Hawaii

“ Not alone was she the most refined and peach-blow blossom of a woman that Hawaii had ever produced, to whom connoisseurs of beauty and of spirit like Robert Louis Stevenson had bowed knee and head and presented with poems and pearls; but she was Kalakaua’s own niece and heir to the throne of Hawaii. Thus, the Americans, moving westward would be compelled to stop on the far shore of the Pacific; while Hawaii, taken under Japan’s wing, would become the easterly outpost of Japan. ”

“ Louis von Tempsky, debonair as of old, and the sonsy Armine, stood peering down in the uncertain light. Without trace of yawn from interrupted sleep, they reached to me the hands of perfect welcome one fails not to clasp in these sweet isles. Never, should I embark and depart a thousand times, can Hawaii’s landings become commonplace. Day or night, they remain the most unspoiled of travel blessings.
If there is one thing lovelier than sea-level on Maui, it is her temperate zone. ”

“ Kaimuki, on the rolling midlands beyond Kapiolani Park, formed quite a little city by itself. Kaimuki’s red lands, on the side of the gentle, seaward-tipped bowl that holds Honolulu, seemed always to be brushed by the raveled ends of rainbow-opal scarves. Never in the minds of living men, due to the continuous storms that year, were there such rainbows over Oahu. We lay, Jack and I, floating on the green hills of water beyond the inshore surges, and bathed our very souls in heavenly color. ”

“ The Hawaiians were barbarous, certainly, since they slew their prisoners of war, and to their gods made sacrifice of their enemies; since no tie of consanguinity save that of mother and son was a bar to wedlock; since murder was scarcely a crime, and the will of the alii-nui on every island was the supreme law; since the masses were in physical bondage to their chiefs and in mental slavery to the priesthood. Yet, with all this, they were a brave, hospitable and unselfish people. ”

“ The process of assimilation and decline is taking place with far more rapidity in Hawaii. Hawaii crashed like a meteor into America and was comminuted and absorbed. The finer dust of its primitive civilization is giving more color to our atmosphere than any other American possession. But the real Hawaii is rapidly receding into the past. On the beach at Waikiki there is a thatch-roofed hut, but like most of the Hawaiians themselves, it bears too obviously the ear-marks of the West, the imprint of invasion. ”

“ On landing in Kohala, Hiiaka took the road that led up through the thickly wooded wilderness of Mahiki, the region that had been the scene, now some months gone, of the most strenuous chapter in her warfare to rid Hawaii of the mo’o—that pestilent brood of winged and crawling monsters great and small that once infested her wilds and that have continued almost to the present day to infest the imagination of the Hawaiian people. ”

“ In 1820, the missionaries completed their long voyage and landed in Hawaii to find a country and a people without gods and without religion, ready and ripe for instruction.
But to return. Hawaii is the home of shanghaied men and women, who were induced to remain, not by a blow with a club over the head or a doped bottle of whisky, but by love. Hawaii and the Hawaiians are a land and a people loving and lovable. ”

“ Honolulu and Hawaii HAWAII, the pearl of the Pacific! What a group of islands abounding with romance and beauty! Truly, this is the land of Arcadia, where fauns and dryads and all the other favorites of Pan must disport. ”

“ But when a dart of sun through a decklight woke me from brief sleep, we were spanking along smartly in a cobalt sea threshed white on every rushing wave, with the green and gold island of Oahu shifting its scenery like a sliding screen as we swept past tawny Diamond Head and palm-dotted Waikiki toward Honolulu Harbor. After an oddly fishless voyage of four weeks from San Francisco (called by the natives Kapalakiko—pronounced Kah-pah-lah-ke-ko) , we were joyously excited over a school of big porpoises, “puffing-pigs,” intent as any flock of barnyard fowl to cross our fleeing forefoot. ”

“ Some three miles from the center of town, we alighted at the big Moana Hotel, where, in a lofty seaward lanai overlooking a palmy carriage court, was spent our first hour at Waikiki, sipping from cool glasses while we rested in large rattan chairs; for none but a malihini moves quickly here in hours of relaxation, though the haoles of Hawaii work at least as hard as on the mainland, and no shorter hours. ”

“ Our captain of the roseate name is painting the Snark, and she floats, a boat of white enamel, in the still blue and silver of the morning flood; while for frame to the fair picture a painted double-rainbow overarches, flinging the misty fringes of its ends in our enraptured faces. From the shell-pink dawn, through the green and golden day, to sunset and purple twilight and starshine, we move in beauty. “What a lot of people must have been shanghaied here by their own desire!” Jack ruminates. And truly, Hawaii is sufficient excuse for never going home. ”

“ On and on they sang, the melting Hawaiian airs, charming “Ua Like No a Like,” and “Dargie Hula,” “Mauna Kea” beloved of Jack, and his more than favorite, Kalakaua’s “Sweet Lei Lehua,” with tripping, ripping hula harmonies unnumbered. At the end of an hour bewitched, to Mr. McVeigh’s low “Good night, boys,” their last Queen’s “Aloha Oe,” with its fadeless “Love to You,” that has helped to make Hawaii the Heart-Home of countless lovers the world over, laid the uttermost touch of eloquence upon the strange occasion. ”

“ Here and there in the building, stages are set with splendid waxen Hawaiians engaged in olden pursuits, such as basket-weaving and poi-pounding. The figures, full-statured, are startlingly lifelike, except in the unavoidable deadness of the coloring. It is impossible to imitate the living hue, of which the natives say, “You can always see the blood of an Hawaiian under his skin.” ”

“ In the pantheon of ancient Hawaiian worship—or, rather, of the worship of the group from the twelfth century to the nineteenth—the deity most feared and respected, especially on the island of Hawaii, was the goddess Pele. She was the queen of fire and goddess of volcanoes, and her favorite residence was the vast and ever-seething crater of Kilauea, beneath whose molten flood, in halls of burning adamant and grottoes of fire, she consumed the offerings of her worshippers and devised destruction to those who long neglected her or failed to respect her prerogatives. ”

“ The street is a mere white, meandering, coral-powdered by-way; no thing less inquisitive than the birds abides in the adjoining garden, where a rustic dwelling shows but vaguely amidst a riot of foliage; and on our southern boundary is a tropic tangle of uninhabited wildwood, fronting upon a native fishpond—an elongated bit of bay inclosed by a low wall of masonry of such antiquity that no tradition of Hawaii can place its origin.
Bayward the outlook is a shadowy coral reef, swept by tepid pea-green tides ”

“ The Hawaiians were never cannibals. The most conspicuous of their barbarisms was the sacrifice of human beings to their gods; but did not the temples of early Gaul and Saxon flow with the blood of men? and did not one of the fathers of Israel sharpen his knife to slay the body of his son upon the altar of the God of Abraham? ”

“ Another caller crossed the springy turf of our garden—one who, having been told we were looking for saddle animals, came to suggest that we bring up our saddles the first of next week, and ride two of his horses back to the peninsula, where we are welcome to them as long as we please. Truly, the face of Hawaii hospitality is fair to see. What a place to live, with the gift of a roof from the rain, tree tops from the noonday sun, a peaceful space in which to work, strange pleasant foods irreproachably set forth, a warm vast bowl of jade for swimming, and fleet steeds for less than the asking! ”

“ Barely had we finished Martin’s eggless breakfast, when a government launch frothed alongside, and the engineer’s cheery “Want a line, Jack—eh?” sounded classic assurance of Hawaii’s far-famed grace of hospitality. Despite my sanguine temperament, I had been conscious of a premonition that something unfortunate would happen upon our arrival, probably due to the impression left by the hasty ship chandler of San Francisco, who unjustly libeled the Snark in Oak land and delayed our sailing; so this gracious “Want a line, Jack?” ”

“ Nowhere on the island of Hawaii do the palms grow taller than in the valleys of Waipio, and nowhere is the foliage greener, for every month in the year they are refreshed with rains, and almost hourly cooled in the shadows of passing clouds. ”

“ But Hawaii can seduce missionaries just as readily as she can seduce sailor boys and bank cashiers, and this particular lot of missionaries was so enamored of her charms that they did not return when old age came upon them. Their bones lie here in the land they came to love better than their own; and they, and their sons and daughters after them, have been, and are, powerful forces in the development of Hawaii. ”

“ In his attempt to translate his concepts into physical signs the Hawaiian was favored not only by his vivid power of imagination, but by his implicit philosophy, for the Hawaiian, looked at things from a physical plane—a safe ground to stand upon—albeit he had glimpses at times far into the depths of ether. When he talked about spirit, he still had in mind a form of matter. A god was to him but an amplified human being.
It is not the purpose to attempt a scientific classification of gesture as displayed in the halau. ”

“ Leaving Waimea, we continued across the rolling green plains, whose indefinite borders were lost in Mauna Kea’s misty foothills. Rain fell soothingly, and often we had glimpses of fierce-looking, curly-headed Scotch bulls with white faces, vignetted in breaking Scotch mist into the veriest details of old steel engravings. Hawaiian cowboys, taking form in the cottony vaporousness, waved and called to our coachman ere swallowed again.
One cannot encompass Hawaii without stepping upon the feet of one lordly mountain or another. ”

“ This record which the Hawaiian people have left of themselves is full and specific. When, therefore, we ask what emotions stirred the heart of the old-time Hawaiian as he approached the great themes of life and death, of ambition and jealousy, of sexual passion, of romantic love, of conjugal love, and parental love, what his attitude toward nature and the dread forces of earthquake and storm, and the mysteries of spirit and the hereafter, we shall find our answer in the songs and prayers and recitations of the hula. ”

“ Hawaii is a great experimental laboratory, not merely in agriculture, but in ethnology and sociology. Remote in the heart of the Pacific, more hospitable to all forms of life than any other land, it has received an immigration of alien vegetable, insect, animal and human life more varied and giving rise to more complicated problems than any other land has received. And right intelligently and whole-heartedly have the people of Hawaii taken hold of these problems and striven to wrestle them to solution. ”

“ Mark Twain's suggestion to those who go to these islands to find a congenial clime is about as practical as it is humorous—"Select your climate, mark your thermometer at the temperature desired, and climb until the mercury stops there." Everyone who visits Hawaii is charmed with the country, and never forgets its novelty, stupendous and delightful scenery, clear atmosphere, gorgeous sunlight, and profusion of fruits and flowers. ”

“ Somewhere on the coast there is an old battlefield where countless human bones still whiten; and on the rocky coast to the south can be seen in shallow water the ruins of miles of ancient fish ponds equaled nowhere in the group. To the northwest Oahu disturbs the horizon, cloud-capped and shimmering in the blue; while Haleakala bulks ten thousand feet in air on Maui to the east.
This ranch home is buried in flowers, and my unbelief in begonias a dozen feet high underwent rude check. A fairy forest of these surrounds the guest cottage, casting a rosy shadow on window and lanai. ”

“ Several traditions have come down the centuries referring to the existence of cannibal tribes or bands at one time or another in the Hawaiian archipelago, particularly on the islands of Oahu and Kauai, and harrowing stories of their exploits are a part of the folk-lore of the group. But in every instance the man-eaters are spoken of as foreigners, who came from a land unknown, maintained local footholds for brief seasons in mountain fastnesses, [372] and in the end were either exterminated or driven from the islands by the people for their barbarous practices. ”

“ He had sought to form a league of native chiefs against these dangerous encroachments; but the wily invaders, with new gods to awe the masses and new customs and new traditions to charm the native nobility, had, through intermarriage and strategy rather than force, become the virtual rulers of Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, and he had abandoned all hope of seeing them supplanted. ”

“ Far back in the past we see the beautiful Hina abducted from her Hawaiian husband by a prince of Molokai, and kept a prisoner in the fortress of Haupu until her sons grow to manhood, when she is rescued at the end of an assault which leaves the last of her defenders dead. Later we see the eight hundred helmeted chiefs of the king of Hawaii, all of noble blood, hurling themselves to destruction against the spears of the armies of Maui on the plains of Wailuku. ”