Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 29: Letter # XVIII - part 1. November 14, 2008
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Darlene E. Kelley donkeyskid@msn.com November 16, 2008, 9:09 am

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands November 14, 2008

Contributed for use in 
USGenWeb Archives
by Darlene E. Kelley
donkeyskid@msn.com
November 14, 2008

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Historical Collections of Hawai'i
Keepers of the Culture
A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands
Isabella L Bird Bishop Letters
" Six Months Among the Plam Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands. "
Letter # XVIII - part 1
Transcribed.

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Letter # XVIII -part 1

" Six Monts Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes in the
Sandwich Islands."


Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu
March 20.


Oahu, with its grey pinnacles, its deep valleys, its cool chasms, its
ruddy headlands, and volcanic cones, all clothed in green by the recent
rains. loked unspeakably lovely as we landed by sunrise in a
rose-flushed atmoshere, and Honolulu, shady, dew-bathed, and brilliant
with flowers, deserved its name, " The Paradise of the Pacific."  The
hotel is pleasant, and Mrs. D,'s presence makes it sweet and homelike;
but in a very few days I lost much of the health I gained on Hawaii, and
the " Rolling Moses " and the Rocky Mountains can hardly come to soon.
For Honolulu is truly a metropolis, gay, hospiable,and restless, and
this hotel centralizes the restlessness Visiting begins at breakfast
time, when it ends I know not, and receivig and making visits, court
festivities, entertainmants given by the commissioners of the great
powers, riding parties, picnics, verandah parties,
" sociables," and luncheon and evening parties on board the ships of
war, succeed each other with frightful rapidity. This is all on the
surface, but beneath and better than this is a kindness which leaves no
stranger to a sense of loneliness, no want uncared for, and no sorrow
unalleviated. This, more than its beauty and its glorious climate, makes
Honolulu " Paradise " for the many who arrive here sick and friendless.
I notice that the people are very intimate with each other, and
generally address each other by their Christian names.Very many are the
descendants of the clerical an secular members of the mission, and
these, besides being naturally intimate, are further drawn and held
together by a society called " The Cousins' Society."
the objects of which are admirable. The people take an intense interest
in each other, and love each other unusually. Possibly they may hate
each other as cordially when occasion offers. It is a charming town, and
the society is delightful. I wish I were well enough to enjoy it.

For people in the early stages of consumption the climate is perfect,
owing to its equability, as also for bronchial infections. Unlike the
health resorts of the Mediterranean, Algeria, Madeira, and Florida,
where great summer heats or an unhealthy season compel half-cured
invalids to depart in the spring, to return the next winter with fresh
colds to begin the half-cure process again, people can live here until
they are completely cured, as the climate is never unhealthy, and never
too hot. Though the regular trades, which blow for nine months of the
year, have not yet set in, and the mercury stands at 80 degrees, there
is no sultriness; a tremulous see-breeze and a mountain breeze fan the
town, and the purple nights, when the stars hang out like lamps, and the
moon gives a light which is almost golden, are cool and delicious. 
Roughly computed, the annual mean temperature is 75 degrees 55', with a
divergence in either direction, As a general rule the temperature is
cooler by four degrees for every thousand feet of altitude, so that
people can choose their climate to suit temselves without leaving the
islands.

I am gradually learning a little of the topography of this island and of
Honoulu, but the last is very intricate. The appearance of Oahu from the
sea is deceptive. It looks hardly larger than Arran, but it is really
forty six miles long by twenty five broad, and is 530 square miles in
extent Diamond Hill, or Leahi, is the most prominent object south of the
town, beyond the palm groves of Waikiki. It is red and arid, except
when, as now, its is verdure-tinged by recent rains. Its height is 760
feet, and its crater nearly as deep, but its cone is rapidly diminishing
Some years ago, when the emormous quantity of thirty-six inches of rain
fell in one week, the degradation of both exterior and interior was
something incredible, and the same process is being carried on slowly or
rapidy at times. The Punchbowl, immediately behind Honolulu, is a crater
of the same kind, but of yet more brilliant coluring; so red is it
indeed, that one might suppose its fires had just died out. In 1786 an
observer noted it was being composed of high peaks; but atmospheric
influences have reduced it to the appearance of a single wasting tufa
cone, simular to those which stud the northern slopes of Mauna Kea.
There are a number of shore craters on the island, and six groups of
tufa cones, but from the disintergartion of the lava, and the great
depth of the soil in many places, it is supposed that volcanic action
ceased earler than on Maui or Hawaii. The shore are mostly fringed with
coral reefs, often half a mile width, composed of emented coral
fragments, shells, sand, and a growing species of zoophyte. The ancient
reefs are elevated thirty, forty, and even 100 feet in some places,
forming barriers which have changed lagoons into solid ground. Honolulu
was a bay or lagoon, protected from the sea by a coral reef a mile wide;
but the elevatin of this reef twenty-five feet has furnished a site of
the capital, by converting the bay into a low but beautifully situated
plain.

The mountainous range behind is a rocky wall with outlying ridges,
valleys of great size cutting the mountain to its core on either side,
until the culminating paks of Waiolani and Konahuanui, 400o feet bove
the sea, seem as if rent in twain to form the Nuuanu Valley. The wndward
side of this range is fertle, and is dotted over with rice and sugar
plantations, but the leeward side has not a trace of the redundancy of
the tropics, and this very barrenness gives a unigue charm to the exotic
beauty of Honolulu.

To me it is daily a fresh pleasure to stroll along the shady streets and
revl among plams and bananas, to see clusters of the granadilla and
night bowing cereus mixed with the double blue pea, tumbling over walls
and fences, while the vermilion flowers of the Erythrina umbrosa, like
spikes of red coral, and the flaring magenta Bougainvillea ( which is ot
a flower at all, but all audacious freak of terminal leaves ) ligt up
the shade, and the purple-leaved Dracaena which grve in pots for dinner
table ornament, is as common as weed..

Besides this hotel, and the handsome but exaggerated and inappropriate
Government buildings not yet finished, there were few " imposing
edifices " here. The tasteful but temporary English Cathedral, the
Kaiwaiaho Church, diminished once to suit a dwindled population, but
already too large again; the prison, a clean, roomy building. empty in
the daytime, because the convicts are sent out to labour on roads and
public works; the Queen' Hospital for Curables, for which Queen Emma and
her husband became mendicants in Honolulu; the Court House, a staring,
unshaded building; and the Iolani Palace, almost exhaust the category.
Of this last, little can be said, except that it is appropriate and
proportioned to a kingdom of 56,000 souls, which is more than can be
said of the income of the King, the salaries of ministers, and some
other things. It stands in pleasure grounds of an acre in extent, with
fine avenue running through them, and is approached by a flight of steps
which leads to a tolerably spacious hall, decorated in the European
style. Portaits of Louis Philippe and his queen, presented by
themselves, and of late Admiral Thomas, adorn the walls. The Hawaiians
have a profound respect for this officer's memory, as through him that
the sovereignty of the islands was promptly restored to the natives
rulers, after the infamous affair of its cession to England, as
reresented by Lord George Paulet. There are also some ornamental vases
and miniture copies of Thorwalden's works. The throne room takes up the
left wing fthe palace. This unfortunately resembles a rather dreary
drawing-room in London or New York, and has no distinctive features
except a decorated chair, which is the Hawaiian throne. There is an
Hawaiian crown also, neithr grand nor costly, but this I havenot seen.
At the present the palace is only used for state receptions and
entertainments, for the King is living at his private residence of
Haemoeipio, not far off.

Miss W. kindly introduced me to Queen Emma, or Kaleleonalani, the
widowed queen of Kamehameha IV., whom you will remember as having
visited England a few years ago, when she recived great attention. She
has one-fourth of English blood in her veins, but her complexion is
fully dark as if she were of unmixed Hawaiian descent, and her features,
though refined by education and circumstances, are also Hawaiian; but
she is a very pretty, as well as a very graceful woman. She was brought
up by Dr. Rooke, and English physician here, and though educated at the
American schol for the children of chiefs, is very English in er
leanings and sympathies, an attched member of the English Church, and an
ardent supporter of the " Honolulu Mission." Socially she is very
popular, and her exceeing kindness and benevolence, with her strongly
national feelings as an Hawaiian, make her much beloved by the natives.

The winter palace, as her town house is called, is a shady abode, like
an old fashioned New England house externally, but with two deep
verandahs, and the entrance is on the upper one. The lower floor seemed
given up to attndants and offices, and a native woman was ironing
clothes under a tree. Upstairs, the house is like tasteful English
country house, with a pleasant English look, as if its furniture and
ornaments had been gradually accumulating during a series of years, and
possessed individal histores and reminisciences, rather than as if they
had been ordered togther as " plenishings " from stores. Indeed, it is
the most English-looking house I have seen since I left home, except
Bishopscourt at Melbourne. If there were a bell I did not see it and we
did not ring, for the queen received us at the door of the drawing
room, which was open. I had seen her before in European dress,driving a
pair of showy black horses in a stylish English phaeton; but on this
occasion she was not reciving visitors formally, and was indulging in
wearing the native holuku, and her black wavy hair was left to its own
devices. She was rather beloe the middle height, very young looking for
her age, which is thirty-seven, and  very graceful in her movements. Her
manner is indeed very fascinating from a combination of unconscious
dignity and ladylike simplicity. Her expresion is sweet and gentle, with
the same look of sadness about her eyes that the King has, but she has a
brightness and archness of expression which gave a great charm to her
appearance. She has sorrowed much: first, for the death, at the age of
four, of her only child, the Prince of Hawaii, who when dying was
baptized into the English Church by the name of Albert Edward, Queen
Victoria and the Prince of Wales being his sponsers: and secondly, for
the premature death of her husband, to whom she was much attched. She
speaks English beautifully, only hesitating now and then for the most
correct form of expression. She spoke a good deal and with great
pleasure of England; and described Venice and the emotions it excited in
her so admirably, that I should like to have heard her descrbe all
Europe.

A few days afterwards I went to a gareden party at her house. It was a
very pretty sight, and the "everybody" of Honoulu was there to the
number of 250. I must describe it for the benifit of ____. who persists
in thinking that coloured royalty must ncessarily be grotesque. People
arrived shortly before sunset, and were recived by Queen Emma, who sat
on the lawn,with her attedants about her, very simply dressed in black
silk. The King, at whose entrance the bad played the national anthem,
stood onthe lawn, where presentations were made by the chamberlain; and
thise who were already acquainted with him had an oppertunity for a few
minutes' conversation. He was dressed in a vry well-made black sut, and
wore a ribbon and star of the Austrian order of Francis Joseph.
Hissimplicity wa atoned for by the superlative splendour of his suite;
the governor of Oahu, and the high chief Kalakaua, who was a rival
candidate for the throne, being conspicuously resplendent. The basis of
the costume appeared to be the Windsor uniform, but it was smothered
with epaulettes, cordons, and lace; and each dignitary has a uniform
peculiar to his office, so that the dispaly of gold lace was prodigious.
The chiefs are so raised above the cpmmon people inheight, size, and
general nobility of aspect, that many have supposed them to be of a
different race; and the alii who reresented the dwindled order that nigt
were certainly superb enough in appearance to justify the supposition.
Beside their splendour and stateliness, the fory officers of the English
and American war-ships, though all in full dress uniform, looked
decidedly insignificant; and I doubt not that the natives who were
assmbled outside the garden railings in crowds were not behind me in
making invidious comparisons.

Chairs and benches were placed under the beautiful trees, and people
grouped themselves on these, and promenaded, flirted, talked politics
and gossip, or listened to the royal band, which played at intervals,
and played well.. The dress of the ladies, whether white or coloured,
was both pretty and appropriate. Most of the younger women were in
white,and wore natural flowers in their hair; and many of the elder
ladies wore blck or coloured silks,with lace an trains. There were
several beautiful leis of the gardenia, which filled all the garden
withtheir delicious odour. Tea and ices were handed round on Sevres
china by footmen and pages in appropriate liveries. What a wonderful
leap from calabashes and poi, malos and paus, to this correct and
tasteful civilization ! As soon as the brief amber twilight of the
tropics was over, the garden was suddenly illuminated by myrids of
Chinese lanterns,and the effect was bewitching. The upper siute of rooms
was thrown open for those who preferred dancing under cover; but I think
that the greater part of the assmblage chose the shady walks and purple
night. Supper was served at eleven, and the party broke up soon
afterwards; but I must confess that, charming as it was, I left before
eight, for society makes heavier demand on my strength than the rough
open-air life of Hawaii.

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Next - part 2.  Letter # XVIII



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