Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 15. October 16, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 23, 2008, 12:42 am Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 16, 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 16, 2008 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections 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 # IX Transcribed. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter # IX " Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands." Onomea, Hawaii This is such a pleasant house and household. Mrs Austin is as bright as though she were not an invalid, and her room, except at meals, is the gathering place of the family. The four boyas are bright, intelligent beings, out of doors, barefooted, all day, with a passion fr horses, of which their father possesses about thirty. The youngest, Ephy, is the brightess child for three years old that I ever saw, but absolutely crazy about horses and mules. He talks of little else, and is constantly asking me to draw horses on his slate. He is a merry, audacious little creature, but came in this evening quite subdued. The sun was setting gloriously behind the forest-covered slopes, flooding the violet distances with a haze of gold, and in a low voice, he said, " I've seen God." There is the usual Chinese cook, who cooks and waits and looks good-natured, and of course has his own horse, and his wife, a most minute Chinese woman, comes in and attends to the rooms and to Mrs. Austin, and sews and mends. She wears her native dress -- a large, stiff, flat cane hat, like a tray, fastened firmly on or to her head a scanty loose frock of blue denim down to her knees, wide trousers of the same down to her ankles, and slippers. Her hair is knotted up; she always weas silver armlets, and would not be seen without the hat for anything. There is not a bell in this or any house on the ilands, and the bother of servants is hardly known, for the Chinamen do their work like automatrons, and disappear at sunset. In a land where there are no carpets, no fires, no dust, no hot waer needed, no windows to open and shut-- for they are always open -- no further service is really required. It is a simple arcadian life, and people live more happily than any that I have seen elsewhere . It is very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured by the eas wind, or wrinkled by the worrying effects to " keep up apearances," which deceive nobody, who have no formal visiting, but real sociability; wh regard the light manual labour of domestic life as a pleasure, not a thing to be ashambed of; who are contented with their crcunstances, and have leisure to be kind, cultured, and agreeable; and who live so tastfully, though simply, that they can at any time as a passing stranger to occupy the simple guest chamber, or share the simple meal, without any of the soul-harassing preparations which often make the exercise of hospitality a thing of terror to people in the same circumstances at home. People will ask you, " What is the food ?' We have everywhere bread and biscuit made of Califonia flour, griddle cakes with molasses, and often cracke wheat, butter not very good, sweet potatoes, boiled kalo, Irish potatoes, and poi. I have not seen fish on any table except at the Honolulu Hotel, or any meat bu beef, which is hard and dry as comaprd with ours. We have China or Japn tea, and island coffee. Honolulu is the only place in which intoxicants are allowed to be sold; and I have not seen beer, wine, or spirits in any house. Banana are an important article of diet, and slice guavas, eaten with milk and sugar, are very good. The cooking is always done in detached cookhouses, in and on American cooking stoves. As to clothing. I wear my flannel riding dress for both riding and walking, and a black silk at other times. The resident ladies wear prints and silks, and the gentlemen black cloth or dark tweed suits. Flannel is not required, neither are puggarees or white hats or sunshades at any season.The changes of temerture are very slight, and there is no chill when the sun goes down. The air is aleays like balm; the rain is tepid and does not give cold; in summer it may be three or four degrees warmer. Windows and doors stand open the whole year. A balnket is agreeable at night, but not abslutely necessary. It is truely delightful climate and mode of living, with such an abundance of air and sunshine. My health improves daily, and I do not consider myself an invalid. Between working, reading aloud, talking, riding, and " loafing," I have had very little time for letter writing; but I must tell you ofa delightful fern-hunting expedion on the margin of the forest that I took yesterday, accompanied by Mr. Thompson and the two elder boys. We rode in the mauka direction, outside cane ready for cutting, with silvery tassels gleaming in the sun, till we reached the verge of the forest, where an old trail was nearly obliterated by a trailing matted gass four feet high, and thosands of woody ferns, whic conceal streams, holes, and pitfalls. When further riding was impossible, we tethered our horses and proceeded on foot. We wee the 1,500 feet above the sea by the aneroid barometer, and the increased coolness was perceptible. The mercury is about four degrees lower for each 1,000 feet of ascent rather more than this indeed on the windward side of the islands. The forest would be quite impenetrable were it not for remains of wood-hauling trails, which, though grown up to the height of my shoulders, are still passable. Underneath the green maze, invisible streams, deep down, made sweet music, sweeter even than the gentle murmur of the cool breeze among the trees. The forest on the volcano track, which I thought so tropical and wonderful a short time ago, is nothing for beauty to compare with this " garden of God." I wish I could describe it, but cannot; and as you know only out pale, small-leaved trees, with their uniform green, I cannot say that it is like this or that. The first line of a hymn, " Oh, Paradise ! oh, Paradise !' rings in my brain, and the rustic exclaimation we used to hear when we were children , " Well, I never ! " followed ny innumerable notes of admiration, seems to exhaust the whole vocabulary of wonderment. The former cutting of some trees gives atmosphere, and the tumbled nature of the ground shows everything to the best advantage. There were openings over which huge candle-nuts, with their pea-green and silver foliage, spread their giant arms, and the light played through their branches on an infinate variety of ferns. There were groves of banans and plantains with shiny sleaves 8 feet long, like enormous hart's-tongue, the bright-leaved noni, the dark-leaved koa, the mahogany of the Pacific; the great glossy-leaved Eugenia-a forest tree as large as our elms; the small leaved ohia, its rose-crimson flowers making a glory in the forests, and its young shoots of carmine red vying with the colouring of the New England fall; and the strange lauhala hung its stiff drooping plumes, which creak in the faintest breeze; and the superb breadfruit hung its untempting fruit, and from spreading guavas we shook the ripe yellow treasures, scooping out the inside, all juicy and crimson, to make drinking cups of the rind; and there were trees that had surrendered their own lives to a conquoring army of vigorous parasites which had clothed their skeletons with an unapproachable and indistinguishable beauty, and over trees and parasites the tender tendils of the great mauve morning glories trailed and weathed themslves, and the stronge, strangling stems of the wound themselves round the tall ohias, which supported their quaint yucca-like spikes of leaves fifty feet from the ground. There are some suberb plants of the glossy tropical looking bird's nest fern, or Aspleniumn Nidas, which makes its home in the stems and branches of trees, and brightens the forest with its great shining fronds, I got a specium from a koa tree. The plant had nine fronds, each measuring from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 fet 7 inches in length, and from 7 to 9 inches in breadth. There were some very fine tree-ferns ( Cibotium Chamissoi? ), two of which being accessible, we measured, and found them seventeen and twenty feet high, their fronds eight feet long, and their stems four feet ten inches in circumference three feet above the ground They showed the most various shades of green, from the dark tint of themature frond, to the pale green of those which were just uncurling themselves. I managed to get up into a tree for the first time in my life to secure speciums of two beautiful parasitic ferns ( Polypodium tamariscinum and P. Hymenophylloides ? I saw for the first time, too, a lygodium and a large climbing potato-fern (Polypodium spectrum), very like a yam in the distance, and the Vittaria elongata, whose long grassy fronds adorn almost every tree. The beautiful Microlepia tenuifolia abounded, and there were a few plants of the loveliest fern I have ever saw ( Trichomanes meifollium), in specimens of which I indulged sparingly, almost grudgingly, for it seemed unfitting that a form of such perfect beauty should be mummied in a herbarium. There was one fern in profusion, with 90 to 130 pair of pinnae on each frond; and the fronds, though often exceeding five feet in length, were only two inches broad.( Nephrolrpis pectinata ) There were many prostrate trees, which nature has entirely covered with choice ferns, specially the rough stem of the tree-fern. I counted seveteen varieties on one trunk, and on the whole obtained thirty-five speciums for my collection. The forest soon became completely impenetrable, the beautiful Gleichenia Hawaiienis forming impassible nework over all the undergrowth. And, indeed, witout this it would have been risky to make further explorations, for often masses of wonderful matted vegetation sustained us temporarily over streams six or eight feet below, whose musical tinkle alone warned us of our peril. I shall never again see anything so beautiful as this fringe of the impassable timber belt. I enjoyed it more than anything I have yet seen; it was intoxicating, my eyes were " satisfied with seeing." It was a dream, a rapture, this maze of form and colour, this entagled luxuriance, this bewildering beauty, through which we caght bright glimpses of the heavenly sky above, while far away, below glade and lawn, shimmered in surpassing loveliness the cool blue of the Pacific. To me, with my hatred of reptiles and insects, it is not the least among charms of Hawaii, that these glorious entanglements and cool depths of a redundant vegetation give shelter to nothing of unseemingly shape and venomous proboscis or fang. Here, in cool, dreamy, sunny Onomea, there are no horrid, drumming, stabbing, mosquitos as at Honolulu, to remind me of what I forget sometimes, that I am not in Eden. I.L.B. Note- Thoughout these letters the botanical names given are only those which are current on the islands at this time. Those specimens of ferns which survived the rough usage which befel them, are to be seen in the Herbarium of the Botanical Garden at Oxford, and have been named and classified by my cousin, Professor Lawson. I. L.B. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Continued in Letter # X. 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