Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 32: Letter # XX  Part 1. November 16, 2008
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Darlene E. Kelley donkeyskid@msn.com November 16, 2008, 9:13 am

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands November 16, 2008

 
Contributed for use in
USGenWeb Archives
by Darlene E. Kelley
November 16, 2008
 
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Historical Collections of Hawai'i
Keepers of the Culture
A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands
Isabella Bird Bishop Letters
"Six Months in the Palm Groves,
Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes in the 
Sandwich Islands."
Letter # XX  Part 1.
Transcribed
 
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Letter # XX Part 1
 
" Six Months in the Palm Groves,
Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands."
 
 
Koloa, Kauai,
March 23rd.
 
 
I am spending a few days on some quaint old mission premises, and the guest
house where I am lodged,
is a adobe house, with walls two feet thick, and a very thick grass roof comes
down six feet all around to shade the windows. It is itself shaded by date palms
and algarobas, and is surrounded by hibiscus, oleanders, and the datura arborea,
which at night fill the air with sweetness. I am the only guest, and the
solitude of the guest house in which I am writing, is most refreshing to tired
nerves. There is not a sound but the rustling of trees.
 
The first event to record is that the trade winds have set in, and though they
may yet yield once or twice to the kona, they will soon be firmly established
for nine months. They are not soft airs as I supposed, but riotous, rollicking
breezes, which keep up a constant clamor, blowing the trees about, slamming
doors, taking liberties with papers, making themselves heard and felt
everywhere, flecking the blue Pacific with foam, lowering the mercury three
degrees, bringing new health and vigor with them,-- wholesome, cheery,
frolicsome north-easters. They brought me here from Oahu in eighteen hours, for
which I thank them heartily.
 
You would think me a Sybarite for howling about those eighteen hours of running
to leeward, when the residents of Kauai, if they go to Honolulu in the intervals
between the quarterly trips of the Kilauea, have to spend from three to nine
days in beating to windward. These inter-island voyages of extreme detention,
rolling on a lazy swell in tropical heat, or beating for days against the strong
trades without shelter from the sun, and without anything that could be called
accommodation, were among the inevitable hardships to which the missionaries'
wives and children were exposed in every migration for nearly forty years.
 
When I reached the wharf at Honolulu the sight of the Jenny, the small sixty-ton
schooner by which I was to travel, nearly made me give up this pleasant plan, so
small she looked, and so cumbered with natives and their accompaniments of mats,
dogs, and calabashes of poi. But she is clean, and as sweet as a boat can be
which carries through the tropics cattle, hides, sugar, and molasses. She is
very low in the water, her deck is the real "fisherman's walk, two steps and
overboard;" and on this occasion was solely occupied by natives. The Attorney
General and Mrs. Judd were to have been my fellow voyagers, but my
disappointment at their non-appearance was considerably mitigated by the fact
there was not stowage room for more than white passenger! Mrs. Dexter pitied me
heartily, for it made her quite ill to look down the cabin hatch; but I
convinced her that no inconveniences are legitimate subjects for sympathy which
are endured in the pursuit of pleasure. There was just room on deck for me to
sit on a box, and the obliging, gentlemanly master, who, with his son and
myself, were the only whites on board, sat on the raft-rail.
 
The Jenny spread her white deck sails, glided gracefully away from the wharf,
and bounded through the coral reef; the red sunlight faded, the stars came out,
the Honolulu light went down in the distance, and in two hours the little craft
was out of sight of land on the broad, crisp Pacific. It was so chilly, that
after admiring as long as I could, I dived into the cabin, a mere den, with a
table, and a berth on each side, in one of which I lay down, and the other was
alternately occupied by the captain and his son. But limited as I thought it,
boards have been placed across on some occasions, and eleven whites have been
packed into a space six by eight! The heat and suffocation were nearly
intolerable, the black flies swarming, the mosquitoes countless and vicious, the
fleas agile beyond anything, and the cockroaches gigantic. Some of the finer
cargo was in the cabin, and large rats, only too visible by the light of a
swinging lamp, were assailing it, and one with a portentous tail ran over my
berth more than once, producing a stampede among the cockroaches each time. I
seldom spent a more miserable night, though there was the extreme satisfaction
of knowing that every inch of canvas was drawing.
 
Towards morning the short jerking motion of the ship close hauled, made me know
that we were standing in for land, and at daylight we anchored in Koloa Roads.
The view is a pleasant one. The rains have been abundant, and the land, which
rises rather gradually from the sea, is dotted with houses, abounds in signs of
cultivation, and then spreads up into a rolling country between precipitous
ranges of mountains. The hills look something like those of Oahu, but their
wonderful greenness denotes a cooler climate and more copious rains, also their
slopes and valleys are densely wooded, and Kauai obviously has its
characteristic features, one of which must certainly be a superabundance of that
most unsightly cactus, the prickly pear, to which the motto
nemo me impune lacessit most literally applies.
 
I had not time to tell you before the trip to Kauai was hastily arranged for me
by several of my Honolulu friends, some of whom gave me letters of introduction,
while others wrote forewarning their friends of my arrival. I am often reminded
of Hazael's question, " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?"
There is no inn or boarding house on the island, and I had hitherto believed
that I could not be concussed into following the usual custom whereby a traveler
throws himself on the hospitality of the residents. Yet, under the influence of
Honolulu persuasions, I am doing this very thing, but with an amount of mauvaise
honte and trepidation, which I will not voluntarily undergo again.
 
My first introduction was to Mrs. Smith, wife of a secular member of the
Mission, and it requested her to find means of forwarding me a distance of
twenty-three miles. Her son was at the landing with a buggy, a most unpleasant
index of the existence of carriage roads, and brought me here; and Mrs. Smith
most courteously met me at the door. When I presented my letter, I felt like a
thief detected in a first offense, but I was made welcome, and my kind host
insist on my remaining with them for some days. Their house is a pretty old
fashioned looking tropical dwelling, much shaded by exotics, and the parlor is
homelike with new books. There are two sons and two daughters at home, all, as
well as their parents, interesting themselves assiduously in the welfare of the
natives. Six bright-looking native girls are receiving an industrial training in
the house. Yesterday being Sunday, the young people taught a Sunday School
twice, besides attending the native church, and act of respect to Devine service
in Hawaiian which always has an influence on native attendance.
 
We have had some beautiful rides in the neighborhood. It is wild, lonely,
picturesque coast, and the Pacific moans along it, casting itself on its heavy
surges, with a singularly dreary sound. There are some very fine specimens of
the phenomena called " blow-holes " on the shore, not like the " spouting cave "
at Iona, however. We spent a long time in watching the action of one, though not
the finest. At half tide this spouting horn throws up a column of water over
sixty feet in height from a very small orifice, and the effect of the compressed
air rushing through a crevice near it, sometimes groans and shrieks, and at
others with a hollow roar like the warning fog-horn on a coast, is magnificent,
when, as to-day, there is a heavy swell on the coast.
 
Kauai is much out of the island world, owing to the in frequent visits of the
Kilauea, but really it is only twelve hours by steam from the capital. Strangers
visit it seldom, as it has no active volcano like Hawaii, or colossal crater
like Maui, or anything sensational of any kind. It is called the " Garden
Island," and has no great wastes of black lava and red ash like its neighbors.
It is queerly shaped, almost circular. with a diameter of from twenty-eight to
thirty miles, and its area is about 500 square miles. Waialeale, its highest
mountain, is 4,800 feet high, but little is known of it, for it is swampy and
dangerous, and a part of it is a forest covered and little explored tableland,
terminating on the sea in a range of perpendicular precipices 2,000 feet in
depth, so steep it is said, that a wild cat could not get around them. Owing to
these, and the virtual inaccessibility of a large region of land behind them, no
one can travel round the island by land, and small as it is, very little seems
to be known of portions of its area.
 
Kauai has apparently two centers of formation, and its mountains are thickly
dotted with craters. The age and density of the vegetation within  and without
those in this Koloa district, indicate a very long cessation from volcanic
action. It is truly, an oddly contrived island. An elevated rolling region,
park-like, liberally ornamented with clumps of ohia, lauhala, hau ( hibiscus )
and koa, and intersected with gullies full of large eugenias, lies outside the
mountain spurs behind Koloa. It is only yhe tropical trees, specially the
lauhala or " screw pine," the whimsical shapes of outlying ridges, which now and
then they are like the leaves in a book, and the strange forms of extinct
craters, which distinguish it from some of our most beautiful park scenery, such
as Windsor Great Park or Belvoir. It is a soft tranquil beauty, and a tolerable
road which owes little enough to art, increases the likeness to the sweet home
scenery of England. In this part of the island the ground seems devoid of
stones, and the grass is as fine and smooth as a race course.
 
The latest traces of volcanic action are found here. From the Koloa Ridge to,
and into the sea, a barren uneven surface of pahoehoe extends, often bulged up
in immense bubbles, some of which have partially burst, leaving caverns, one of
which, near the shore, is paved with the ancient coral reef !
 
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Letter XX continued in Part 2


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