The Hawaiian Archipelago by Isabella Lucy Bird (best fiction novels to read txt) 📕

their habits. They assemble together for everything that has to be made or done, and their occupations and amusements are shared by both sexes. In old days it is said that a king of Hawaii assembled most of the adults of the then populous island, and formed a human chain three miles long to pass up stones for the building of the great Heiau in Kona. It is said that this valley had 2000 inhabitants forty years ago, but they have dwindled to 117. The former estimate is probably not an excessive one, for nearly the whole valley is suitable for the culture of kalo, and a square mile of kalo will feed 15,000 natives for a year.

Two women were shrimping in the river, the children were swimming to school, blue smoke curled up into the still air, kalo was baking among the stones, and a group of women sat sewing and making leis on the ground. The Waimanu day had begun; and it was odd to think that through the long summer years days dawned like this, and that the people of the valley grew grey and old in shrimping and sewing and kalo baking. All Waimanu shook hands with me, the kindly "Aloha" filled the air, and the women threw garlands over us both. I could hardly induce my host to accept a dollar and a half for my entertainment. From the dizzy summit of the pali, where the sun was high and hot, I looked my last on the dark, cool valley, slumbering in an endless calm, the deepest, greenest, quaintest cleft on all the island.

The sun was fierce and bright, the ocean had a metallic glint, the hot breath of the kona was scorching. My hands, swollen from mosquito bites, could not be stuffed into my gloves, and inflamed under the sun, and my wet boots baked and stiffened on my feet. Hananui plaited a crown of leaves for my hot head, which I found a great relief. I was still minded to linger, for one side of each glorious gulch was cool with shadow and dripping with dew. The blue morning glories were yet unwilted, rivulets dropped down into ferny grottoes and lingered there, rose ohia blossoms lighted shady places, orange flowers gleamed like stars amidst the dense leafage, and the crimped-leaved coffee shrubs were white with their mimic snow. It was my last tropical dream, and I was rudely roused by finding myself on the unsightly verge of the great bluff on the north side of this valley, which plunges to the sea with an uncompromising perpendicular dip of 2000 feet, and carries on its dizzy brow a shelving trail not more than two feet wide!

I felt that I must go back and live and die in Waimanu rather than descend that scathed steep, and being stupid with terror flung myself from my horse, forgetting that it was much safer to trust to his four feet than to my two, and to an animal without "nerves," dizziness, or "the fore-knowledge of death," than to my palsied, cowardly self. I had intended to go into details of the horrible descent, but the "pilikia" is over now, and Halemanu claps me on the shoulder with an approving smile, ejaculating, "Maikai, maikai" (good). Besides, my returning senses inform me that I have not tasted food since yesterday, and some delicious river fishes are smoking on the table. . . . .

I.L.B.



LETTER XVII.

STR. KILAUEA.

. . . I have been spending the day at Lahaina on Maui, on my way from Kawaihae to Honolulu. Lahaina is thoroughly beautiful and tropical looking, with its white latticed houses peeping out from under coco palms, breadfruit, candlenut, tamarinds, mangoes, bananas, and oranges, with the brilliant green of a narrow strip of sugar-cane for a background, and above, the flushed mountains of Eeka, riven here and there by cool green chasms, rise to a height of 6000 feet. Beautiful Lahaina! It is an oasis in a dazzling desert, straggling for nearly two miles along the shore, but compressed into a width of half a mile. It was a great missionary centre, as well as a great whaling station, but the whalers have deserted it, and missions are represented now only by the seminary of Lahainaluna on the hillside. An old palace, the remains of a fort, a custom-house, and a native church are the most conspicuous buildings. The stores and dwellings of the foreign residents are scattered along the shore, and the light frame house, with its green verandah, buried amid gorgeous exotics and shaded by candlenut and breadfruit, looks as seemly and in keeping as in far-off Massachusetts, under hickory and elm. The grass houses of the natives cluster along the waters' edge, or in lanes dark with mangoes and bananas, and fragrant with gardenia fringing the cane-fields. These, with adobe houses and walls, the flush of the soil, the gaudy dresses of the natives, the masses of brilliant exotics, the intense blue of the sea, and the dry blaze of the tropical heat, give a decided individuality to the capital of Maui. The heat of Lahaina is a dry, robust, bracing, joyous heat. The mercury stood at 80 degrees, the usual temperature of the "flare" or sea level on the leeward side of the islands; but I strolled through the cane-fields and along the glaring beach without suffering the least inconvenience from the sun, and found the unusual precaution of a white umbrella perfectly needless.

The beach is formed of pure white broken coral; the sea is blue with the calm, pure blue of turquoise, but crystalline in its purity, and breaks for ever over the environing coral reef with a low deep music. Blue water stretched to the far horizon, the sky was blazing blue, the leafage was almost dazzling to the eye, the mountainous island of Molokai floated like a great blue morning glory on the yet bluer sea; a sweet, soft breeze rustled through the palms, lazy ripples plashed lightly on the sand; humanity basked, flower-clad, in sunny indolence; everything was redundant, fervid, beautiful. How can I make you realize the glorious, bountiful, sun-steeped tropics under our cold grey skies, and amidst our pale, monotonous, lustreless greens?

Yet Molokai is only enchanting in the distance, for its blue petals enfold 400 lepers doomed to endless isolation, and 300 more are shortly to be weeded out and sent thither. In to-day's paper appeared the painful notice, "All lepers are required to report themselves to the Government health officer within fourteen days from this date for inspection, and final banishment to Molokai." It is hoped that leprosy may be "stamped out" by these stringent measures, but the leprous taint must be strong in many families, and the social, gregarious natives smoke each other's pipes and wear each other's clothes, and either from fatalism or ignorance have disregarded all precautions regarding this woful disease; and now that measures are being taken for the isolation of lepers, they are concealing them under mats and in caves and woods. This forlorn malady, called here Chinese leprosy, in the cases that I have seen, confers nothing of the white, scaly look attributed to Syrian leprosy; but the face is red, puffed, bloated, and shining, and the eyes glazed, and I am told that in its advanced stage the swollen limbs decay and drop off. It is a fresh item of the infinite curse which has come upon this race, and with Molokai in sight the Hesperides vanished, and I ceased to believe that the Fortunate Islands exist here or elsewhere on this weary earth.

My destination was the industrial training and boarding school for girls, taught and superintended by two English ladies of Miss Sellon's sisterhood, Sisters Mary Clara and Phoebe; and I found it buried under the shade of the finest candlenut trees I have yet seen. A rude wooden cross in front is a touching and fitting emblem of the Saviour, for whom these pious women have sacrificed friends, sympathy, and the social intercourse and amenities which are within daily reach of our workers at home. The large house, which is either plastered stone or adobe, contains the dormitories, visitors' room, and oratory, and three houses at the back, all densely shaded, are used as schoolroom, cook-house, laundry, and refectory. There is a playground under some fine tamarind trees, and an adobe wall encloses, without secluding, the whole. The visitors' room is about twelve feet by eight feet, very bare, with a deal table and three chairs in it, but it was vacant, and I crossed to the large, shady, airy schoolroom, where I found the senior sister engaged in teaching, while the junior was busy in the cook-house. These ladies in eight years have never left Lahaina. Other people may think it necessary to leave its broiling heat and seek health and recreation on the mountains, but their work has left them no leisure, and their zeal no desire, for a holiday. A very solid, careful English education is given here, as well as a thorough training in all housewifely arts, and in the more important matters of modest dress and deportment, and propriety in language. There are thirty-seven boarders, native and half-native, and mixed native and Chinese, between the ages of four and eighteen. They provide their own clothes, beds, and bedding, and I think pay forty dollars a year. The capitation grant from Government for two years was 2325 dollars. Sister Phoebe was my cicerone, and I owe her one of the pleasantest days I have spent on the islands. The elder Sister is in middle life, but though fragile-looking, has a pure complexion and a lovely countenance; the younger is scarcely middle-aged, one of the brightest, bonniest, sweetest-looking women I ever saw, with fun dancing in her eyes and round the corners of her mouth; yet the regnant expression on both faces was serenity, as though they had attained to "the love which looketh kindly, and the wisdom which looketh soberly on all things."

I never saw such a mirthful-looking set of girls. Some were cooking the dinner, some ironing, others reading English aloud; but each occupation seemed a pastime, and whenever they spoke to the Sisters they clung about them as if they were their mothers. I heard them read the Bible and an historical lesson, as well as play on a piano and sing, and they wrote some very difficult passages from dictation without any errors, and in a flowing, legible handwriting that I am disposed to envy. Their accent and intonation were pleasing, and there was a briskness and emulation about their style of answering questions, rarely found in country schools with us, significant of intelligence and good teaching. All but the younger girls spoke English as fluently as Hawaiian. I cannot convey a notion of the blitheness and independence of manner of these children. To say that they were free and easy would be wrong; it was rather the manner of very frolicsome daughters to very indulgent mothers or aunts. It was a family manner rather than a school manner, and the rule is obviously one of love. The Sisters are very wise in adapting their discipline to the native character and circumstances. The rigidity which is customary in similar institutions at home would be out of place, as well as fatal here, and would ultimately lead to a rebound of a most injurious description. Strict obedience is of course required, but the rules are few and lenient, and there is no more pressure