Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 6. October 8, 2008
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Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 7, 2008, 11:32 pm

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 8, 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
October 8, 2008

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Historical Collections of Hawai'i
Keepers of the Culture
A Study in Time, of the Hawi'ian Islands
Letters of Isabelle L. Bird Bishop
" Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands.
Letter # 3 - part 2
Transcribed

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Letter # 3 - Part 2

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


Hilo, Hawaii.

The Kilauea is not a fast propeller, and as she lurched very much in
crossing the channel most of the passengers were sea-sick, a casualty
which did not impair their cheerfulness and good humour. After dark we
called at Kawaihae ( pronounced To-wee-hye ), on the northwest of
Hawaii, and then steamed through the channel to the east or windward
side. I was only too glad on the second night to accept the offer of " a
mattress on the skylight, " but between the heavy rollng caused by the
windward swell, and the natural excitement on nearing the land of
volcanoes and earthquakes, I could not sleep, and no other person slept,
for it was considered " a very rough passage, " though there was hardly
a Yachtsman's breeze. It would do these Sybarites good to give them a
short spell of the howling horrors of the North or South Atlantic, an
easterly snowstorm off Sable Island, or a winter gale in the latitude of
Inaccessible Island!
The night was cloudy, and so the glare from Kilauea which is often seen
far of at sea was not visible.

When the sun rose amidst showers and rainbows ( for this is the showery
season ) I could hardly believe my eyes. Scenery, vegetation, colour
were all changed. The glowing red, the fiery glare, the obtrusive lack
of vegetation were all gone. There was a magnificent coast-line of grey
cliffs many hundred feet in height, usually draped in green, but often
black, caverned, and fantastic at their bases. Into cracks and caverns
the heavy waves surged with a sound like artillery, sending their broad
white sheets of foam high up among the ferns and trailers, and drowning
for a time the endless baritone of the surf, which is never silent
through the summer years. Cascades in numbers took one impulsive leap
from the cliffs into the sea, or came thundering down clefts or "
gulches," which, widening at their extremities, opened on smooth green
lawns, each one of which has its grass house or houses, kalo patch,
bananas, and coco-palms, so close to the broad Pacific that its spray
often frittered itself away over their fan-like leaves. Above the cliffs
there were grassy uplands with park like clumps of the screw-pine, and
candle-nut, and glades and dells of dazzling green, bright with
cataracts, opened up among the dark dense forests which for some
thousands of feet girdle Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two vast volcanic
mountains, whose snow-capped summits gleamed here and there above the
clouds, at an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet. Creation surely cannot
exhibit a more brilliant green than that which clothes windward Hawaii
with perpetual spring. I have never seen such verdure. In the final
twenty-nine miles there are more than sixty gulches, from 100 to 700
feet in depth, each with its cataracts, and wild vagaries of tropical
luxuriance. Native churches, frame-built and painted white, are almost
like mile-stones along the coast, far too large and too many for the
notoriously dwindling population. Ten miles from Hilo we came in sight
of the first sugar plantation, with its patches of yet brighter green,
its white boiling house
and tall chimney stack; than more churches, more plantations, more
gulches, more houses, and before ten we steamed into Byron's, or as it
is now calle Hilo Bay.

This is the paradise of Hawaii. What Honolulu attempts to be, Hilo is
without effort. Its crescent-shaped by, said to be the most beautiful in
the Pacific, is a simi-circle of about two miles, with its farther
extremity formed by Cocoanut Island, a black lava islet on which this
palm attains great perfection, and beyond it again a fringe of cocoanuts
marks the deep indentations of the shore. From this island to the north
point of the bay, there is a band of golden sand on which the roar of
the surf sounded thunderous ad drowsy as it mingled with the music of
living waters, the Waiakea and the Wailuku, which after lashing the
sides of the mountains which give them birth, glide deep and
fern-fringed into the ocean. native houses, half hidden by greenery,
line the bay, and stud the heights above the Wailuku, and near the
landing some white frame houses and three church spires above the wood
denote the foreign element. Hilo is unique. Its climate is humid, and
the long repose which it has enjoyed from rude volcanic upheavals has
mingled  great depth of vegetable mould with the decomposed lava. Rich
soil, rain, heat, sunshine, stimulate nature to supreme efforts, and
there is a luxuriant prodigality of vegetation which leaves nothing
uncovered but the golden margin of the sea, and even that above
high-water-mark is green with the Convolvulus maritimus. So dense is the
wood that Hilo is rather suggested than seen. It is only on shore that
one becomes aware of its bewildering variety of native and exotic trees
and shrubs . From the sea it looks one dense mass of greenery, in which
bright foliage of the candle-nut relieves the glossy dark gree of the
breadfruit-- a maze of preposterous banans, out of which rise slender
annulated trunks of palms giving their infinate grace to the grove. And
palms along the bay, almost among the surf, toss their waving plumes in
the sweet soft breeze, not " palms in exile, " but children of a blessed
isle where " never wind blows loudly." Above Hilo, broad lands sweeping
up cloudwards, with their sugar cane, kalo, melons, pine-apples, and
banana groves suggest the boundless liberality of Nature. Woods and
waters, hill and valley are all there, and from the region of an endless
summer the eye takes in the domain of an endless winter, where almost
perpetual snow crowns the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Mauna Kea
from Hilo has a shapely aspect, for its top is broken into peaks, said
to be the craters of extinct volcanos, but my eyes seek the dome-like
cave of Mauna Loa with far deeper interest, for it is yet an unfinished
mountain. It has a huge crater on its summit 800 feet in depth, and a
pit of unresting fire on its side; it throbs and rumbles and palpitates;
it has sent forth floods of fire over all tis part of Hawaii, and at the
moment it may be crowned with a lonely light, showing that its
tremendous forces are agin in activity. My imagination is already
inflamed by hearing of marvels, and I am beginning to think tropically.

Canoes came off the shore, dusky swimmers glided through the water,
youths, athletes, like the bronzes of the Naples Museum, rode the waves
on teirsurf-boards, brilliantly dressed riders galloped along the sands
and came trooping down the bridle-paths from all the vicinity till a
many-coloured tropical crowd had assembled at the landing. Then a
whaleboat came off, rowed by eight young men in white linen suits and
white straw hats, with wreaths of carmine-coloured flowers round both
hats and throats. They were singing a glee in honour of Mr. Ragsdale,
whom they sprang on deck to welcome. Our crowd of native fellow
passengers, by some inscrutable process, had re-arrayed themselves and
blossomed into brilliancy. Hordes of Hilo natives swarmed on deck, and
it became a Babel of alohas, kisses, hand-shakings, and reiterated
welcomes. The glee singers threw their beautiful garlands of roses and
ohias over the foreign passengers, and music, flowers,  goodwill and
kindliness made us welcome to these enchanted shores. We landed in a
whaleboat, and were hoisted up a rude pier which was crowded, for what
the arrival of the Australian mail-steamer is to Honolulu, the coming of
the Kilauea is to Hilo. I had not time to fel myself a stranger, there
were so many introductions, and so much friendliness. Mr. Coan and Mr.
Lyman, two of the most venerable of the few surviving missionaries, were
on the landing, and I was introduced to them and many others.
There is no hotel in Hilo. The residents receive strangers, and Ms Karpe
and I wre soon installed in a large buff frame-house, with two deep
verandahs, the residence of Mr. Severance, Sheriff of Hawaii.

Unlike many other places, Hilo is more fastinating on closer
acquantaince , so fastinating that it is hard to write about it in plain
prose. Two narroe roads lead up from the sea to one as narrow, running
parallel with it. Further up the hill another runs in the same
direction. There are no conveyances, and outside the viilage these
narrow roads dwindle into bridle paths, with just room for one horse to
pass another. The houses in which Mr. Coan, Mr. Lyman, Dr. Wetmore (
formally
of the Mission ), and one of the dominant influence on these islands,
but the climate has idealized them,and clothed them with poetry and
antiquity.

Of the three churches, the most prominent is the Roman Catholic Church,
a white frame building with two great towers; Mr. Coan's native church
with a spire comes next; and then the neat little foreign church, also
with a spire. The Roman church is a rather noisy neighbor, forits bell
ring at unnatural hours, and a doleful strains of a band which cannot
play either in time or tune proceed from it. The court-house, a large
buff painted frame building with two deep verandahs, standing on a well
kept lawn planted with exotic trees, is the most imposing building in
Hilo. All the foreigners have carried out their individual tastes in
their dwellings, and the result is very agreeable, though in
picturesqueness they must yeild the palm to the native houses, which
whether of frame, or grass plain or plaited, whether one or two storyed,
all have the deep thatched roofs and varandahs plain or fantastically
latticed, which are so in harmony with the surroundings. These lattices
and single and double verandahs are gorgeous with trailers, and the
general warm tint of the houses contrasts pleasantly with the deep green
of the bananas whic over-shadow them. There are living waters
everywhere. Each house seems to possess its pure bright stream., which
is arrested in bathing houses to be liberated among kalo patches of the
brightest green. Every verandah appears a gathering place, and the
bright holukus
of the women, the gay shirts and bandanas of the men, the brilliant
wreaths of natural flowers which adorn both, the hot-house temperature,
the new trees and flowers which demand attention, the strange rich
odours, and the low monotonous recitative which mourns through the
groves make me feel that I am in a new world. Ah, this is all Polynesian
!

This must be the land to which the " timid
eyed " lotos-eaters came. There is a strange fascination in the languid
air, and it is strangely sweet " to dream of fatherland "........ 

I.L.B.

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to be continued in Letter # 4.


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