Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands written by Charles Nordhoff

C >> Charles Nordhoff >> Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

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Eight thousand two hundred and sixty-five dollars were also realized for
awa licenses. Awa is a root the use of which produces a frightful kind
of intoxication, in which the victim falls into stupor, his features
are contorted, and he has seizures resembling epilepsy. The body of the
habitual awa drinker becomes covered with white scales; and it is said
that awa drinking predisposes to leprosy. The manner of preparing awa
is peculiarly disgusting. The root is chewed by women, and they spit out
well-chewed mouthfuls into a calabash. Here it settles, and the liquor is
then drunk. It is said that in old times the chiefs used to get together
the prettiest young girls to chew awa for them.

The king receives a salary of $22,500 per annum; the cabinet ministers and
the chief-justice receive $5000, and the two associate justices $4000
per annum. These are the largest salaries paid; and in general the public
service of the Islands is very cheaply as well as ably and conscientiously
conducted. There is an opportunity for retrenchment in abolishing some of
the offices; but the saving which could thus be effected would after all
not be great. The present Government means, I have been told, to undertake
some reforms; these will probably consist in getting the king to turn the
crown lands into public lands, to be sold or leased for the benefit of the
treasury. They are now leased, and the income is a perquisite of the king,
a poor piece of policy, for the chiefs from among whom a sovereign is
selected are all wealthy; the present king, for instance, has an income
of probably $25,000 per annum from private property of his own. It is also
proposed to lessen the number of cabinet ministers; but this will scarcely
be done. They are but four in number now, having charge of Foreign
Affairs, Finance, and the Interior and Law Departments.

There is a debt of about $300,000 which is entirely held within the
kingdom; and the public property is of value sufficient to pay three times
this sum. It is probable, however, that, like many other governments,
the Hawaiian ministry will have to deal with a deficit when the next
Legislature meets; and this will probably bring reform and retrenchment
before them. There is not much hope of increasing the revenue from new and
still untouched sources, for there are but few such.

The taxable industries and wealth of the Islands can not be very greatly
increased. Finding yourself in a tropical country, with a charming and
equable climate, and with abundant rains, you are apt to think that, given
only a little soil, many things would grow and could be profitably raised.
It is one of the surprises of a visitor to the Hawaiian group to discover
that in reality very few products succeed here.

Coffee was largely planted, and promised to become a staple of the
Islands; but a blight attacked the trees and proved so incurable that
the best plantations were dug up and turned into sugar; and the export of
coffee, which has been very variable, but which rose to 415,000 pounds
in 1870, fell to 47,000 pounds in the next year, and to 39,276 pounds in
1872.

Sea-island cotton would yield excellent crops if it were not that a
caterpillar devours the young plants, so that its culture has almost
ceased. Only 10,000 pounds were exported in 1872. The orange thrives in so
few localities on the Islands that it is not an article of commerce: only
two boxes were exported last year, though San Francisco brings this fruit
from Otaheite by a voyage of thirty days. A burr worse than any found
in California discourages the sheep-raiser in some of the Islands. The
cacao-tree has been tried, but a blight kills it. In the garden of Dr.
Hillebrandt, near Honolulu, I saw specimens of the cinnamon and allspice
trees; but again I was told that the blight attacked them, and did not
allow them to prosper. Wheat and other cereals grow and mature, but they
are subject to the attacks of weevil, so that they can not be stored or
shipped; and if you feed your horse oats or barley in Honolulu, these have
been imported from California. Silk-worms have been tried but failed. Rice
does well, and its culture is increasing.

Moreover, there is but an inconsiderable local market. A farmer on
Maui told me he had sent twenty bags of potatoes to Honolulu, and so
overstocked the market that he got back only the price of his bags. Eggs
and all other perishable products, for the same reason, vary much in
price, and are at times high-priced and hardly attainable. It will not do
for the farmer to raise much for sale. The population is not only divided
among different and distant islands, but it consists for much the largest
part of people who live sufficiently well on taro, sweet-potatoes, fish,
pork, and beef--all articles which they raise for themselves, and which
they get by labor and against disadvantages which few white farmers would
encounter.

For instance, the Puna coast of Hawaii is a district where for thirty
miles there is so little fresh water to be found that travelers must bring
their own supplies in bottles; and Dr. Coan told me that in former days
the people, knowing that he could not drink the brackish stuff which
satisfied them, used to collect fresh water for his use when he made the
missionary tour, from the drippings of dew in caves. Wells are here out
of the question, for there is no soil except a little decomposed lava, and
the lava lets through all the water which comes from rains. There are
few or no streams to be led down from the mountains. There are no fields,
according to our meaning of the word.

Formerly the people in this district were numbered by thousands: even
yet there is a considerable population, not unprosperous by any means.
Churches and schools are as frequent as in the best part of New England.
Yet when I asked a native to show me his sweet-potato patch, he took me
to the most curious and barren-looking collection of lava you can imagine,
surrounded, too, by a very formidable wall made of lava, and explained
to me that by digging holes in the lava where it was a little decayed,
carrying a handful of earth to each of these holes, and planting there in
a wet season, he got a very satisfactory crop. Not only that, but being
desirous of something more than a bare living, this man had planted a
little coffee in the same way, and had just sold 1600 pounds, his last
crop. He owned a good wooden house; politely gave up his own mats for me
to sleep on; possessed a Bible and a number of other works in Hawaiian;
after supper called his family together, who squatted on the floor while
he read from his Scriptures, and, after singing a hymn, knelt in family
prayers; and finally spent half an hour before going to bed in looking
over his newspaper. This man, thoroughly respectable, of good repute,
hospitable, comfortable in every way so far as I could see, lived,
and lived well, on twenty or thirty acres of lava, of which not even a
Vermonter would have given ten cents for a thousand acres; and which was
worthless to any one except a native Hawaiian.

Take next the grazing lands. In many parts they are so poorly supplied
with water that they can not carry much stock. They also are often
astonishingly broken up, for they frequently lie high up on the sides of
the mountains, and in many parts they are rocky and lava-covered beyond
belief. On Hawaii, the largest island, lava covers and makes desolate
hundreds of thousands of acres, and on the other and smaller islands,
except, perhaps, Kauai, there is corresponding desolation. Thus the area
of grazing lands is less than one would think. But on the other hand,
cattle are very cheaply raised. They require but little attention; and the
stock-owners, who are now boiling down their cattle and selling merely
the hides and tallow, are said to be just at this time the most prosperous
people on the Islands. Sheep are kept too, but not in great flocks except
upon the small island of Niihau, which was bought some years ago by two
brothers, Sinclair by name, who have now a flock of fifteen or eighteen
thousand sheep there, I am told; on Molokai and part of Hawaii; and upon
the small island of Lanai, where Captain Gibson has six or eight thousand
head.

One of the conspicuous trees of the Hawaiian forests is the Kukui or
candle-nut. Its pale green foliage gives the mountain sides sometimes a
disagreeable look; though where it grows among the Ko trees, whose leaves
are of a dark green, the contrast is not unpleasant. From its abundance
I supposed the candle-nut might be made an article of export; but the
country is so rough that the gathering of the nuts is very laborious; and
several persons who have experimented in expressing the oil from the nut
have discovered that it did not pay cost. Only two thousand pounds
of Kukui nuts were exported in 1872.

Sandal-wood was once a chief article of export. It grows on the higher
mountain slopes, and is still collected, for 20,232 pounds were exported
in 1872, and a small quantity is worked up in the Islands. The cocoa-nut
is not planted in sufficient quantities to make it an article of commerce.
Only 950 nuts were exported last year. Of pulu 421,227 pounds were
shipped; this is a soft fuzz taken from the crown of a species of fern;
it is used to stuff bedding, and is as warm, though not as durable, as
feathers. Also 32,161 pounds of "fungus," a kind of toad-stool which grows
on decaying wood, and is used in China as an article of food.

There has been no lack of ingenuity, enterprise, or industry among the
inhabitants. The Government has imported several kinds of trees and
plants, as the cinnamon, pepper, and allspice, but they have not
prospered. Private effort has not been wanting either. But nature does not
respond. Sugar and rice are and must it seems continue to be the staples
of the Islands; and the culture of these products will in time be
considerably increased.

This, it appears to me, decides the future of the Islands and the
character of their population. A sugar or rice plantation needs at most
three or four American workmen aside from the manager. The laboring
force will be Hawaiians or Chinese; for they alone work cheaply, and will
content themselves in the situation of plantation laborers. It is likely,
therefore, that the future population of the Islands will consist largely,
as it does now, of Hawaiians and Chinese, and a mixture of these two
races; and, no doubt, these will live very happily there.

[Illustration: NATIVE HAY PEDDLER.]

For farming, in the American sense of the word, the Islands are, as these
facts show, entirely unfit. I asked again and again of residents this
question: "Would you advise your friend in Massachusetts or Illinois, a
farmer with two or three thousand dollars in money, to settle out here?"
and received invariably the answer, "No; it would be wrong to do so."
Transportation of farm products from island to island is too costly; there
is no local market except Honolulu, and that is very rapidly and easily
overstocked; Oregon or California potatoes are sold in the Islands at
a price which would leave the local farmer without a profit. In short,
farming is not a pursuit in the Islands. A farmer would not starve, for
beef is cheap, and he could always raise vegetables enough for himself;
but he would not get ahead. Moreover, perishable fruits, like the banana,
have but a limited chance for export. The Islands, unluckily, lie to
windward of California; and a sailing vessel, beating up to San Francisco,
is very apt to make so long a passage that if she carries bananas they
spoil on the way. Hence but 4520 bunches were shipped from the Islands in
1872--which was all the monthly steamer had room for.

These circumstances seem to settle the question of annexation, which is
sometimes discussed. To annex the Islands would be to burden ourselves
with an outlying territory too distant to be cheaply defended; and
containing a population which will never be homogeneous with our own; a
country which would neither attract nor reward our industrious farmers and
mechanics; which offers not the slightest temptation to emigration, except
a most delightful climate, and which has, and must by its circumstances
and natural formation continue to have, chiefly a mixed population of
Chinese and other coolies, whom it is assuredly not to our interest to
take into our family. I suppose it is a proper rule that we should not
encumber ourselves with territory which by reason of unchangeable natural
causes will repel our farmers and artisans, and which, therefore, will not
become in time Americanized. If this is true, we ought not to annex the
Hawaiian Islands.

Moreover, there is no excuse for annexation, in the desire of the people.
The present Government is mild, just, and liked by the people. They can
easily make it cheaper whenever they want to. The native people are very
strongly opposed to annexation; they have a strong feeling of nationality,
and considerable jealousy of foreign influence. Annexation to our own or
any other country would be without their consent.

As to the residents of foreign birth, a few of them favor annexation to
the United States; but only a few. A large majority would oppose it as
strenuously as the native people. Most of the planters see that it would
break up their labor system, demoralize the workmen, and probably for
years check the production of sugar.

One thing is certain, however. If the Islands ever offer themselves to any
foreign power, it will be to the United States. Their people, foreign as
well as native, look to us as their neighbors and friends; and the king
last summer blurted out one day when too much wine had made him imprudent,
this truth: that if annexation came, it must be to the United States.

As I write a negotiation has been opened with the United States
Government, for the purpose of offering us Pearl River in exchange for a
reciprocity treaty. Pearl River is an extensive, deep, and well-protected
bay, about ten miles from Honolulu. It would answer admirably for a naval
station; and if the United States were a second-rate power likely to be
bullied by other nations, we might need a naval station in the Pacific
Ocean. In our present condition, when no single power dares to make war
with us, and when, unless we become shamelessly aggressive, no alliance of
European powers against us for purposes of war is possible, the chief use
of distant naval stations appears to me to be as convenient out-of-the-way
places for wasting the public money. Pearl River would be an admirable
spot for a dozen pleasant sinecures, and the expenditure of three or four
millions of money. It seems to me, therefore, that it would be a dear
bargain. For the accommodation of merchant steamers and ships and their
repair, Honolulu offers sufficient facilities. There are ingenious
American mechanics there who have even taken a frigate upon a temporary
dry-dock, and repaired her hull.

[Illustration: HULA-HULA, OR DANCING-GIRLS.]

But justice, kindly feeling, and a due regard for our future interests in
the Pacific Ocean ought to induce us to establish at once a reciprocity
treaty with the Hawaiian Government. We should lose but little revenue;
and should make good that loss by the greater market which would be opened
for our own products, in the Islands. Such a treaty would bring more
capital to the Islands, increase their prosperity, and, at the same time,
bind them still more closely and permanently to us. It would pave the way
to annexation, if that should ever become advisable.

The politics of the Hawaiian Kingdom are not very exciting. In those
fortunate Isles the Legislature troubles itself chiefly about the horse
and dog tax. The late king, who was of an irascible temper, did not always
treat his faithful Commons with conspicuous civility. He sometimes told
them that they had talked long enough and had better adjourn; and they
usually took his advice. The present king, who belonged to "his majesty's
opposition" during the late reign, has yet to develop his qualities as a
ruler. He has shown sound judgment in the nomination of his cabinet;
and he is believed to have the welfare of the people at heart. He is
unmarried; but is not likely to marry; and he will probably nominate a
successor from one of the chief or ruling families still remaining. The
list from which he can choose is not very long; and it is most probable,
as this is written, that he will nominate to succeed him Mrs. Bernice
Pauahi Bishop, wife of the present Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mrs.
Bishop is a lady of education and culture, of fine presence, every way fit
to rule over her people; and her selection would be satisfactory to the
foreign residents as well as to the best of the Hawaiian people.

[Illustration: HAWAIIAN STYLE OF DRESS.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE LEPER ASYLUM ON MOLOKAI.

So much has been said and written of late about the disease called leprosy
and its ravages in the Sandwich Islands that I had the curiosity to visit
the asylum for lepers at Molokai, where now very nearly all the people
suffering from this disease have been collected, under a law which directs
this seclusion.

The steamer _Kilauea_ left Honolulu one evening at half-past five o'clock,
and dropped several of us about two o'clock at night into a whale-boat
near a point on the lee side of Molokai. Here we were landed, and
presently mounted horses and rode seven or eight miles to the house of a
German, Mr. Meyer, who is the superintendent of the leper settlement, and
also, I believe, of a cattle farm which belongs to the heirs of the late
king.

Mr. Meyer has lived on Molokai since 1853. He is married to a Hawaiian,
and has a large family of sons and daughters who have been carefully and
excellently brought up, I was told. Mrs. Meyer, who presided at breakfast,
is one of those tall and grandly proportioned women whom you meet among
the native population not infrequently, who enable you to realize how it
was that in the old times the women exercised great influence in Hawaiian
politics. She seemed born to command, and yet her benevolent countenance
and friendly smile of welcome showed that she would probably rule gently.

From Mr. Meyer's we rode some miles again, until at last we dismounted at
the top or edge of the great precipice, at the foot of which, two thousand
feet below, lies the plain of Kalawao, occupied by the lepers. At the
top we four dismounted, for the trail to the bottom, though not generally
worse than the trail into the Yosemite Valley, has some places which would
be difficult and, perhaps, dangerous for horses.

From the edge of the Pali or precipice the plain below, which contains
about 16,000 acres, looks like an absolute flat, bounded on three sides by
the blue Pacific. Horses awaited us at the bottom, and we soon discovered
that the plain possessed some considerable elevations and depressions. It
is believed to have been once the bottom of a vast crater, of which the
Pali we clambered down formed one of the sides, the others having sunk
beneath the ocean, leaving a few traces on one side. It has yet one
considerable cone, a hill two hundred feet high, a well-preserved
subsidiary crater, on whose bottom grass is now growing, while a
little pool of salt water, which rises and falls with the tide, shows a
connection with the ocean. A ride along the shore showed me also several
other and smaller cones.

The whole great plain is composed of lava stones, and to one unfamiliar
with the habits of these islanders would seem to be an absolutely
sterile desert. Yet here lived, not very many years ago, a considerable
population, who have left the marks of an almost incredible industry in
numerous fields inclosed between walls of lava rock well laid up; and in
what is yet stranger, long rows of stones, like the windrows of hay in a
grass field at home, evidently piled there in order to secure room in the
long, narrow beds thus partly cleared of lava which lay between, to plant
sweet-potatoes. As I rode over the trails worn in the lava by the horses
of the old inhabitants, I thought this plain realized the Vermonter's
saying about a piece of particularly stony ground, that there was not room
in the field to pile up the rocks it contained.

Yet on this apparently desert space, within a quarter of a century more
than a thousand people lived contentedly and prosperously, after their
fashion; and this though fresh water is so scarce that many of them must
have carried their drinking water at least two or even three miles. And
here now live, among the lepers, or rather a little apart from them at
one side of the plain, about a hundred people, the remnant of the former
population, who were too much attached to their homes to leave them, and
accepted sentence of perpetual seclusion here, in common with the lepers,
rather than exile to a less sterile part of the island.

When we had descended the cliff, a short ride brought us to the house of
a luna, or local overseer, a native who is not a leper; and of this house,
being uncontaminated, we took possession.

By a law of the kingdom it is made the duty of the Minister of the
Interior, and under him of the Board of Health, to arrest every one
suspected of leprosy; and if a medical examination shows that he has the
disease, to seclude the leper upon this part of Molokai.

Leprosy, when it is beyond its very earliest stage, is held to be
incurable. He who is sent to Molokai is therefore adjudged civilly dead.
His wife, upon application to the proper court, is granted a decree of
absolute divorce, and may marry again; his estate is administered upon
as though he were dead. He is incapable of suing or being sued; and his
dealings with the world thereafter are through and with the Board of
Health alone.

In order that no doubtful cases may be sent to Molokai there is a hospital
at Kalihi, near Honolulu, where the preliminary examinations are made, and
where Dr. Trousseau, the skillful physician of the Board of Health, son of
the famous Paris physician of the same name, retains people about whom he
is uncertain.

The leper settlement at Molokai was begun so long ago as 1865; but the law
requiring the seclusion of lepers was not enforced under the late king,
who is believed to have been himself a sufferer from this disease, and
who, at any rate, by constantly granting exemptions, discouraged the
officers of the law. Since the accession of the present king, however, it
has been rigidly enforced, and it is this which has caused the sudden and
great outcry about leprosy, which has reached even to the United States,
and has caused many people, it seems, to fear to come to the Islands, as
though a foreigner would be liable to catch the disease.

You must understand that the native people have no fear of the disease.
Until the accession of the present king lepers were commonly kept in the
houses of their families, ate, drank, smoked, and slept with their own
people, and had their wounds dressed at home. If the disease were
quickly or readily contagious, it must have spread very rapidly in such
conditions; and that it did not spread greatly or rapidly is one of
the best proofs that it is not easily transmitted. When I remember how
commonly, among the native people, a whole family smokes out of the same
pipe, and sleeps together under the same tapa, I am surprised that so few
have the disease.

There are at this time eight hundred and four persons, lepers, in the
settlement, besides about one hundred non-lepers, who prefer to remain
there in their ancient homes. Since January, 1865, when the first leper
was sent here, one thousand one hundred and eighty have been received,
of whom seven hundred and fifty-eight were males and four hundred and
twenty-two females. Of this number three hundred and seventy-three
have died, namely, two hundred and forty-six males and one hundred and
twenty-seven females. Forty-two died between April 1 and August 13 of the
present year. The proportion of women to men is smaller than I thought;
and there are about fifty leper children, between the ages of six and
thirteen. Lepers are sterile, and no children have been born at the
asylum.

So great has been the energy and the vigilance of the Board of Health and
its physician, Dr. Trousseau, that there are not now probably fifty lepers
at large on all the islands, and these are persons who have been hidden
away in the mountains by their relatives. In fact if there was ever any
risk to foreign visitors from leprosy, this is now reduced to the minimum;
and as the disease is not caused by the climate, and can be got, as
the widest experience and the best authorities agree, only by intimate
contact, united with peculiar predisposition of the blood, there is not
the least ground for any foreign visitor to dread it.

When a leper is sent to Molokai, the Government provides him a house, and
he receives, if an adult, three pounds of paiai or unmixed poi, per day,
and three pounds of salt salmon, or five pounds of fresh beef, per week.
Beef is generally preferred.

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