Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 5. October 7, 2008
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Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 7, 2008, 11:31 pm

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 7, 2008

Contributed for use in 
USGenWeb Archives
by Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
Oct 7, 2008

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Historical Collections of Hawai'i 
Keepers of the Culture
A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands
Letters of Isabelle L. Bird Bishop
" Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwhich Islands.
Letter # 3 - part 1.
Transcribed

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Letter # 3 - part 1.

" Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands. "


Hawaiian Hotel
Jan. 28.

Sunday was a very pleasant day here. Church bells rang, and the shady
streets were filled with people in holiday dress. There are two large
native churches, the Kaumakapili, and the Kaiwaiaho, usually called the
stone church. The latter is an immense substantial building, for the
erection of which each Christian native brought a block of rock- coral.
There is a large Roman Catholic church, the priests of which are said to
have been somewhat successful in proselytizing operations. The Reformed
Catholic, or English temporary catherdral, is a tasteful but very simple
wooden building, standing in pretty grounds, on which a very useful
institution for boarding and training native and half-white girls, and
the reception of white girls as day scholors, also stands. This is in
connection with Miss Sellon's Sisterhood at Davenport. Another building,
alongside the cathedral, is used for English service in Hawaiian. There
are two Congregational churches; the old 
" Bethel." of which the Rev. S.C. Damon, known to all strangers, and one
of the oldest and most respected Honolulu residents, is the minister;
and the " Fort
St. Church," which has a large and influential congregation, and has
been said to " run the government," because its members compose the
majority of the Cabinet. Lunalilo, the present King, has cast in his lot
with the Conregationalists, but Queen Emma ia an earnest member of the
Anglican Church, and attends the Liturgical  Hawaiian Service in order
to throw the weight of her influence with the natives into the scale of
that communion. Her husband spent many of his days in translating the
Prayer-Book. As is natural, most of the natives belong to the
denomination from which they or their fathers received the Christian
faith, and the majority of the foreigners are of the same persuasion.
The New England Puritan influence, with its rigid Sabbatarianism, though
considerably worn away, is still influential enough to produce a general
appearance of Sabbath observance. The stores are closed, the
church-going is very demonstative, and the pleasure-seeking is very
unobtrusive.
The wharves are profoundly quiet.

I went twice to the English Cathedral, and was interested to see there a
lady in a nun's habit, with a number of brown girls, who was pointed out
to me as Sister Bertha, who has been working here usefully for many
years. The ritual is high. I am told that it is above the desires and
the comprehension of most of the island Episcopalians, but the zeal and
disinterestedness of Bishop Willis will, in time I doubt not, win upon
those who prize such qualities. He called in the afternoon, and took me
to his pretty, unpretending residence up the Nuuanu
Valley. He has a traning and boarding school there for native boys, some
of whom were at church in the morning as a surpliced choir. The bishop,
his sister, the schoolmater, and fourteen boys take their meals together
in a refectory, the boys acting as servitors by turns. There is service
every morning at 6:30 in the rivate chapel attached to the house, and
also in the cathedral a little later. Early risers, so near the equator,
must get up by candlelight all year round.

This morning we joined our kind friends from the Nevada for the last
time at breakfast. I have noticed that there is often a centrifugal
force which acts upon passengers who have been long at sea together,
dispersing them on reaching port. Indeed, the temporary enforced
cohesion is often succeeded by violent repulsion. But in this instance
we deeply regret the dissolution of our pleasant fraternity; the less
so, however, that this wonderful climate has produced a favourable
change in Mr. D., who no longer requires the hourly attention they have
hitherto shown him. The mornings here, dew-bathed and rose-flushed, are,
if possible, more lovely than the nights, and people are astir early to
enjoy them. The American consul and Mr. Damon called while we were
sitting at our eight-o'clock breakfast, from which I gather that
formalities are dispensed with. After  spending the morning in hunting
among the stores for things which were essential for the invalid, I
lunched in the Nevada with Captain Blethen and our friends.

Next to the advent of " national ships "
( a euphemism for men-of-war ). the arrivals and departures of the New
Zealand mail-steamers constitute the great excitement of Honolulu, and
the failures, mishaps, and wonderful unpunctuality of this Webb line are
highly stimulating in a region where " nothing happens." The loungers
were saying that the Navada's pumps were going for five days before we
arrived, and pointed out the clearness of the water which was running
from them at the wharf as an evidence that she was leaking badly. 
[ A week after her sailing, this unlucky ship put back with some
mysterious ailment, and on her final arrival at San Franisco, her
condition was found to be such that it was a marvel that she had made
the passage at all.  ]  The crowd of natives was enormous, and the
foreigners were there in hundreds. She was loading with oranges and
green bananas up to the last moment,--those tasteless bananas which, out
of the tropics, misrepresent this most delicious and ambrosial fruit.

There was a far greater excitment for the natives, for King Lunalilo was
about to pay a state visit to the American flag-ship California, and
every available place along the wharves and roads was crowded with
kanakas anxious to see him. I shall tell you that the late King, being
without heirs, ought to have nominted his successor; but it is said that
a sorceress, under the influence he was, persuaded him that his death
would follow upon his act. When he died, two months ago, leaving the
succession unprovided for, the duty of electing a sovereign, according
to the constitution, devolved upon the people through their
representatives, and they exercised it with a combination of order and
enthusiasm which reflects great credit on their cvilization. They chose
the highest chief on the islands, Lunalilo
( Above All), known among the foreigners as " Prince Bill," and at this
time letters of congratulation are pouring in upon him from his
brethern, the sovereigns of Europe.

The spectacular effect of a pageant here is greatly heightened by the
cloudless blue sky, and the wealth of light and colour. It was very hot,
almost too hot for sight-seeing, on the Nevada's bow. Expectation among
the lieges became tremendous and vociferous when Admiral Pennock's
sixteen-oared barge, with a handsome awning, followed by two well
manned boats, swept across the strip of water which lies between the
ships and the shore. Outrigger canoes, with garland men and women, were
poised upon the motionless water or darted gracefully round the
ironclads, as gracefully to come to rest. Then a stir and swaying of the
crowd, and the American Admiral was seen standing at the steps of an
English barouche and four, and an Hawaiian imitation of an English cheer
rang out upon the air. More cheering, more excitement, and I saw nothing
else till the Admiral's barge, containing the Admiral, and the King
dressed in a plain morning suit with a single decoration, swept past the
Nevada. The suite followed in other boats,-- brown men and white,
governors, ministers, and court dignitaries,in Winsor uniforms, but with
added resplendency of plumes, epaulettes, and gold lace. As soon as
Lunalilo reached the California, the yards if the three ships were
manned, and amidst cheering which rent the air, ad the deafening thunder
of a royal salute from sixty-three guns of heavy calibre, the popular
descendant of seventy generations of sceptred savages stepped on board
the flag-ship's deck. No higher honours could have been paid to the
Emperor " of all the Russias." I have seen  few sights more curious than
that of the representative of the American Republic standing bare-headed
before a coloured man, and the two mightiest empires on earth paying
royal honours to a Polynesian sovereign, whose little kingdom in the
North Pacific is known to many of us at home only as " the group of
islands where Captain Cook was killed."
Ah! how lovely this Queen of Oceans is!
Blue, bright, balm-breathing, gentle in its supreme strength, different
both in motion and colour from the course " vexed Atlantic! "


Steamer Kilauea
Jan 29th. 

I was turning homewards, enjoying the prospects of a quiet week in
Honolulu, when Mr. and Mrs, Damon siezed upon me, and told me that a
lady friend of theirs, anxious for a companion, was going to the volcano
on Hawaii, that she was a most expert and intelligent traveller, that
the Kilauea wold sail in two hours, that unless I went now I should have
no future oppertunity during my limited stay on the islands, that Mrs.
Dexter was anxious for me to go, that they would more than fill my place
in my absence, that this was a golden opportunity, that in short I MUST
go, and they would drive me back to the hotel to pack! The volcano is
still a myth to me, and I wanted to " read up " before going
and above all was grieved to leave my friend, but she had already made
some needful preparations, her son with his feeble voice urged my going,
the docor said that there was now no danger to be apprehended, and the
Damons' kind urgency left me no little choice, that by five I was with
them at the wharf, being introduced to my traveling companion, and to
many of my fellow-passengers.
Such an unexpected move is very bewildering, and it is too experimental,
and too much of a leap in the dark to be enjoyable at the present.

The wharf was one dense, well-compacted mass of natives takng leave of
their friends with much effusiveness, and the steamer's encumbered deck
was crowded with them, till there was hardly room to move; men, women,
children, dogs, cats, mats, calabashes of poi, cocoanuts,bananas, dried
fish, and every dusky individual of the throng was wreathed and garland
with ordorous and brilliant flowers. All were talking and laughing, and
an immenese amount of gesticulation seems to emphasize and suppliment
speech. We steamed through the reef in the brief red twilight, over the
golden tropic sea, keeping to the leeward side of the islands. Before it
was quit dark the sleeping arrangements were made, and the deck and
skylights were covered with mats and mattresses on which 170 natives
sat, slept, or smoked, -- a motley, parti-coloured mass of humanity, in
the midst of which I recognized Bishop Willis in the usual episcopal
dress, lying on a mattress among the others, a prey to discomfort and
weariness!  What would his episcopal brethern at home think of such a
hardship?

There is a yellow-skinned, soft voiced, fasinating Goa or Malay steward
on board, who with infinate goodwill attends to the comfort of
everybody. I was surprised when he asked me if I would like a mattress
on the skylight, or a berth below, and in unhesitating ignorance replied
severly, " Oh, below, of cours, please," thinking of a ladies' cabin,
but when I went down to supper, my eyes were enlightened.

The Kilauea is a screw boat of 400 tons, most unprepossessing in
appearance, slow, but sure, and capable of bearing an infinate amount of
battering. It is jokingly
that her keel has rasped off the branch coral round all the islands.
Though there are many inter-island schooners, she is the only sure mode
of reaching windward
islands in less than a week; and though at present I am disposed to
think rather slightly of her, and to class her with the New Zealand
coasting craft, yet the residents are very proud of her, and speak
lovingly of her, and regard her as a blessed deliverance from the
horrors of beating to windward. She has a shabby, obsolete look about
her, like a second-rate coasting collier, or an old American tow-boat.
She looks ill-found, too; I saw two essentail pieces of tackle give way
as they were hoisting the main sail. [ Dear old craft! I would not
change her now for the finest palace which floats on the Hudson, or the
trimmest of the Hutchesons' beautiful West Highland fleet.]

Miss Karpe, my travelling companion, and two agreeable ladies, were
already in their berths very sick, but I did not get into mine because a
coachroach, looking as large as a mouse, occupied the pillow, and a
companion not much smaller was roaming over the quilt without any
definate purpose. I can't vouch for the accuracy of my observation, but
it seemed to me that these tremendous creatures were dark red, with eyes
like lobsters', and antannae two inches long. They looked capable of
carrying out the most dangerous and inscutable designs. I called the
Malay steward; he smiled mournfully, but spoke reassuringly, and pledged
his word for their innocuousness, but I never can believe that they are
not the enemies of man; and I laid down on the transom, not to sleep,
however, for it seemed essential to keep watch on the proceedings of
these formidable vermin.

The grotesqueness of the arrangements of the berths and their occupants
grew on me during the night, and the climax was put upon it when a
gentleman coming down in the early morning asked me if I knew that I was
using the Governor of Maui's head for a footstool, this portly 
native " Excellancy " being in profound slumber on the forward part of
the transom. The side of the saloon and te happy family of English,
Chinamen, Hawaiians, and American consisted of ; 

Governor Lyman - Miss Karpe- Miss ---
Afong -Vacant- Miss---
Governor Nahaolelua -Myself - Miss --

I noticed, too, that there were very few trunks and portmanteaus, but
that the after end of the saloon was heaped with Mexican saddles ad
saddlebags, which I learned too late were essential gear of every
traveller on Hawaii.

At five in the morning we were at anchor in the roads of Lahaina, the
chief village on the mountainous island of Maui. This place is very
beautiful from the sea, for beyond the blue water and the foamy reef the
eye rests gratefully on a picturesque collection of low, one-storied,
thatch houses, many of frame, painted white; others of grass, but all
with deep cool varandahs, half hidden among palms, bananas, kukuis,
breadfruit, and mangoes, dark groves against gentle slopes behind,
covered wth sugar-cane of a bright pea-green. It is but a narrow strip
of land between the ocean and the red, flaring, almost inacessible, Maui
hills, which here rise abruptly to a height of 6,000 feet, pinnacled,
chasmed, buttressed, and almost verdureless, except in a few clefts,
green and cool with ferns and candlenut trees, and moist with falling
water. Lahaina looked intensely tropical in the rose fush of the early
morning, a dream of some bright southern isle, too surely to pass away.
The sun blazed down on the shore, ship, and sea, glorifying all things
through the winter day. It was again ecstasy "to dream, and dream "
under the awning, fanned by the light sea-breeze, with the murmur of an
unknown musical tongue in one's ears,and the rich colouring and graceful
grouping of a tropical race around one. We called at Maaleia, a neck of
sandy, scorched, verdureless soil, and at Ulupalakua, or rather at the
furnace seven times heated, which is the landing of the plantation of
that name, on whose breezy slopes cane refreshes the eye at a height of
2,000  feet above the sea. We anchored at both places, what seemed to me
a needless amount of delay, discharged goods and natives, and natives'
mats, and calabashes were embarked. In addition to the essential mat and
calabash of poi, every native carried some pet, either dog or cat, which
was caressed, sung to, and talked to with extreme tenderness; but there
were hardly any children, and I noticed that where there were any, the
men took charge of them. There were very few fine, manly dogs; the pets
in greatest favour are obviously those odious weak-eyed, pink-nosed
terriers.

The aspect of the sea was so completely lazy, that it was a fresh
surprise as each indolent undulation touch the shore that it had latent
vigour left to throw itsef upwards into clouds of spray. We looed
through limid water into cool depths where, strange bright fish darted
through
the submarine chapparal, but the coolness was imaginary, for the water
was at 80 degree. The air above the great black lava flood, which in
prehistoric times had flowed into the sea, had ever since declined the
kindly draping offices of nature, vibrated in waves of heat. Even the
imperishable cocoanut trees, whose tall, bare, curved trunks rose from
the lava or the burnt red earth, were gaunt, tattered, and
thirsty-looking, weary of crying for moisture to the pitiless skies.
At last the ceaseless ripple of talk ceased, crew and passengers slept
on the hot deck, and no sounds were heard but the drowsy flap of the
awning, and the drowsier creak of the rudder, as the Kilauea swayed
sleepily on the lazy undulations. The flag drooped and fainted with the
heat. the white sun blazed like a magnesium light on blue water, black
lava, and fiery soil, roasting, blinding, scintillating, and flushed the
red rocks of Maui into glory. It was a constant marvel that troops of
mounted natives, male and female, could gallop on the schorching shore
without being melted or shrivelled. It is all glorious, this fierce
bright glow of the Tropic of Cancer, yet it was a relief to look up the
great rolling featureless slopes above Ulupalakua to a forset belt of
perennial green, watered, they say, by perpetual showers, and a little
later to see a mountain summit uplifted into a region of endless winter,
above a steady cloud-bank as white as snow. This mountain, Haleakala,
the House of the Sun, is the largest extinct volacano in the world, its
terminal crater being nineteen miles in circumference at a height of
more than 10,000 feet. It, and its spurs, slopes, and custers of small
craters form East Maui. West Maui is composed mainly of the lofty
picturesque group of the Eeka mountains. A desert strip of land, not
much above high water mark, unites the twain, which form an island
forty-eight miles long and thirty broad, with an area of 620 square
miles.

We left Maui in the afternoon, and spent six hours in crossing the
channel between it and Hawaii, but the short tropic day did not allow us
to see anything of the latter island but two snow capped domes uplifted
above the clouds. I have been reading Jarves' excellant book on te
islands as industriously as possible, as well as trying to get
information from my fellow passengers regarding the region into which I
have so suddenly and unintentionally projected. I really know nothing
about Hawaii, or the size and phenomena of the volcano to which we are
bound, or the state of society or of the native race, or of the
relations existing between it and the forieign population, or of the
details of the constitution. This ignorance is most oppressive, and I
see that it will not be easily enlightened, for among several
intelligent gentlemen who have been conversing with me, no two seem
agreed on any matter of fact..  
   
From the hour of my landing I have observed the existence of two parties
of pro and anti missionary leanings, with views on all island subjects
in grotesque antagonism. So far, the former have left the undoubted
results of missionary effort here to speak for themselves; and I am
almost disposed, from the pertinacious aggressiveness of the latter
party, to think that it must be weak. I have already seized upon ( a
gentleman would write 
"button-holed" ) by several persons, who, in their anxiety to be first
in imprinting their own views on the Tabula rasa of a strangers mind,
have exercisd an unseemingly over-haste in giving the conversation an
anti-missionary twist. They apparently desire to convey the impression
that the New England tachers, finding a people rejoicing in the
innocence and simplicity of Eden, taught them the knowledge of evil,
turned them into a nation of hypocrites, and with a strange mingling of
fanaticism and selfisheness, afflicted them with many woes calculated to
accelerate their extnction, clothing among others. The animus appears
strong and bitter. There are two intelligent and highly educated ladies
on board, daughters of missionaries, and the candid and cautious tone in
which they speak on the same subject impresses me favourably. Mr. Damon
introduced me to a very handsome halfwhite gentleman, a lawyer of
ability, and lately interpreter to the Legislature. Mr. Ragsdale, or, as
he is usaully called " Bill Ragsdale." a leading spirit among natives.
His conversation was eloquent and poetic, though rather stilted, and he
has a good deal of French mannerism; but if he is a specimen of native
feeling,I think that the extinction of Hawaiian nationality must be far
off. I was amused with the attention that he paid to his dress under
very adverse circunstances. He appeared in three different suits, with
light kid gloves to match, all equally elegant, in two days. A Chinese
gentleman, who is at the same time a wealthy merchant at Honolulu, and a
successful planter on Hawaii, interests me, from the quiet keen
intelligence of his face, and the courtesy and dignity of his manner. I
hear that he possesses the repect of the whole community for his honour
and integrity. It is quite unlikely an ordinary miscellaneous herd of
passengers. The tone is so cheerful, courteous, and friendly, and peole
speak without introductions, and to help to make the tone pass
pleasantly to each other.

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Letter # III continued in part 2.



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