Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 14. October 15, 2008
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Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 23, 2008, 12:41 am

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 15, 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 15, 2008

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Historical Collection of Hawai'i 
Keepers of the Culture
A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands
Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop
" Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands."
Letter # VIII
Transcribed.

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Letter # VIII

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


Onomea, Hawaii
Judge Austins


Mrs. A. has been ill for sometime, and Mrs. S, her sister and another
friend 
" plotted " in a very " clansetine " manner that I should come here for
a few days in order to give her " a little change of Society," but I am
quite sure that under this they only veil a kind wish that I should see
something of plantation life. There is a plan, too, that I should take a
five day's trip to a remarkable valley called Waipio, but this is only a
" castle in the air."

Mr. A. sent in for me a capital little lean rat of a horse which by dint
of spirit and activity managed to keep within sight of two large horses,
ridden by Mr. Thompson, and a very handsome young lady riding " cavalier
fashion." who convoyed me out. Borrowed saddle-bags, and a couple of
shingles for carrying ferns formed my outfit, and were carried behind my
saddle. It was a magnificent ride here. The track crosses the deep,
still, Wailuku River on a wooden bridge, and then after winding up a
steep hill, among native houses fantastically situated, hangs on the
verge of the lofty precipices which descend perpendicularly to the sea,
dips into tremendous, and at last emerges on the delicious heigth on
which this house is built. 

This coast looked beautiful from the deck of the Kilauea, but I am now
convinced that I have never seen anything so perfectly lovely as it is
when one is actually among its details. Onomea is 600 feet high, and
every yard of the ascent from Hlo brings one into a fresher and purer
air. One looks up the wooded, broken slopes to a wild vocanic wilderness
and the snowy peaks of Mana Kea on one side, and on the other down into
the calm blue Pacific, wrinkled by the sweet tradewind, till it blends
in far-off loveliness with the still, blue, sky; and heavy surges break
out on the reefs, and fritter themselves away onthe rocks, tossing their
pure foam over ti and lauhala trees, and the exquisite ferns and
trailers which mantle the cliffs down to the water's edge. Here a native
house stands, with passion-flowers clustering round its verandah, and
the great solitary red blossoms of the hibiscus flaming out from dark
surrounding leafage, and women in rose and green holukus, weaving
garlands greet us with "Aloha " as we pass. Then we come upon a whole
cluster of grass houses under lauhalas and bananas. Then there is the
sugar plantation of Kaiwiki, with its patches of bright green cane, its
flumes crossing the track above our heads, bringing the cane down from
the upland cane-fields to the crushing mill, and the shifting busy
scenes of the sugar-boiling season.

Then the track goes down with a great dip, along which we slip and slide
in the mud to a deep broad stream. This is a most picturesque spot, the
junction of two clear bright rivers, and a few native houses and a
Chinaman's store are grouped close by under some palms, with the
customary loungers on horseback, asking and receiving nuhou, or news, at
the doors. Our accustomed horses leaped into a ferry-scow provided by
Government, worked by a bearded female of hideous aspect, and leaped out
on the other side to climb a track cut in the side of a precipice, which
would be steep to mount on one's own feet. There we met parties of
natives, all flower-wreathed, talking and singing, coming gaily down on
sure-footed horses, saluting us with the invariable " Aloha." Every now
and then
we passed native churches, with spires painted white, or native
schoolhouse, or a group of scholars all ferns and flwers. The greenness
of the vegetation merits the term " dazzling." We think England green,
but its color is poor and pale as compared with that of tropical Hawaii.
Palms, candle-nuts, ohias, hibiscus, were it not for their exceeding
beauty, would almost pall upon one from their abundance, and each gulch
has its glorious etanglement of breadfruit, and large leaved ohia, or
native apple, a species of Eugenia ( Eugenia Malaccensis), and the
pandanus, withits aerial roots, all looped together by a large sky-blue
convolvuli and running fern, and is marvellous with parasitic growths.

The distrcting beauty of this coast is what are called gulches -- narrow
deep ravines or gorges, from 100 to 2,000 feet in depth, each with a
series of cascades from 10 to 1,800 feet in height. I dislike reducing
their glories to the baldness of figures, but the depth of these clefts
( originally, probably, the seams caused by fire torrents), cut and worn
by the fierce streams fed by the snows of Mauna Kea, and the rains of
the orest belt, cannot otherwise be expressed. The cascades are most
truly beautiful, gleaming white among the dark depths of foliage far
away, and falling into deep limpid basins, festooned and overhung with
the richest and greenset vegetation of this prolific climate, from the
huge leaved banana and shining breadfruit to the most feathery of ferns
and lycopodiums. Each gulch opens on a velvet lawn close to the sea, and
most of them have space for a few grass houses, with cocoanut trees,
bananas, an kalo patches. There are sixty-nine of these extraordinary
chasms within a distance of thirty miles !

I think we came through eleven, fording the streams in all but two. The
descent into some of them is quite alarming. You go down almost standing
in your stirrups, at a right angle with the horse's head, and up,
grasping his mane to prevent the saddle slipping. He goes down like a
goat, with his bare feet, looking cautiously at each step, sometimes
putting out a foot and withdrawing it again in favour of better footing,
and sometimes gathering his four feet under him and sliding or jumping.
The Mexcan saddle has great advantages on these tracks, which are noting
better then ledges cut on the sides of precipices, for one goes up and
down not only in pefect secrity but without fatigue. I am beginning to
hope that I am not to old, as I feared I was, to learn a new mode of
riding, for my companions rode at full speed over places where I should
have pickd my way carefully at a foot's pace; and my horse followed
them, galloping and stopping short at their pleasure, and I successfully
kept my seat, though not without occasional fears of an ignominious
downfall. I even wish that you can see me in my Rob Roy riding dress,
with leather belt and pouch, a lei of the orange seeds of the pandanus
round my throat, jingling Mexican spurs, blue saddle blanket, and Rob
Roy blanket strapped on behind the saddle !

This place is grandly situated 600 feet above a deep cove, into which
two beautiful gulches of great size run, with heavy cascades, finer than
Foyers at its best, and a native village is picturesquely situated
between the two. The great white rollers, whiter by cintrast with dark
deep water, come down into the gulch just where we forded the river, and
from the ford a passable road made for hauling sugar ascends to the
house. The air is something absolutely delicious; and the murmur of the
rollers and the deep boom 
of the cascades are very soothing. There is little rise or fall in the
cadence of the surf anywhere on the windward coast, but one even sound,
loud or soft, like that made by a train in a tunnel.

We were kindly welcomed, and were at once " made at home." Delicious
phrase !
the full meaning of which I am learning on Hawaii, where, though
everything has the fasination of novelty, I have ceased to feel myself a
stranger. This is a roomy, rambling farmhouse, with a verandah, and a
door, as is usual here, opens directly into the sitting-room. The stair
ny which I go to my room suggests possibilities, for it has been removed
three inches from the wall by an earthquake, which also brought down the
tall chimney of the boiling-house. Close by there are pretty
frame-houses for the overseer, bookkeeper, sugar boiler, and machinist;
a store, the factory, a pretty native church near the edge of the cliff,
and quite a large native village below. It looks gree and bright, and
the atmosphere is perfect,with the cool air coming down from the
mountains, and a soft breeze coming up from the blue dreamy ocean.
Behind the house the uplands slope away to the colossal Mauna Kea. The
actual, dense, impenetrable forest does not begin for a mile and a half
from the coast, and its broad dark belt, extening to a height of 4,000
feet, and beautifully broken, throws out into greater brightness the
upward glades of grass and the fields of sugar cane.

This is a busy season, and as this is a large plantation there is an
appearance of great animation. There are five or six saddled horses
usually tethered below the house; with overseers, white and coloured,
and natives riding at full gallop, and people coming on all sorts of
errands, the hum of the crushing mill, the rush of water in the flumes,
and the grind of the waggons carrying cane, there is no end of stir.

The plantations in the Hilo district enjoy special advantages, for by
turning some of the innumerable mountain streams into flumes the owners
can bring a great deal of their cane and all their wod for fuel down to
the mills without other expense than the original cst of the woodwork.
Mr. Austin has a hundred mules, but the greater part of their work is
ploughing and hauling kegs of sugar down to the cove, when in favourable
weather they ae put on board of a schooner for Honolulu. This plantation
employs 185 hands, native and Chinese, and turns out 600 tons of sugar a
year. The natives are uch liked as labourers, being docile and on the
whole willing; but native labour is hard to get, as the natives do not
like to work for a term unless obliged, and a pernicious sytem of "
advances" is practiced. The labourers hire themselves to the planters,
in the case of natives usually for a year, by contract which has to be
signed beore a notary public. The wages are about eight dollars a month
with food, or eleven dollars without food, and the planters supply
houses and medical attendance The Chinese are imported as coolies, and
usually contract to work for five years. s a matter of policy no less
than of humanity the "hands" are well treated; for if a single instance
of injustice were perpetrated on a plantation the factory might stand
still the next year, for hardly a native would contract to serve again..

The Chinese are quiet and industrious, but smoke opium, and are much
addicted to gaming. Many of them save money, and, when their turn of
service is over, set up stores, or grow vegetbles for money. Each man
employed has his horse, and on Sundays the hands form quite a cavalcade.
Great tact, firmness, and knowledge of hman nature are required in the
manager of a plantation. The natives are at times disposed to shirk work
without sufficient cause; and native lunas, or overseerers, are not
always reasnable, the Chinamen and natives so not aways agree, and
quarrels and entanglements arise, and everything is referred to the
decision of the manager, who,besides all thigs else, must know the exact
aount of work which ought to be performed, both in the fields and
factory, and see that it is done. Mr. Austin is a keen , shrwd ma of
business, kind without being weak, and with an eye on every detail of
his plantations. The requirments are enless. It reminds me very much of
plantation life in Georgia in the old days of slavery. I never elsewhere
heard of so many headaches, sore hands, and other trifling ailments. It
is very amusing to see the attempts which the would-be invalids mak to
lengthn their brief smiling faces into lugubriousness, and the sudden
relaxation into naturalnss when they are allowed a holiday. Mr. Austin
comes into the house constantly to consult his wife regarding the
treatment of different ailments.

I have made a second tour through the factory, and am rather disgusted
with sugar making. " All's well that ends well," however, and the
delicate crystalline result makes one forget the initial stages of the
manufacture. The cane, stripped of its leaves, passes from the flumed
undre the rollers of the crshing mill, where it is subjected to a
pressure of five to six tons. On hundred pounds of cane under this
process yield up from sixty-five to seventy-five pound of juice. This
juice passes, as a green cataract, into a trough, which conducts it into
a vat, where it is dosed with quicklime to neutalize its acid, and is
then run off into a large heated metal vessels. At this stage the smell
is abominable, and the terbid fluid, with a thick scum upon it, is
simply disgusting. After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed
of into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled
from one to the other till it reaches the last, which is nearest to the
fire, and there it boils with the greatest violence, seething and
foaming, bringing all the remaining scum to the surface. After the
concentration has proceeded far enough, the action of the heat is
suspended, and the reddish-brown, oily looking liquid is drawn into a
vacuum-pan till it is a thrird full; the concentration is dompleted by
boiling the juice in vacuo at a temperature of 150 degrees, and even
lower. As the boiling proceeds, the sugar boiler tests the contents of
the pan by withdrawing a few dros, and holding them up to the light on
his finger; and by certain minute changes in their condition, he judges
when it is time to add an addional quantity. When th pan id full, the
contents have thickened into the consistency of thick gruel by the
formation of minute crstals, and are then allowed to ganulate
The liquid, or molasses, which remains after the first crystallization i
returned to the vacuum pan and reboiled, and this reboiling of the
drainings is repeated two or three times, with a gradually decreasing
result in the quanity and quality of the sugar. The last process, which
is used for getting rid of the treacle, is a most beautiful one. The
mass of sugar and treacle is put into what are called " centrifugal
pans." which are drums about three feet in diameter and two feet high,
which makes about 1,000 revolutions a minute. These have false interiors
of wire guaze, and ths mass is formed violently against their sides by
centrifical action. and they let the treacle whil through, and reatin
the suagr crystals, which lie in a dry heap in the centre.

The cane is being flumed in with great rapidity, and the factory is
working till late at night. The cane from which the juice has been
expressed, called " trash." is dried and used as fuel for the furnace
which supplies the steam power. The sugar is packed in kegs, and a
cooper and carpenter, as well as other mechanics, are employed.

Sugar is now the great interest of the islands. Christain missions and
whaling have had their day, and now people talk sugar. Hawaii thrills to
the news of a cent up or a cent down in the American market. All the
interests of the Kingdom are threatened by this one, which, because it
is grievously depressed and staggers under a heavy import duty in the
American market, is now clamorous in some quarters for " annexation,"
and in others, for a " reciprocity treaty," which last means the cession
of the Pearl River lagoon on Oahu. with its adjacent shores, to America,
for a Pacific naval station. There are 200,000 acres of productive soil
in the islands, of which only a fifteenth is under cultivation, and
ofthis large area 150,000 is said to be specially adapted for sugar
culture. Herein is a prospective Utopia, and people are always dreaming
o the sugar-growing capacities of the belt of rich disintergrated lava
which slopes upwards from the sea to the bases of the mountains.
Hiterto, sugar growing has been a very disastrous speculation, and a few
o the planters at present do more than keep their heads above water.

Were labour plentiful and duties removed, fortunes might be made, for
the soil yields on an average about three times as much as that of the
State of Louisianna. Two and a half tons to the acre is a common yield,
five tons a frequent one, and instances are known of the slowly matured
cane of a high altitude yeilding as much as seven tons! The magnificent
climate makes it a very easy crop to grow. There is no brief harvest
time with its rush, hurry, and frantic demand for labour, or frost to
render necessary the hasty cutting of an immense crop. The same number
of hands is kept on all year round. The planters can plant pretty much
when they please, or not plant at all for two or three years, the only
difference in the latter case being that the rattoons which spring up
after the cutting of the former crop are smaller in bulk. They can cut
when the please, whether the cane be tasselled or not, and they can
plant, cut, and grind at one time !

It is a beautiful crop in any stage of growth, especially in the
tasselled stage. Every part of it is useful-- the cane pre-eminently --
the leaves as food for horses and mules, and the tassells for making
hats. Here and elsewhere there is a plate of cut cane always within
reach, and the children chew it incessantly. I fear you will be tired of
sugar, but I find it more interesting than the wood and mutton of
Victoria and New Zaeland and it is a most important item of wealth of
theis toy kingdom, which last year exported 16,995,402 lbs of sugar and
192,105 gallons of molasses. With regard to molasses, the Government
prohibits the manufacture of rum, so the planters are deprived of a
fruitful source of profit. It is really difficult to tear myslf from the
subject of sugar, for I see the cane waving inthe sun while I write, and
hear the busy hum of the crushing mill.

I.L.B.

[ In 1873 the export of sugar reached a total of upwards of 23,000,000
lbs.]

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To be continued in Letter # IX.


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