2

Introductory Chapter

CANON K I N G S L E Y , in his charming book on the West Indies, says, " The undoubted fact is known I find to few educated English people, that the Coco palm, which produces coir rope, cocoanuts, and a hundred other useful things, is not the same plant as the cacao bush which produces chocolate, or anything like it. I am sorry to have to insist upon this fact, but till Professor Huxley's dream and mine is fulfilled, and our schools deign to teach, in the intervals of Greek and Latin, some slight knowledge of this planet, and of those of its productions which are most commonly in use, even this fact may need to be re-stated more than once." There is no room for the supposition that the intelligence of Mr. Kingsley's " educated English " acquaintance is below the average, and I should be sorry to form

3

WHERE

IS

HAWAII?

an unworthy estimate of tliat of my own circle, though I have several times met with the foregoing confusion, as well as the following and other equally ill-informed questions, one or two of which I reluctantly admit that I might have been guilty of myself before I visited the Pacific: "Whereabouts are the Sandwich Islands? They are not the same as the Fijis, are they ? Are they the same as Otaheite ? Are the natives all cannibals ? What sort of idols do they worship ? Are they as pretty as the other South Sea Islands ? Does the king wear clothes ? Who do they belong to ? Does any one live on them but the savages ? Will anything grow on them ? Are the people very savage?"etc. Their geographical position is a great difficulty. I saw a gentleman of very extensive information looking for them on the map in the neighbourhood of Tristran d'Acunha ; and the publishers of a high-class periodical lately advertised, "Letters from the Sandwich Islands" as "Letters from the South Sea Islands." In consequence of these and similar interrogatories, which are not altogether unreasonable, considering the imperfect teaching of physical geography, the extent of this planet, the multitude of its productions, and the enormous number of islands composing Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, it is necessary to preface the following letters with as many preliminary statements as shall serve to make them intelligible. The Sandwich Islands do not form one of the South Sea groups, and have no other connexion with them than certain affinities of race and language. They constitute the only important group in the vast North Pacific Ocean, 4

in which they are so advantageously placed as to be pretty nearly equidistant from California, Mexico, China, and Japan. They are in the torrid zone, and extend from 18° 50' to 22° 20' north latitude, and their longitude is from 154° 53' to 160° 15' west from Greenwich. They were discovered by Captain Cook in 1778. They are twelve in number, but only eight are inhabited, and these vary in size from Hawaii, which is 4000 square miles in extent, and 88 miles long by 73 broad, to Kahoolawe, which is only 11 miles long and 8 broad. Their entire superficial area is about 6,100 miles. They are to some extent bounded by barrier reefs of coral, and have few safe harbours. Their formation is altogether volcanic, and they possess the largest perpetually active volcano and the largest extinct crater in the world. They are very mountainous, and two mountain summits on Hawaii are nearly 14,000 feet in height. Their climate for salubrity and general equability is reputed the finest on earth. I t is almost absolutely equable, and a man may take his choice between broiling all the year round on the sea level on the leeward side of the islands at a temperature of 80°, and enjoying the charms of a fireside at an altitude where there is frost every night of the year. There is no sickly season, and there are no diseases of locality. The trade winds blow for nine months of the year, and on the windward coasts there is an abundance of rain, and a perennial luxuriance of vegetation. The Sandwich Islands are not the same as Otaheite nor as the Fijis, from which they are distant about 4,000 miles, nor are their people of the same race. The natives

EXPLANATIONS

are not cannibals, and it is doubtful if they ever were so. Their idols only exist in missionary museums. They cast them away voluntarily in 1819, at the very time when missionaries from America sent out to Christianize the group were on their way round Cape Horn. The people are all clothed, and the king, who is an educated gentleman, wears the European dress. The official designation of the group is " Hawaiian Islands," and they form an independent kingdom. The natives are not savages, most decidedly not. They are on the whole a quiet, courteous, orderly, harmless, Christian community. The native population has declined from 400,000 as estimated by Captain Cook in 1778 to 49,000, according to the census of 1872. There are about 5,000 foreign residents, who live on very friendly terms with the natives, and are mostly subjects of Kalakaua, the king of the group. The islands have a thoroughly civilized polity, and the Hawaiians show a great aptitude for political organization. They constitute a limited monarchy, and have a constitutional and hereditary king, a parliament with an upper and lower house, a cabinet, a standing army, a police force, a Supreme Court of Judicature, a most efficient postal system, a Governor and Sheriff on each of the larger islands, court officials, and court etiquette, a common school system, custom houses, a civil list, taxes, a national debt, and most of the other amenities and appliances of civilization.

AND

THANKS

The missionaries translated the Bible and other books into Hawaiian, taught the natives to read and write, gave the princes and nobles a high class education, induced the king and chiefs to renounce their oppressive feudal rights, with legal advice framed a constitution which became the law of the land, and obtained the recognition of the little Polynesian kingdom as a member of the brotherhood of civilized nations. With these few remarks I leave the subject of the volume to develop itself in my letters. They have not had the advantage of revision by any one familiar with the Sandwich Islands, and mistakes and inaccuracies may consequently appear, on which, I hope that my Hawaiian friends will not be very severe. In correcting them, I have availed myself of the very valuable "History of the Hawaiian Islands," by Mr. Jackson Jarves, Ellis' " T o u r Eound Hawaii," Mr. Brigham's valuable monograph on " T h e Hawaiian Volcanoes," and sundry reports presented to the legislature during its present session. I have also to express my obligations to the Hon. E . Allen, Chief Justice and Chancellor of the Hawaiian kingdom, Mr. Manley Hopkins, author of " Hawaii," Dr. T. M. Coan, of New York, Professor W. Alexander, Daniel Smith, Esq., and other friends at Honolulu, for assistance most kindly rendered. ISABELLA L .

BIED.

There is no State Church. The majority of the foreigners, as well as of the natives, are Congregationalists. 5

LETTER I

in the bay, preferring to spend the night in her than in the unbearable heat on shore.

She belongs to the W e b b

line, an independent mail adventure, now dying a natural death, undertaken by the New Zealand Government, as much probably out of jealousy of Victoria as anything else. She nearly foundered on her last voyage; her passengers STEAMER

NEVADA,

JANUARY

1 9 .

unanimously signed a protest against her unseaworthy condition.

A WHITE, unwinking, scintillating sun blazed

down

She was condemned by the

Government

surveyor, and her mails were sent to Melbourne.

She

Along the white glaring

has, however, been patched up for this trip, and eight

road from Onehunga, dusty trees and calla lilies drooped

passengers, including myself, have trusted ourselves to

with the heat.

her.

upon Auckland, New Zealand.

D u s t y thickets sheltered the cicada, whose

She is a huge paddle-steamer, of the old-fashioned

triumphant din grated and rasped through the palpitating

American type, deck above deck, balconies, a pilot-house

atmosphere.

be

abaft the foremast, two monstrous walking beams, and two

gardens, shrivelled geraniums scattered sparsely alone

masts which, possibly in case of need, might serve as jury

defied the heat.

masts.

In

dusty

enclosures,

supposed

Flags drooped in the stifling air.

to

Men

on the verge of sunstroke plied their tasks mechanically, like automatons.

flabby

and

H u g e , airy, perfectly comfortable as she is, not a

protruding

passenger stepped on board without breathing a more

tongues, hid themselves away under archway shadows.

earnest prayer than usual that the voyage might end

T h e stones of the sidewalks and the brick of the houses

propitiously.

radiated a furnace heat.

whispered about to the effect that her state of disrepair

groaning, gasping.

Dogs, with

A l l nature was limp, dusty,

T h e very first evening statements were

T h e day was the climax of a burning

is such that she has not been to her own port for nine

fortnight, of heat, draught, and dust, of baked, cracked,

months, and has been sailing for that time without a

dewless land, and oily breezeless seas, of glaring days,

certificate; that her starboard shaft is partially fractured,

passing through fierce fiery sunsets into stifling nights.

and that to reduce the strain upon it the floats of her

I only remained long enough in the capital to observe

starboard wheel have been shortened five inches, the strain

that it had a look of having seen better days, and that its

being further reduced by giving her a decided list to port;

business streets had an American impress, and, taking a

that her crank is " bandaged," that she is leaky, that

boat at a wharf, in whose seams the pitch was melting, I

her mainmast is sprung, and that with only four hours'

went off to the steamer Nevada, which was anchored out

steaming many of her boiler tubes, even some of those

6

A

put in at Auckland, had already given way. I cannot testify concerning the mainmast, though it certainly does comport itself like no other mainmast I ever saw; but the other statements and many more which might be added, are, I believe, substantially correct. That the caulking of the deck was in evil case we very soon had proof, for during heavy rain above, it was a smart shower in the saloon and state rooms, keeping four stewards employed with buckets and swabs, and compelling us to dine in waterproofs and rubber shoes. In this dilapidated condition, when two days out from Auckland, we encountered a revolving South Sea hurricane, succinctly entered in the log of the day as " Encountered a very severe hurricane with a very heavy sea." I t began at eight in the morning, and never spent its fury till nine at night, and the wind changed its direction eleven times. The Nevada left Auckland two feet deeper in the water than she ought to have been, and laboured heavily. Seas struck her under the guards with a heavy, explosive thud, and she groaned and strained as if she would part asunder. I t was a long weird day. We held no communication with each other, or with those who could form any rational estimate of the probabilities of our destiny; no officials appeared; the ordinary invariable routine of the steward department was suspended without notice; the sounds were tremendous, and a hot lurid obscurity filled the atmosphere. Soon after four the clamour increased, and the shock of a sea blowing up a part of the fore-guards made the groaning fabric reel and shiver throughout her whole huge bulk. At that time, by

SOUTH

SEA

HURRICANE

common consent, we assembled in the deck-house, which had windows looking in all directions, and sat there for five hours. Very few words were spoken, and very little fear was felt. We understood by intuition that if our crazy engines failed at any moment to keep the ship's head to the sea, her destruction would not occupy half-an-hour. It was all palpable. There was nothing which the most experienced seaman could explain to the merest novice. We hoped for the best, and there was no use in speaking about the worst. Nor, indeed, was speech possible, unless a human voice could have outshrieked the hurricane. In this deck-house the strainings, sunderings, and groanings were hardly audible, or rather were overpowered by a sound which, in thirteen months' experience of the sea in all weathers, I have never heard, and hope never to hear again, unless in a staunch ship, one loud, awful, undying shriek, mingled with a prolonged relentless hiss. No gathering strength, no languid fainting into momentary lulls, but one protracted gigantic scream. And this was not the whistle of wind through cordage, but the actual sound of air travelling with tremendous velocity, carrying with it minute particles of water. Nor was the sea running mountains high, for the hurricane kept it down. Indeed during those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the whole surface was caught up and carried furiously into the air, like snow-drift on the prairies, sibilant, relentless. There was profound quiet on deck, the little life which existed being concentrated near the bow, where the captain was either lashed to the foremast, or in shelter in the pilot-house. Never a soul appeared on deck, the force 7

BLACK

WATER

AT

LAST

of the hurricane being such that for four hours any man would have been carried off his feet. Through the swift strange evening our hopes rested on the engine, and amidst the uproar and din, and drifting spray, and shocks of pitiless seas, there was a sublime repose in the spectacle of the huge walking beams, alternately rising and falling, slowly, calmly, regularly, as if the Nevada were on a holiday trip within the Golden Gate. At eight in the evening we could hear each other speak, and a little later, through the great masses of hissing drift we discerned black water. At nine Captain Blethen appeared, smoking a cigar with nonchalance, and told us that the hurricane had nearly boxed the compass, and had been the most severe he had known for seventeen years. This grand old man, nearly the oldest captain in the Pacific, won our respect and confidence from the first, and his quiet and masterly handling of this dilapidated old ship is beyond all praise. "When the strain of apprehension was mitigated, we became aware that we had not had anything to eat since breakfast, a clean sweep having been made, not only of the lunch, but of all the glass in the racks above i t ; but all requests to the stewards were insufficient to procure even biscuits, and at eleven we retired supperless to bed, amidst a confusion of awful sounds, and were deprived of lights as well as food. When we asked for food or light, and made weak appeals on the ground of faintness, the one steward who seemed to dawdle about for the sole purpose of making himself disagreeable, always replied, " You can't get anything, the stewards are on duty." 8

We were not accustomed to recognize that stewards had any other duty than that of feeding the passengers, but under the circumstances we meekly acquiesced. We were allowed to know that a part of the foreguards had been carried way, and that iron stanchions four inches thick had been gnarled and twisted like candy sticks, and the constant falling of the saloon casing of the mainmast, showed something wrong there. A heavy clang, heard at intervals by day and night, aroused some suspicions as to more serious damage, and these were afterwards confirmed. As the wind fell the sea rose, and for some hours realized every description I have read of the majesty and magnitude of the rollers of the South Pacific. The day after the hurricane something went wrong with the engines, and we were stationary for an hour. We all felt thankful that this derangement which would have jeopardised or sacrificed sixty lives, was then only a slight detention on a summer sea. Five days out from Auckland we entered the tropics with a temperature of 80° in the water, and 85° in the ail', but as the light head airs blew the intense heat of our two smoke stacks aft, we often endured a temperature of 110°. There were quiet heavy tropical showers, and a general misty dampness, and the Navigator Islands, with their rainbow-tinted coral forests, their fringe of coco palms, and groves of banyan and breadfruit trees, those sunniest isles of the bright South Seas, resolved themselves into dark lumps looming through a drizzling mist. But the showers and the dampness were confined to that

ODDITIES

region, and for the last fortnight an unclouded tropical sun has blazed upon our crawling ship. The boiler tubes are giving way at the rate of from ten to twenty daily, the fracture in the shaft is extending, and so, partially maimed, the old ship drags her 320 feet of length slowly along. The captain is continually in the engine-room, and we know when things are looking more unpropitious than usual by his coming up puffing his cigar with unusual strength of determination. I t has been so far a very pleasant voyage. The moral, mental, and social qualities of my fellow-passengers are of a high order, and since the hurricane we have been rather like a family circle than a miscellaneous accidental group. For some time our days went by in reading aloud, working, chess, draughts and conversation, with two hours at quoits in the afternoon for exercise; but four days ago the only son of Mrs. Dexter, who is the only lady on board besides myself, ruptured a blood vessel on the lungs, and lies in a most critical state in the deck-house from which he has not been moved, requiring most careful nursing, incessant fanning, and the attention of two persons by day and night. Mrs. D . had previously won the regard of everyone, and I had learned to look on her as a friend from whom I should be grieved to part. The only hope for the young man's life is that he should be landed at Honolulu, and she has urged me so strongly to land with her there, where she will be a complete stranger, that I have consented to do so, and consequently shall see the Sandwich Islands. This severe illness has cast a great gloom over our circle of six, and Mr. D . continues in a state of

OF

THE

" N E V A D A "

so much exhaustion and peril that all our arrangements as to occupation, recreation, and sleep, are made with reference to a sick, and as we sometimes fear, a dying man, whose state is much aggravated by the maltreatment and stupidity of a dilapidated Scotcli doctor, who must be at least eighty, and whose intellects are obfuscated by years of whiskey drinking. Two of the gentlemen not only show the utmost tenderness as nurses, but possess a skill and experience which are invaluable. They never leave him by night, and scarcely take needed rest even in the day, one or other of them being always at hand to support him when faint, or raise him on his pillows. I t is not only that the Nevada is barely seaworthy, and has kept us broiling in the tropics when we ought to have been at San Francisco, but her fittings are so old. The mattresses bulge and burst, and cockroaches creep in and out, the deck is so leaky that the water squishes up under the saloon matting as we walk over it, the bread swarms with minute ants, and we have to pick every piece over because of weevils. Existence at night is an unequal fight with rats and cockroaches, and at meals with the stewards for time to eat. The stewards outnumber the passengers, and are the veriest riff-raff I have seen on board ship. At meals, when the captain is not below, their sole object is to hurry us from the table in order that they may sit down to a protracted meal; they are insulting and disobliging, and since illness has been on board, have shown a want of common humanity which places them below the rest of then - species. The unconcealed hostility with which they regard us is a marvellous 9

INSUPPORTABLE

HEAT

contrast to the natural or purchasable civility or servility which prevails on British steamers. I t has its comic side too, and we are content to laugh at it, and at all the other oddities of this vaunted " Mail Line." Our most serious grievance was the length of time that we were kept in the damp inter-island region of the Tropic of Capricorn. Early breakfasts, cold plunge baths, and the perfect ventilation of our cabins, only just kept us alive. We read, wrote, and talked like automatons, and our voices sounded thin and far away. We decided that heat was less felt in exercise, made up an afternoon quoit party, and played unsheltered from the nearly vertical sun, on decks so hot that we required thick boots for the protection of our feet, but for three days were limp and faint, and hardly able to crawl about or eat. The nights were insupportable. We used to lounge on the bow, and retire late at night to our cabins, to fight the heat, and scare rats and kill cockroaches with slippers, until driven by the solar heat to rise again unrefreshed to wrestle through another relentless day. We read the " Idylls of the King " and talked of misty meres and reedy fens, of the cool north, with its purple hills, leaping streams, and life-giving breezes, of long northern winters, and ice and snow, but the realities of sultriness and damp scared away our coolest imaginations. I n this dismal region, when about forty miles east of Tutuila, a beast popularly known as the " Flying fox " * alighted on our rigging, and was eventually captured A Frugiferous bat.

10

as a prize for the zoological collection at San Francisco. He is a most interesting animal, something like an exaggerated bat. His wings are formed of a jet black membrane, and have a highly polished claw at the extremity of each, and his feet consist of five beautifully polished long black claws, with which he hangs on head downwards. His body is about twice the size of that of a very large rat, black and furry underneath, and with red foxy fur on his head and back. His face is pointed, with a very black nose and prominent black eyes, with a savage,remorseless expression. His wings, when extended, measure forty-eight inches across, and his flying powers are prodigious. H e snapped like a dog at first, but is now quite tame, and devours quantities of dried figs, the only diet he will eat. We crossed the Equator in Long. 159° 44', but in consequence of the misty weather it was not till we reached Lat. 10° 6' N. that the Pole star, cold and pure, glistened far above the horizon, and two hours later we saw the coruscating Pleiades, and the starry belt of Orion, the blessed familiar constellations of " a u l d lang syne," and a " b r e a t h of the cool north," the first I have felt for five months, fanned the tropic night and the calm silvery Pacific. From that time we have been indifferent to our crawling pace, except for the sick man's sake. The days dawn in rose colour and die in gold, and through their long hours a sea of delicious blue shimmers beneath the sun, so soft, so blue, so dreamlike, an ocean worthy of its name, the

OUR

enchanted region of perpetual summer.

calm,

and an

endless

F a r off, for many an azure league, rims of

GROTESQUE

LIST

are incessant and most harassing, owing to the critical state

of the

engines.

T h e Nevada

now presents a

rock, fringed with the graceful coco palm, girdle still

grotesque appearance, for within the last few hours she

lagoons, and are themselves encircled by coral reefs on

has received such an added list to port that her star-

which the ocean breaks all the year in broad drifts of

board wheel looks nearly out of the water.

foam.

Myriads of flying fish and a few dolphins and

I. L . B .

Portuguese men-of-war flash or float through the scarcely undulating water.

B u t we look in vain for the " sails

of silk and ropes

of sendal," which are alone

priate to this dream-world.

appro-

T h e Pacific in this region is

an indolent blue expanse, pure and lonely, an almost untraversed sea.

W e revel in these tropic days of tran-

scendent glory, in the balmy breath which just stirs the dreamy blue, in the brief, fierce crimson sunsets, in the soft splendour of the nights, when the moon and stars hang like lamps out of a lofty and distant vault, and in the pearly crystalline dawns, when the sun

rising

through a veil of rose and gold " rejoices as a giant to run his course," and brightens by no " p a l e gradations" into the " perfect day." P . S . — T o - m o r r o w morning we expect to sight land. I n spite of minor evils, our voyage has been a singularly pleasant one.

T h e condition of the ship and her

machinery warrants the strongest condemnation, but her discipline is admirable, and so are many of her regulations, and we might have had a much more disagreeable voyage in a better ship.

Captain Blethen is beyond

all praise, and so is the chief

engineer, whose duties

11

The grand promontory of Diamond Head, its fiery sides now softened by a haze of green .

12

LETTER II

HAWAIIAN

HOTEL,

HONOLULU,

JAN.

26.

YESTERDAY morning at 6 . 3 0 I was aroused by the news that " The Islands " were in sight. Oahu in the distance, a group of grey, barren peaks rising verdureless out of the lonely sea, was not an exception to the rule that the first sight of land is a disappointment. Owing to the clear atmosphere', we seemed only five miles off, but in reality we were twenty, and the land improved as we neared it. I t was the fiercest day we had had, the deck was almost too hot to stand upon, the sea and sky were both magnificently blue, and the unveiled sun turned every minute ripple into a diamond flash. As we approached, the island, changed its character. There were lofty peaks, truly—grey and red, sun-scorched and windbleached, glowing here and there with traces of their fiery origin; but they were cleft by deep chasms and ravines of cool shadow and entrancing green, and falling water streaked their sides—a most welcome vision after eleven months of the desert sea and the dusty browns of Australia and New Zealand. Nearer yet, and the coast line came into sight, fringed by the feathery cocoanut tree of the tropics, and marked by a long line of surf. The grand promontory of Diamond Head, its fiery sides now

13

FIRST

VIEW

OF

HONOLULU

softened by a haze of green, terminated the wavy line of palms ; then the Punchbowl, a very perfect extinct crater, brilliant with every shade of red volcanic ash, blazed against the green skirts of the mountains. We were close to the coral reef before the cry, " There's Honolulu ! " made us aware of the proximity of the capital of the island kingdom, and then, indeed, its existence had almost to be taken upon trust, for besides the lovely wooden and grass huts, with deep verandahs, which nestled under palms and bananas on soft green sward, margined by the bright sea sand, only two church spires and a few grey roofs appeared above the trees. We were just outside the reef, and near enough to hear that deep sound of the surf which, through the ever serene summer years girdles the Hawaiian Islands with perpetual thunder, before the pilot glided alongside, bringing the news which Mark Twain had prepared us to receive with interest, that " Prince B i l l " had been unanimously elected to the throne. The surf ran white and pure over the environing coral reef, and as we passed through the narrow channel, we almost saw the coral forests deep down under the Nevada's keel; the coral fishers plied their graceful trade ; canoes with outriggers rode the combers, and glided with inconceivable rapidity round our ship; amphibious brown beings sported in the transparent waves ; and within the reef lay a calm surface of water of a wonderful blue, entered by a narrow, intricate passage of the deepest indigo. And beyond the reef and beyond the blue, nestling among cocoanut trees and bananas, umbrella trees and breadfruits, oranges, 14

mangoes, hibiscus, algaroba, and passion-flowers, almost hidden in the deep, dense greenery, was Honolulu. Bright blossom of a summer sea ! Fair Paradise of the Pacific! Inside the reef the magnificent iron-clad California (the flag-ship) and another huge American war vessel, the Benicia, are moored in line with the British corvette Scout, within 200 yards of the shore; and their boats were constantly passing and re-passing, among countless canoes filled with natives. Two coasting schooners were just leaving the harbour, and the inter-island steamer Kilauea, with her deck crowded with natives, was just coming in. By noon the great decrepit Nevada, which has no wharf at which she can lie in sleepy New Zealand, was moored alongside a very respectable one in this enterprising little Hawaiian capital. We looked down from the towering deck on a crowd of two or three thousand people—whites, Kanakas, Chinamen—and hundreds of them at once made their way on board, and streamed over the ship, talking, laughing, and remarking upon us in a language which seemed without backbone. Such rich brown men and women they were, with wavy, shining black hair, large, brown, lustrous eyes, and rows of perfect teeth like ivory. Everyone was smiling. The forms of the women seem to be inclined towards obesity, but their drapery, which consists of a sleeved garment which falls in ample and unconfined folds from their shoulders to their feet, partly conceals this defect, which is here regarded as a beauty. Some of these dresses were black, but many of those worn by

SORRY

the younger women were of pure white, crimson, yellow, scarlet, blue, or light green. The men displayed their lithe, graceful figures to the best advantage in white trousers and gay Garibaldi shirts. A few of the women wore coloured handkerchiefs twined round their hair, but generally both men and women wore straw hats, which the men set jauntily on one side of their heads, and aggravated their appearance yet more by bandana handkerchiefs of rich bright colours round their necks, knotted loosely on the left side, with a grace to which, I think, no Anglo-Saxon dandy could attain. Without an exception the men and women wore wreaths and garlands of flowers, carmine, orange, or pure white, twined round their hats, and thrown carelessly round their necks, flowers unknown to me, but redolent of the tropics in fragrance and colour. Many of the young beauties wore the gorgeous blossom of the red hibiscus among their abundant, unconfined, black hair, and many, besides the garlands, wore festoons of a sweet-scented vine, or of an exquisitely beautiful fern, knotted behind and hanging half-way down their dresses. These adornments of natural flowers are most attractive. Chinamen, all alike, very yellow, with almond-shaped eyes, youthful, hairless faces, long pigtails, spotlessly clean clothes, and an expression of mingled cunning and simplicity, " foreigners," half-whites, a few negroes, and a very few dark-skinned Polynesians from the far-oif South Seas, made up the rest of the rainbow-tinted crowd. The " foreign " ladies, who were there in great numbers, generally wore simple light prints or muslins, and

RAWBONED

NAGS

white straw hats, and many of them so far conformed to native custom as to wear natural flowers round their hats and throats. But where were the hard, angular, careworn, sallow, passionate faces of men and women, such as form the majority of every crowd at home, as well as in America and Australia ? The conditions of life must surely be easier here, and people must have found rest from some of its burdensome conventionalities. The foreign ladies, in their simple, tasteful, fresh attire, innocent of the humpings and bunchings, the monstrosities and deformities of ultra-fashionable bad taste, beamed » with cheerfulness, friendliness, and kindliness. Men and women looked as easy, contented, and happy as if care never came near them. I never saw such healthy, bright complexions as among the women, or such " sparkling smiles," or such a diffusion of feminine grace and graciousness anywhere. Outside this motley, genial, picturesque crowd about 200 saddled horses were standing, each with the Mexican saddle, with its lassoing horn in front, high peak behind, immense wooden stirrups, with great leathern guards, silver or brass bosses, and coloured saddle-cloths. The saddles were the only element of the picturesque that these Hawaiian steeds possessed. They were sorry, lean, undersized beasts, looking in general as if the emergencies of life left them little time for eating or sleeping. They stood calmly in the broiling sun, heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, with flabby ears and pendulous lower lips, limp and rawboned, a doleful type of the " creation which groaneth and travaileth in misery." All these belonged 15

FANTASTIC

FISH

to the natives, who are passionately fond of riding. Every now and then a flower-wreathed Hawaiian woman, in her full radiant garment, sprang on one of these amimals astride, and dashed along the road at full gallop, sitting on her horse as square and easy as a hussar. Ill the crowd and outside of it, and everywhere, there were piles of fruit for sale—oranges and guavas, strawberries, papayas, bananas (green and golden), cocoanuts, and other rich, fantastic productions of a prolific climate, where nature gives of her wealth the whole year round. Strange fishes, strange in shape and colour, crimson, blue, orange, rose, gold, such fishes as flash like living light through the coral groves of these enchanted seas, were there for sale, and coral divers were there with their treasures— branch coral, as white as snow, each perfect specimen weighing from eight to twenty pounds. But no one pushed his wares for sale—we were at liberty to look and admire, and pass on unmolested. No vexatious restrictions obstructed our landing. A sum of two dollars for the support of the Queen's Hospital is levied on each passenger, and the examination of ordinary luggage, if it exists, is a mere form. From the demeanour of the crowd it was at once apparent that the conditions of conquerors and conquered do not exist. On the contrary, many of the foreigners there were subjects of a Hawaiian king, a reversal of the ordinary relations between a white and a coloured race which it is not easy yet to appreciate. Two of my fellow-passengers, who were going on to San Francisco, were anxious that I should accompany 16

them to the Pali, the great excursion from Honolulu; and leaving Mr. M to make all arrangements for the Dexters and myself, we hired a buggy, destitute of any peculiarity but a native driver, who spoke nothing but Hawaiian, and left the ship. This place is quite unique. I t is said that 15,000 people are buried away in these low-browed, shadowy houses, under the glossy, darkleaved trees, but except in one or two streets of miscellaneous, old-fashioned looking stores, arranged with a distinct leaning towards native tastes, it looks like a large village, or rather like an aggregate of villages. As we drove through the town we could only see our immediate surroundings, but each had a new fascination. We drove along roads with over-arching trees, through whose dense leafage the noon sunshine only trickled in dancing, broken lights; umbrella trees, caoutchouc, bamboo, mango, orange, breadfruit, candlenut, monkey pod, date and coco palms, alligator pears, " p r i d e s " of Barbary, India, and Peru, and huge-leaved, wide-spreading trees, exotics from the South Seas, many of them rich in parasitic ferns, and others blazing with bright, fantastic blossoms. The air was heavy with odours of gardenia, tuberose, oleanders, roses, lilies, and the great white trumpet-flower, and myriads of others whose names I do not know, and verandahs were festooned with a gorgeous trailer with magenta blossoms, passion-flowers, and a vine with masses of trumpet-shaped, yellow, waxy flowers. The delicate tamarind and the feathery algaroba intermingled their fragile grace with the dark, shiny foliage of the South Sea exotics, and the deep red, solitary flowers of the

TROPICAL

hibiscus rioted among clear familiar fuschias and geraniums, which here attain the height and size of large rhododendrons. Few of the new trees surprised me more than the papaya. I t is a perfect gem of tropical vegetation. I t has a soft, indented stem, which runs up. quite straight to a height of from 15 to 30 feet, and is crowned by a profusion of large, deeply indented leaves, with long foot-stalks, and among, as well as considerably below these, are the flowers or the fruit, in all stages of development. This, when ripe, is bright yellow, and the size of a musk melon. Clumps of bananas, the first sight of which, like that of the palm, constitutes a new experience, shaded the native houses with their wonderful leaves, broad and deep green, from five to ten feet long. The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale green fruit into delicate contrast. All these, with the exquisite rose apple, with a deep red tinge in its jToung leaves, the fan palm, the chirimoya, and numberless others, and the slender shafts of the coco palms rising high above them, with their waving plumes and perpetual fruitage, were a perfect festival of beauty. I n the deep shade of this perennial greenery the people dwell. The foreign houses show a very various individuality. The peculiarity in which all seem to share is, that everything is decorated and festooned with flowering

LUXURIANCE

trailers. I t is often difficult to tell what the architecture is, or what is house and what is vegetation; for all angles, and lattices, and balustrades, and verandahs are hidden by jessamine or passion-flowers, or the gorgeous flamelike Bougainvilliers. Many of the dwellings straggle over the ground without an upper story, and have very deep verandahs, through' which I caught glimpses of cool, shady rooms, with matted floors. Some look as if they had been transported from the old-fashioned villages of the Connecticut Valley, with their clap-board fronts painted white and jalousies painted green ; but then the deep verandah in which families lead an open-air life has been added, and the chimneys have been omitted, and the New England severity and angularity are toned down and draped out of sight by these festoons of large-leaved, bright-blossomed, tropical climbing plants. Besides the frame houses there are houses built of blocks of a creamcoloured coral conglomerate laid in cement, of adobe, or large sun-baked bricks, plastered; houses of grass and bamboo; houses on the ground and houses raised on posts; but nothing looks prosaic, commonplace, or mean, for the glow and luxuriance of the tropics rest on all. Each house has a large garden or " yard," with lawns of bright perennial greens and banks of blazing, many-tinted flowers, and lines of Dracaena, and other foliage plants, with their great purple or crimson leaves, and clumps of marvellous lilies, gladiolas, ginger, and many plants unknown to me. Fences and walls are altogether buried by passion-flowers, the night-blowing Cereus, and the tropseolum, mixed with geraniums, 17

LUSH

NUUANU

VALLEY

fuschia, and jessamine, which cluster and entangle over them in indescribable profusion. A soft air moves through the upper branches, and the drip of water from miniature fountains falls musically on the perfumed air. This is midwinter ! The summer, they say, is thermometrically hotter, but practically cooler, because of the regular trades which set in in April, but now, with the shaded thermometer at 80° and the sky without clouds, the heat is not oppressive. The mixture of the neat grass houses of the natives with the more elaborate homes of the foreign residents has a very pleasant look. The " a b o r i g i n e s " have not been crowded out of sight, or into a special " quarter." We saw man)' groups of them sitting under the trees outside their houses, each group with a mat in the centre, with calabashes upon it containing poi, the national Hawaiian dish, a fermented paste made from the root of the halo, or arum esculentum. As we emerged on the broad road which leads up the Nuuanu Valley to the mountains, we saw many patches of this halo, a very handsome tropical plant, with large leaves of a bright tender green. Each plant was growing on a small hillock, with water round it. There were beautiful vegetable gardens also, in which Chinamen raise for sale not only melons, pineapples, sweet potatoes, and other edibles of hot climates, but the familiar fruits and vegetables of the temperate zones. In patches of surpassing neatness, there were strawberries, which are ripe here all the year, peas, carrots, turnips, asparagus, lettuce, and celery. I saw no other plants or trees which grow at home, but

recognized as hardly less familiar growths the Victorian Eucalyptus, which has not had time to become gaunt and straggling, the Norfolk Island pine, which grows superbly here, and the handsome Moreton Bay fig. But the chief feature of this road is the number of residences; I had almost written of pretentious residences, but the term would be a base slander, as I have jumped to the conclusion that the twin vulgarities of ostentation and pretence have no place here. But certainly for a mile and' a half or more there are manj- very comfortablelooking dwellings, very attractive to the eye, with an ease and imperturbable serenity of demeanour as if they had nothing to fear from heat, cold, wind, or criticism.. Their architecture is absolutely unostentatious, and their one beauty is that they are embowered among trailers, shadowed by superb exotics, and surrounded by banks of flowers, while the stately cocoanut, the banana, and. the candlenut, the aborigines of Oahu, are nowhere displaced. One house with extensive grounds, a perfect wilderness of vegetation, was pointed out as the summer palace of Queen Emma, or Kaleleonalani, widow of Kamehameha IV., who visited England a few years ago, and the finest garden of all as that of a much respected Chinese merchant, named Afong. Oahu, at least on this leeward side, is not tropical looking, and all this tropical variety and luxuriance which delight the eye result from foreign enthusiasm and love of beauty and shade. When we ascended above the scattered dwellings and had passed the tasteful mausoleum, with two tall Kahilis,* The kahili is shaped like an enormous bottle brush.

18

The fines

. the finest garden of all is that of a much respected Chinese merchant, named Afong.

19

The Nuuanu Pali, or precipice, near

Honolulu.

or feather plumes, at the door of the tomb in which the last of the Kamehamehas received Christian burial, the glossy, redundant, arborescent vegetation ceased. At that height a shower of rain falls on nearly every day in the year, and the result is a green sward which England can hardly rival, a perfect sea of verdure, darkened in the valley and more than half way up the hill sides by the foliage of the yellow-blossomed and almost impenetrable hibiscus, brightened here and there by the pea-green candlenut. Streamlets leap from crags and ripple along the roadside, every rock and stone is hidden by moistlooking ferns, as aerial and delicate as marabout feathers, and when the windings of the valley and the projecting spurs of mountains shut out all indications of Honolulu, in the cool green loneliness one could image oneself in the temperate zones. The peculiarity of the scenery is, that the hills, which rise to a height of about 4,000 feet, are wall-like ridges of grey or coloured rock, rising precipitously out of the trees and grass, and that these walls are broken up into pinnacles and needles. At the Pali (wall-like precipice), the summit of the ascent of 1,000 feet, we left our buggy, and passing through a gash in the rock the celebrated view burst on us with are sometimes twenty feet liigli, with handles twelve or fifteen feet long, covered with tortoiseshell and whale tooth ivory. The upper part is formed of a cylinder of wicker work about a foot in diameter, on which red, black, and yellow feathers are fastened. These insignia are carried in procession instead of banners, and used to be fixed in the ground near the temporary residence of the king or chiefs. At the funeral of the late king seventy-six large and small kahilis were carried by the retainers of chief families.

20

Immense masses of black and ferruginous volcanic rock, hundreds feel in nearly perpendicular height, . . . seemed to pierce the sky.

of

. . . we left our buggy, and passing through a gash in the rock, the celebrated view burst on us with overwhelming effect.

21

ENCHANTED

DREAMLAND

overwhelming effect. Immense masses of black and ferruginous volcanic rock, hundreds of feet in nearly perpendicular height, formed the pali on either side, and the ridge extended northwards for many miles, presenting a lofty, abrupt mass of grey rock broken into fantastic pinnacles, which seemed to pierce the sky. A broad, umbrageous mass of green clothed the lower buttresses, and fringed itself away in clusters of coco palms on a garden-like stretch below, green with grass and sugarcane, and dotted with white houses, each with its palm and banana grove, and varied by eminences which looked like long extinct tufa cones. Beyond this enchanted region stretched the coral reef, with its white wavy line of endless surf, and the broad blue Pacific, ruffled by a breeze whose icy freshness chilled us where we stood. Narrow streaks on the landscape, every now and then disappearing behind intervening hills, indicated bridle tracks connected with a frightfully steep and rough zigzag path cut out of the face of the cliff on our right. I could not go down this on foot without a sense of insecurity, but mounted natives driving loaded horses descended with perfect impunity into the dreamland below. This pali is the scene of one of the historic tragedies of this island. Kamehameha the Conqueror, who after fierce fighting and much ruthless destruction of human life united the island sovereignties in his own person, routed the forces of the King of Oahu in the Nuuanu Valley, and drove them in hundreds up the precipice, from which they leaped in despair and madness, and their bones lie bleaching 800 feet below. 22

The drive back here was delightful, from the wintry height, where I must confess that we shivered, to the slumbrous calm of an endless summer, the glorious tropical trees, the distant view of cool chasm-like valleys, with Honolulu sleeping in perpetual shade, and the still blue ocean, without a single sail to disturb its profound solitude. Saturday afternoon is a gala-day here, and the broad road was so thronged with brilliant equestrians, that I thought we should be ridden over by the reckless laughing rout. There were hundreds of native horsemen and horsewomen, many of them doubtless on the dejected quadrupeds I saw at the wharf, but a judicious application of long rowelled Mexican spurs, and a degree of emulation, caused these animals to tear along at full gallop. The women seemed perfectly at home in their gay, brass-bossed, high peaked saddles, flying along astride, barefooted, with their orange and scarlet riding dresses streaming on each side beyond their horses' tails, a bright kaleidoscopic flash of bright eyes, white teeth, shining hair, garlands of flowers and many-coloured d r e s s e s ; while the men were hardly less gay, with fresh flowers round their jaunty hats, and the vermilion-coloured blossoms of the Ohia round their brown throats. Sometimes a troop of twenty of these free-and-easy female riders went by at a time, a graceful and exciting spectacle, with a running accompaniment of vociferation and laughter. Among these we met several of the Nevada's officers, riding in the stiff, wooden style which AngloSaxons love, and a horde of jolly British sailors from H . M . S . Scout, rushing helter skelter, colliding with

THE

The pa'u or Hawaiian ladies' holiday riding dres*.

PERFECTION

OF

AN

HOTEL

everybody, bestriding their horses as they would a topsailyard, hanging on to manes and lassoing horns, and enjoying themselves thoroughly. In the shady tortuous streets we met hundreds more of native riders, dashing at full gallop without fear of the police. Many of the women were in flowing riding-dresses of pure white, over which their unbound hair, and wreaths of carmine-tinted flowers fell most picturesquely. All this time I had not seen our domicile, and when our drive ended under the quivering shadow of large tamarind and algaroba trees, in front of a long, stone, two-storied house with two deep verandahs festooned with clematis and passion flowers, and a shady lawn in front, I felt as if in this fairy land anything might be expected. This is the perfection of an hotel. Hospitality seems to take possession of and appropriate one as soon as one enters its never-closed door, which is on the lower verandah. There is a basement, in which there are a good many bedrooms, the bar, and billiard-room. This is entered from the garden, under two semicircular flights of stairs which lead to the front entrance, a wide corridor conducting to the back entrance. This is crossed by another running the whole length, which opens into a very large many-windowed dining-room which occupies the whole width of the hotel. On the same level there is a large parlour, with French windows opening on the verandah. Upstairs there are two similar corridors on which all the bedrooms open, and each room has one or more French windows opening on the verandah, with 23

This is the perfection of an hotel. Hospitality seems to take possession of one as soon as one enters . . .

24

KINDNESS

doors as well, made like German shutters, to close instead of the windows, ensuring at once privacy and coolness. T h e rooms are tastefully furnished with varnished pine with a strong aromatic scent, and there are plenty of lounging-chairs on the verandah, where people sit and receive their intimate friends. T h e result of the construction of the hotel is that a breeze whispers through it by day and night. Everywhere, only pleasant objects meet the eye. One can sit all day on the back verandah, watching the play of light and colour on the mountains and the deep blue green of the Nuuanu Valley, where showers, sunshine, and rainbows make perpetual variety. T h e great diningroom is delicious. I t has no curtains, and its decorations are cool and pale. I t s windows look upon tropical trees in one direction, and up to the cool mountains in the other. Piles of bananas, guavas, limes, and oranges, decorate the tables at each meal, and strange vegetables, fish, and fruits vary the otherwise stereotyped American hotel fare. There are no female domestics. T h e host is a German, the manager an American, the steward an Hawaiian, and the servants are all Chinamen in spotless white linen, with pigtails coiled round their heads, and an air of superabundant good-nature. They know very little English, and make most absurd mistakes, but they are cordial, smiling, and obliging, and look cool and clean. T h e hotel seems the great public resort of Honolulu, the centre of stir—club-house, exchange and drawing-room in one. I t s wide corridors and verandahs are lively with English and American naval uniforms, several planters'

AND

BONHOMMIE

families are here for the season; and with health seekers from California, resident boarders, whaling captains, tourists from the British Pacific Colonies, and a stream of townspeople always percolating through the corridors and verandahs, it seems as lively and free-and-easy as a place can be, pervaded by the kindliness and bonhommie which form an important item in my first impressions of the islands. T h e hotel was lately built by government at a cost of $120,000, a sum which forms a considerable part of that token of an advanced civilization, a National D e b t . T h e minister whose scheme it was seems to be severely censured on account of it, but undoubtedly it brings strangers and their money into the kingdom, who would have avoided it had they been obliged as formerly to cast themselves on the hospitality of the residents. T h e present proprietor has it rent-free for a term of years, but I fear that it is not likely to prove a successful speculation either for him or the government. I dislike health resorts, and abhor this kind of life, but for those who like both, I cannot imagine a more fascinating residence. T h e charges are $15 a week, or $ 3 a day, but such a kindly, open-handed, system prevails that I am not conscious that I am paying anything! This sum includes hot and cold plunge baths ad libitum, justly regarded as a necessity in this climate. D r . McGrew has hope that our invalid will rally in this healing, equable atmosphere. Our kind fellow-passengers are here, and take turns in watching and fanning him. T h r o u g h the half-closed jalousies we see bread-fruit trees, delicate tamarinds and algarobas, fan-palms, date25

PERFUMED

NIGHT

palms and bananas, and the deep blue Pacific gleams here and there through the plumage of the cocoanut trees. A soft breeze, scented with a slight aromatic odour, wanders in at every opening, bringing with it, mellowed by distance, the hum and clatter of the busy cicada. The nights are glorious, and so absolutely still, that even the feathery foliage of the algaroba is at rest. The stars seem to hang among the trees like lamps, and the crescent moon gives more light than the full moon at home. The evening of the day we landed, parties of officers and ladies mounted at the door, and with much mirth disappeared on moonlight rides, and the white robes of flower-crowned girls gleamed among the trees, as groups of natives went by speaking a language which sounded more like the rippling of water than human speech. Soft music came from the ironclads in the harbour, and from the royal band at the king's palace, and a rich fragrance of dewy blossoms filled the delicious air. These are indeed the " isles of Eden," the " sun lands," musical with beauty. They seem to welcome us to their enchanted shores. Everything is new but nothing strange; for as I enjoyed the purple night, I remembered that I had seen such islands in dreams in the cold gray North. " How sweet," I thought it would be, thus to hear far off, the low sweet murmur of the " sparkling brine," to rest, and " Ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream."

A half-dream only, for one would not wish to be quite asleep and lose the consciousness of this delicious outer 26

world. So I thought one moment. The next I heard a droning, humming sound, which certainly was not the surf upon the reef. It came nearer—there could be no mistake. I felt a stab, and found myself the centre of a swarm of droning, stabbing, malignant mosquitos. No, even this is not paradise ! I am ashamed to say that on my first night in Honolulu I sought an early refuge from this intolerable infliction, in profound and prosaic sleep behind mosquito curtains. I. L. B.

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