Charles Nordhoff

“ Except the rock of Tristan d'Acunha in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, I have never seen an inhabited spot which seemed so utterly desolate, so entirely separated from the world, whose people appeared to me to have such a slender hold on mankind. Yet for their solace they know that a powerful Government watches over their welfare, and—if that is any comfort—that, thirty miles away, there are lights and music and laughter and singing, as well as crowds, and all the anxieties and annoyances incidental to what we are pleased to call civilization. ”

“ The voyage from San Francisco is almost all the way in sight of land; and as you skirt the mountainous coast of Oregon you see long stretches of forest, miles of tall firs killed by forest fires, and rearing their bare heads toward the sky like a vast assemblage of bean-poles—a barren view which you owe to the noble red man, who, it is said, sets fire to these great woods in order to produce for himself a good crop of blueberries. ”

“ When I had spent a day and a half at anchor abreast of Astoria, the words appeared less exaggerated. Wherever you look you see only timber; tall firs, straight as an arrow, big as the California redwoods, and dense as a Southern canebrake. On your right is Oregon—its hill-sides a forest so dense that jungle would be as fit a word for it as timber; on the left is Washington Territory, and its hill-sides are as densely covered as those of the nearer shore. ”

“ And yet there are people who would make of woman only a kind of female man!
As you travel along the coast, the stage-road gives you frequent and satisfactory views of its curiously distorted and ocean-eaten caves and rocks. It has a dangerous and terrible aspect, no doubt, to mariners, but it is most wonderful, viewed from the shore. At every projection you see that the waves have pierced and mined the rock; if the sea is high, you will hear it roar in the caverns it has made, and whistle and shriek wherever it has an outlet above through which the waves may force the air. ”

“ As there are but two seasons, so there are apt to be sharply-drawn differences in natural features, and you descend from what appears to you an interminable mass of mountains suddenly into a plain, and pass from deep forests shading the mountain road at once into a prairie valley, which nature made ready to the farmer's hands, taking care even to beautify it for him with stately and umbrageous oaks. ”

“ Kawelo too eagerly followed his mother's advice, and soon there was not on the island a more indefatigable planter of kalo, nor a more expert fisherman. But what succeeds with common women is not always the thing to charm the daughters of kings. Kaakaukuhimalani could make nothing of a husband who was a skillful farmer or a lucky fisherman; other talents are required to touch the hearts of nobles, and hers remained indifferent, insensible to the sighs of Kawelo. Nobles then, as to-day, regarded pleasure above all things; and a good comedian was worth more to them than an honest workman. ”

“ It seemed to me that in such a climate as that of Mendocino, where they wear the same clothes all the year round, have evening fires in July, and may keep their doors open in January, such a little kennel as this meets all the real wants of the male of the human race.
This, I suspect, is about as far as man, unaided by woman, would have carried civilization anywhere. Whatever any of us have over and above such a snuggery as this we owe to womankind; whatever of comfort or elegance we possess, woman has given us, or made us give her. ”

“ One of the curious sights of Honolulu to us travelers, last spring, was to see long processions of native people, men, women, and children, marching to the palace to lay their offerings before the king, who is a high chief. Each brought something—a man would walk gravely along with a pig under his arm; after him followed perhaps a little child with half a dozen bananas, a woman with a chicken tied by a string, a girl with a handkerchief full of eggs, a boy with a cocoa-nut, an old woman with a calabash of poi, and so on. ”

“ You are to ride for thirty miles over a lava bed, along a narrow trail as well made as it could be without enormous expense, but so rough, so full of mud-holes filled with broken lava in the first part of the journey, and so entirely composed of naked, jagged, and ragged lava in the remainder, that one wonders how the horses stand it. A canter, except for two or three miles near the Volcano House, is almost out of the question; and though the Hawaiians trot and gallop the whole distance, a stranger will scarcely follow their example. ”

“ Their house is built somewhat under the shelter of the rocks, but they live in what to a landsman would seem a perpetual storm; the ocean roars in their ears day and night; the boom of the surf is their constant and only music; the wild scream of the sea-birds, the howl of the sea-lions, the whistle and shriek of the gale, the dull, threatening thunder of the vast breakers, are the dreary and desolate sounds which lull them to sleep at night, and assail their ears when they awake. ”

“ Chance visitors they see only occasionally, and at that distance at which a steamer is safe from the surf, and at which a girl could not even recognize her lover. The commerce of San Francisco passes before their eyes, but so far away that they can not tell the ships and steamers which sail by them voiceless and without greeting; and of the events passing on the planet with which they have so frail a social tie they learn only at long and irregular intervals. The change from sunshine to fog is the chief variety in their lives; the hasty landing of supplies the great event in their months. ”

“ It is one of the embarrassing incidents of travel on these Islands that there are no hotels or Inns outside of Honolulu and Hilo. Whether he will or no the traveler must accept the hospitality of the residents, and this is so general and so boundless that it would impose a burdensome obligation, were it not offered in such a kindly and graceful way as to beguile you into the belief that you are conferring as well as receiving a favor. Nor is the foreigner alone generous; for the native too, if you come with a letter from his friend at a distance, places himself and all he has at your service. ”

“ In Mendocino, Lake, and Marin, the roads are excellent, and either a public stage, or, what is pleasanter and but little dearer, a private team, with a driver familiar with the country, is always obtainable. In such a journey one element of pleasure is its somewhat hap-hazard nature. You do not travel over beaten ground, and on routes laid out for you; you do not know beforehand what you are to see, nor even how you are to see it; you may sleep in a house to-day, in the woods to-morrow, and in a sail-boat the day after; you dine one day in a logging camp, and another in a farm-house. ”

“ Wherever the valley is settled, you will see neat board fences, roomy barns, and farm-houses nestling among trees, and flanked by young orchards. You will not find a great variety of crops, for wheat and barley are the staple products of this valley; and though the farms here are in general of 640 acres or less, there are not wanting some of those immense estates for which California is famous; and a single farmer in this valley is said to have raised on his own land last year one-twentieth of the entire wheat crop of the State. ”

“ A high chief was approached only with abject gestures, and no one dared resist his acts or dispute his will. The sense of obedience must have been very strong, for it has survived every change; and only the other day a friend of mine saw a Hawaiian lady, a chiefess, but the wife of an American, and herself tenderly nurtured and a woman of education and refinement, boxing the ears of a tall native, whom she had caught furiously abusing his wife, and the man bore his punishment as meekly as a child. ”

“ There are so many chances in life out there that men become overenterprising—a speculative spirit invades even the farm-house; and as a man can always live—food being so abundant and the climate so kindly—and as the population is as yet sparse, men are tempted to go from one avocation to another, to do many things superficially, and to look for sudden fortunes by the chances of a shrewd venture, rather than be content to live by patient and continued labor. ”

“ Well, the Indian camp at Round Valley is in a deplorable state of disorder. No attempt is made to teach our wards to be clean or orderly, or to form in them those habits which might elevate, at least, their children. The plain around the shanties is full of litter, and overgrown with dog-fennel. As Mr. Burchard, the superintendent, walked about with me, half-grown boys sat on the grass, and even on the school-house steps, gambling with cards for tobacco, and they had not been taught manners enough to rise or move aside at the superintendent's approach. ”

“ The white frame houses with green blinds, the picket-fences whitewashed until they shine, the stone walls, the small barns, the scanty pastures, the little white frame churches scattered about, the narrow "front yards," the frequent school-houses, usually with but little shade: all are New England, genuine and unadulterated; and you have only to eliminate the palms, the bananas, and other tropical vegetation, to have before you a fine bit of Vermont or the stonier parts of Massachusetts. ”

“ For the advantages of the sugar planter on these islands are very decided. He has not only, as I showed you above, a favorable climate and an extraordinarily fertile soil, but he has a laboring population, perhaps the best, the most easily managed, the kindliest, and—so far as habits affect the steadiness and usefulness of the laborer—the least vicious in the world. He does not have to pay exorbitant wages; he is not embarrassed to feed or house them, for food is so abundant and cheap that economy in its distribution is of no moment; and the Hawaiian is very cheaply housed. ”

“ It is plain that the Island trade is so largely in our hands that no other nation can be said to dispute it with us. If our flag flew over Honolulu we could hardly expect to have a more complete monopoly of Hawaiian commerce than we already enjoy. Moreover, almost all the sugar-plantations—the most productive and valuable property on the Islands—are owned by Americans; and the same is true of the greater number of stock farms.
Our political predominance on the Islands is as complete as the commercial. In the present cabinet all the ministers except one are Americans. ”

“ It would hardly do to compare the Hawaiian people with those of New England; but they will compare favorably in comfort, in intelligence, in wealth, in morals, and in happiness with the common people of most European nations; and when one sees here how happily people can live in a small way, and without ambitious striving for wealth or a career, he can not but wonder if, after all, in the year 2873, our pushing and hard-pushed civilization of the nineteenth century will get as great praise as it gets from ourselves, its victims. ”

“ You put on thinner clothing. After breakfast you will like to spread rugs on deck and lie in the sun, fanned by deliciously soft winds; and before you see Honolulu you will, even in winter, like to have an awning spread over you to keep off the sun. When they seek a tropical climate, our brethren on the Pacific coast have to endure no such rough voyage as that across the Atlantic. On the way you see flying-fish, and if you are lucky an occasional whale or a school of porpoises, but no ships. ”

“ It is a very surprising sight to see three or four men thus dashed for nearly a mile toward the shore at the speed of an express train, every moment about to be overwhelmed by a roaring breaker, whose white crest was reared high above and just behind them, but always escaping this ingulfment, and propelled before it. They look, kneeling or lying on their long surf-boards, more like some curious and swift-swimming fish—like dolphins racing, as it seemed to me—than like men. ”

“ The best way to see the island is to land, as we did, at Waimea; ride to a singular spot called the "barking sands"—a huge sand-hill, gliding down which you hear a dull rumble like distant thunder, probably the result of electricity. On the way you meet with a mirage, remarkable for this that it is a constant phenomenon—that is to say, it is to be seen daily at certain hours, and is the apparition of a great lake, having sometimes high waves which seem to submerge the cattle which stand about, apparently, in the water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you use your time well, the thirty-six hours which the steamer spends at Victoria will suffice you to see all that is of interest there to a traveler, and you can return in her down the Sound, and make more permanent your impressions of its scenery.
You will perhaps be startled, if you chance to overhear the conversation of your fellow-passengers, to gather that it concerns itself chiefly with millions, and these millions run to such extraordinary figures that you may hear one man pitying another for the confession that he made no more than a hundred millions last year. ”

“ When you have seen Honolulu and the Nuanu Valley, and bathed and drunk cocoa-nut milk at Waikiki, you will be ready for a charming excursion—the ride around the Island of Oahu. For this you should take several days. It is most pleasantly made by a party of three or four persons, and ladies, if they can sit in the saddle at all, can very well do it. You should provide yourself with a pack-mule, which will carry not only spare clothing but some provisions; and your guide ought to take care of your horses and be able, if necessary, to cook you a lunch. ”

“ The anti-Chinese agitation in San Francisco has led me to look a little closely into this matter, and I declare my belief that there are not a hundred decent men who work for a living in that city engaged in this crusade against the Chinese. If you could to-day assemble there all who join in this persecution, and if then you took from this assemblage all the Hoodlums, all the bar-room loafers, and all the political demagogues, I don't believe you would have a hundred men left on the ground. That is to say, the people who actually earn the bread they eat do not persecute the Chinese. ”

“ When the young king Lunalilo returned to the palace after the coronation, the pipe-bearer, an old native retainer, approached him on his knees, and was shocked at being ordered to get up and act like a man. The older natives to this day approach a chief or chiefess only with humble and deprecatory bows; and wherever a chief or chiefess travels, the native people along the road make offerings of the fruits of the ground, and even of articles of clothing and adornment. ”

“ Hua, in confusion, fell into a terrible rage, and massacred Uluhoomoe on the spot. The gods avenged the death of the priest by sending a distressing famine, first on the island of Maui, then on Hawaii. Hua, thinking to baffle the divine vengeance, went to Hawaii to escape the scourge; but a famine more terrible yet pursued him there. The chief vainly traversed every quarter of the islands; he starved to death in the temple of Makeanehu (Kohala) . His bones, after death, dried and shrunk in the rays of the burning sun, to which his dead body remained exposed. ”

“ The farmer in this State is a person of uncommon resources and ingenuity. I think he uses his brains more than our Eastern farmers. I do not mean to say that he lives better, for he does not. His house is often shabby, even though he be a man of wealth, and his table is not unfrequently without milk; he buys his butter with his canned vegetables in San Francisco, and bread and mutton are the chief part of his living, both being universally good here. ”

“ I am not certain that the wildness does not oppress one a little after a while, and there are parts of the river where the smoothly cut cliffs, coming precipitously down to the water's edge, and following down, sheer down, to the river's bottom, make you think with terror of the unhappy people who might here be drowned, with this cold rock within their reach, yet not affording them even a momentary support. I should like to have seen the rugged cliffs relieved here and there by the softness of smooth lawns, and some evidences that man had conquered even this rude and resisting nature. ”

“ The progress of California in material enterprises is something quite wonderful and startling. A year brings about changes for which one can hardly look in ten years. It is but eighteen months ago that the idea of a system of irrigation, to include the whole of the San Joaquin Valley, was broached, and then the most sanguine of the projectors thought that to give their enterprise a fair start would require years, and a great number of shrewd men believed the whole scheme visionary. ”

“ Honolulu is a capital city unconnected with any other place in the world by telegraph, having a mail once a month from San Francisco and New Zealand, and dependent during the remainder of the month upon its own resources. To a New Yorker, who gets his news hot and hot all day and night, and can't go to sleep without first looking in at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to hear the latest item, this will seem deplorable enough; but you have no idea how charming, how pleasant, how satisfactory it is for a busy or overworked man to be thus for a while absolutely isolated from affairs ”

“ Not a year passes but some new and valuable product of the soil is naturalized in this State; and one who has seen the soil and who knows the climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or, at most, ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed, and all their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, seen how wide is the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future of California. ”

“ An army officer, methodical, orderly, and having the habit of command, is the proper person for superintendent of a reservation; for drill and discipline, regular hours, regular duties, respectful manners, cleanliness, method—these are the elements of civilization that are needed, and which an army officer knows how to impress without harshness, because they are the essence of his own life. But under our present Indian policy the army is the mere servant of the Indian agent. ”

“ A hundred times and more, in my travels through the State, I have found Chinese serving not only as laborers, but holding positions where great skill and faithfulness were required; and almost every time the employer has said to me, "I would rather, of course, employ a white man, but I can not get one whom I can trust, and who will stick to his work." In some cases this was not said, but the employer spoke straight out that he had tried white men, and preferred the Chinese as more faithful and painstaking, more accurate, and less eye-servants. ”