The Hawaiian Archipelago.
by Isabella L. Bird.
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 are necessary.
I was travelling for health, when circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 {0} 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 circ.u.mstance, 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. BIRD.
January, 1875.
TRAVELS IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
Canon Kingsley, 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 an unworthy estimate of that 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- cla.s.s 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 mult.i.tude 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 const.i.tute the only important group in the vast North Pacific Ocean, in which they are so advantageously placed as to be pretty nearly equidistant from California, Mexico, China, and j.a.pan. They are in the torrid zone, and extend from 18 degrees 50"
to 22 degrees 20" north lat.i.tude, and their longitude is from 154 degrees 53" to 160 degrees 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. It 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 degrees, and enjoying the charms of a fireside at an alt.i.tude 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 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 apt.i.tude for political organization. They const.i.tute a limited monarchy, and have a const.i.tutional 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.
There is no State Church. The majority of the foreigners, as well as of the natives, are Congregationalists. The missionaries translated the Bible and other books into Hawaiian, taught the natives to read and write, gave the princes and n.o.bles a high cla.s.s education, induced the king and chiefs to renounce their oppressive feudal rights, with legal advice framed a const.i.tution 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" "Tour Round Hawaii," Mr.
Brigham"s valuable monograph on "The 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 a.s.sistance most kindly rendered.
ISABELLA L. BIRD.
LETTER I.
STEAMER NEVADA, NORTH PACIFIC, January 19.
A white, unwinking, scintillating sun blazed down upon Auckland, New Zealand. Along the white glaring road from Onehunga, dusty trees and calla lilies drooped with the heat. Dusty thickets sheltered the cicada, whose triumphant din grated and rasped through the palpitating atmosphere. In dusty enclosures, supposed to be gardens, shrivelled geraniums scattered spa.r.s.ely alone defied the heat. Flags drooped in the stifling air. Men on the verge of sunstroke plied their tasks mechanically, like automatons. Dogs, with flabby and protruding tongues, hid themselves away under archway shadows. The stones of the sidewalks and the brick of the houses radiated a furnace heat. All nature was limp, dusty, groaning, gasping. The day was the climax of a burning fortnight, of heat, draught, and dust, of baked, cracked, dewless land, and oily breezeless seas, of glaring days, pa.s.sing through fierce fiery sunsets into stifling nights.
I only remained long enough in the capital to observe that it had a look of having seen better days, and that its business streets had an American impress, and, taking a boat at a wharf, in whose seams the pitch was melting, I went off to the steamer Nevada, which was anch.o.r.ed out in the bay, preferring to spend the night in her than in the unbearable heat on sh.o.r.e. She belongs to the Webb 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 pa.s.sengers unanimously signed a protest against her unseaworthy condition. She was condemned by the Government surveyor, and her mails were sent to Melbourne. She has, however, been patched up for this trip, and eight pa.s.sengers, including myself, have trusted ourselves to her. She is a huge paddle-steamer, of the old- fashioned American type, deck above deck, balconies, a pilot-house abaft the foremast, two monstrous walking beams, and two masts which, possibly in case of need, might serve as jury masts.
Huge, airy, perfectly comfortable as she is, not a pa.s.senger stepped on board without breathing a more earnest prayer than usual that the voyage might end propitiously. The very first evening statements were whispered about to the effect that her state of disrepair is such that she has not been to her own port for nine months, and has been sailing for that time without a certificate; that her starboard shaft is partially fractured, and that to reduce the strain upon it the floats of her starboard wheel have been shortened five inches, the strain being further reduced by giving her a decided list to port; that her crank is "bandaged," that she is leaky; that her mainmast is sprung, and that with only four hours" steaming many of her boiler tubes, even some of those 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." It 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. It 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 common consent, we a.s.sembled 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 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 ma.s.ses 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 compa.s.s, 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 gla.s.s in the racks above it; 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."
We were not accustomed to recognize that stewards had any other duty than that of feeding the pa.s.sengers, but under the circ.u.mstances 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 degrees in the water, and 85 degrees in the air, but as the light head airs blew the intense heat of our two smoke stacks aft, we often endured a temperature of 110 degrees. 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, these 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 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. It has been so far a very pleasant voyage. The moral, mental, and social qualities of my fellow-pa.s.sengers 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 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 Scotch 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.
It 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 c.o.c.kroaches 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 c.o.c.kroaches, and at meals with the stewards for time to eat. The stewards outnumber the pa.s.sengers, 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 their species. The unconcealed hostility with which they regard us is a marvellous contrast to the natural or purchasable civility or servility which prevails on British steamers. It 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 c.o.c.kroaches 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. In this dismal region, when about forty miles east of Tutuila, a beast popularly known as the "Flying fox" {14} alighted on our rigging, and was eventually captured 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. He snapped like a dog at first, but is now quite tame, and devours quant.i.ties of dried figs, the only diet he will eat.
We crossed the Equator in Long. 159 degrees 44", but in consequence of the misty weather it was not till we reached Lat. 10 degrees 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 "auld lang syne," and a "breath 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 enchanted region of perpetual calm, and an endless summer. Far off, for many an azure league, rims of rock, fringed with the graceful coco palm, girdle still lagoons, and are themselves encircled by coral reefs on which the ocean breaks all the year in broad drifts of foam. Myriads of flying fish and a few dolphins and Portuguese men-of-war flash or float through the scarcely undulating water. But we look in vain for the "sails of silk and ropes of sendal," which are alone appropriate to this dream-world. The Pacific in this region is an indolent blue expanse, pure and lonely, an almost untraversed sea. We revel in these tropic days of transcendent 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 "pale gradations" into the "perfect day."
P.S.--To-morrow morning we expect to sight land. In spite of minor evils, our voyage has been a singularly pleasant one. The 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 are incessant and most hara.s.sing, owing to the critical state of the engines. The Nevada now presents a grotesque appearance, for within the last few hours she has received such an added list to port that her starboard wheel looks nearly out of the water.
I.L.B.
LETTER II.
HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU, Jan. 26th.
Yesterday morning at 6.30 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. It 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 wind-bleached, 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 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 gra.s.s 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 Bill" had been unanimously elected to the throne. The surf ran white and pure over the environing coral reef, and as we pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage of the deepest indigo. And beyond the reef and beyond the blue, nestling among cocoanut trees and bananas, umbrella trees and breadfruits, oranges, mangoes, hibiscus, algaroba, and pa.s.sion-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 sh.o.r.e; and their boats were constantly pa.s.sing and re-pa.s.sing, 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.