The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions,
by
Murat Halstead

Part 8 out of 10




No. of Trees or Area.
Newly 1 to 3 Trees in
Planted. year old. Bearing.
J. C. Lenhart, Kaupo 2,000 trs. 4,000 trs. ....
Mokulau Coffee Co., Kaupo 2,000 trs. 10,000 trs. 2 acres
E. E. Paxton, Kaupo 5,000 trs. 7,000 trs. ....
Native Patches throughout Kaupo 10 acres .... ....
Lahaina Coffee and Fruit Co., Ltd.,
Lahaina 10,000 trs. 100,000 trs. 30,000 trs.
H. P. Baldwin, Honokahua 35,947 trs. 4,669 trs. 2,641 trs.
Waianae Coffee Plantation Co.,
Waianae 7,500 trs. 23,000 trs. 36,000 trs.
C. A. Wideman, Waianae 10,000 trs. 8,500 trs ....
Makaha Coffee Co., Ltd., Waianae 112 acres .... ....
Lanihau Plantation, Kailua 20,700 trs. 25,000 trs. 10,000 trs.
Kona Coffee Co., Ltd., Kailua .... .... 35 acres
Geo. McDougal & Sons, Kailua .... 176 acres 105 acres
H. C. Achi, Holualoa .... .... 10,000 trs.
E. W. Barnard, Laupahoehoe .... .... 30,000 trs.
J. M. Barnard, Laupahoehoe .... 5,000 trs. ....
John Gaspar, Napoopoo .... 33,000 trs. 16,000 trs.
Manuel Sebastian, Kealakekua .... .... 8,000 trs.
J. G. Henriques, Kealakekua .... .... 3,000 trs.
C. Hooper, Kauleoli .... 2 acres 12 acres
J. Keanu, Keei 5 acres 10 acres 16 acres
A. S. Cleghorn 3 acres .... 100 acres
Mrs. E. C. Greenwell .... 8 acres 25 acres
J. M. Monsarrat, Kolo .... 38 acres 40 acres
Queen Emma Plantation .... .... 25,000 trs.
L. M. Staples Plantation .... 25,000 trs. 12,000 trs.
Olaa Coffee Co., Ltd 50 acres 90 acres ....
Grossman Bros 100 acres 30 acres ....
B. H. Brown 2,260 trs. 2,000 trs. 3,225 trs.
Herman Eldart 40,000 trs. 20,000 trs. 7,000 trs.


The list of coffee growers is very long. That which is of greater
interest is the showing made of the immense number of new trees. The
coffee movement steadily gains force and the pace of progress is
accelerated.

Everybody has not been pleased with annexation. The Japanese are
not in a good humor about it. The minister of Japan got his orders
evidently to leave for Japan when the news arrived that the question
had been settled in Washington, and he left for Yokohama by the boat
that brought the intelligence. Japanese journals of importance raise
the question as to the propriety of our establishing a coal station
here. There is some dissatisfaction among the Hawaiians, who are
bewildered. They are children who believe stories in proportion as
they are queer. Many of them feel that they have a grievance. The
young princess who is the representative of the extinguished monarchy
is affable and respected. If the question as to giving her substantial
recognition were left to the Americans here, they would vote for her
by a large majority. It would not be bad policy for the government
to be generous toward her. She is not in the same boat with the
ex-Queen. The Americans who have been steadfast in upholding the
policy that at last has prevailed are happy, but not wildly so,
just happy. Now that they have gained their cause, their unity will
be shaken by discussions on public questions and personal preferments.

There should be no delay in understanding that in this Archipelago the
race questions forbid mankind suffrage, and that our new possessions
are not to become states at once, or hurriedly; that it will take
generations of assimilation to prepare the Hawaiian Islands for
statehood.

The objection to the climate of the marvelous islands of which we
have become possessed is its almost changeless character. There is no
serious variation in the temperature. There is a little more rain in
"winter" than in "summer." There is neither spring nor fall. The trade
winds afford a slight variety, and this seems to be manipulated by
the mountains, that break up the otherwise unsparing monotony of
serene loveliness. The elevations of the craters, and the jagged
peaks are from one thousand to thirteen thousand feet. If you want
a change of climate, climb for cold, and escape the mosquitos,
the pests of this paradise. There are a score of kinds of palms;
the royal, the date, the cocoanut, are of them. The bread fruit and
banana are in competition. The vegetation is voluptuous and the scenery
stupendous. There is a constellation of islands, and they differ like
the stars in their glories and like human beings in their difficulties.



CHAPTER XXI

Early History of the Sandwich Islands.

Captain James Cook's Great Discoveries and His Martyrdom--Character
and Traditions of the Hawaiian Islands--Charges Against the Famous
Navigator, and effort to Array the Christian World Against Him--The
True Story of His Life and Death--How Charges Against Cook Came
to Be Made--Testimony of Vancouver, King and Dixon, and Last
Words of Cook's Journal--Light Turned on History That Has Become
Obscure--Savagery of the Natives--Their Written Language Took Up
Their High Colored Traditions, and Preserved Phantoms--Scenes in
Aboriginal Theatricals--Problem of Government in an Archipelago Where
Race Questions Are Predominant--Now Americans Should Remember Captain
Cook as an Illustrious Pioneer.

Regarding the islands in the Pacific that we have for a long time
largely occupied and recently wholly possessed, the Hawaiian cluster
that are the stepping stone, the resting place and the coal station
for the golden group more than a thousand leagues beyond, we should
remember Captain Cook as one of our own Western pioneers, rejoice
to read his true story, and in doing so to form a correct estimate
of the people who have drifted into the area of our Protection, or
territory that is inalienably our own, to be thoroughly Americanized,
that they may some day be worthy to become our fellow-citizens.

Sunday, January 18th, 1778, Captain Cook, after seeing birds every
day, and turtles, saw two islands, and the next day a third one, and
canoes put off from the shore of the second island, the people speaking
the language of Otaheite. As the Englishmen proceeded, other canoes
appeared, bringing with them roasted pigs and very fine potatoes. The
Captain says: "Several small pigs were purchased for a six-penny nail,
so that we again found ourselves in a land of plenty. The natives
were gentle and polite, asking whether they might sit down, whether
they might spit on the deck, and the like. An order restricting the
men going ashore was issued that I might do everything in my power
to prevent the importation of a fatal disease into the island,
which I knew some of our men now labored under." Female visitors
were ordered to be excluded from the ships. Captain Cook's journal
is very explicit, and he states the particulars of the failure of
his precautions. This is a subject that has been much discussed,
and there is still animosity in the controversy. The discovery of
the islands that he called the Sandwich, after his patron the Earl
of Sandwich, happened in the midst of our Revolutionary war. After
Cook's explorations for the time, he sailed in search of the supposed
Northwest passage, and that enterprise appearing hopeless, returned to
the summer islands, and met his fate in the following December. Captain
George Vancouver, a friend and follower of Cook, says, in his "Voyage
of Discovery and Around the World." from 1790 to 1795:

"It should seem that the reign of George the Third had been
reserved by the Great Disposer of all things for the glorious task
of establishing the grand keystone to that expansive arch over which
the arts and sciences should pass to the furthermost corners of the
earth, for the instruction and happiness of the most lowly children of
nature. Advantages so highly beneficial to the untutored parts of the
human race, and so extremely important to that large proportion of the
subjects of this empire who are brought up to the sea service deserve
to be justly appreciated; and it becomes of very little importance to
the bulk of our society, whose enlightened humanity teaches them to
entertain a lively regard for the welfare and interest of those who
engage in such adventurous undertakings for the advancement of science,
or for the extension of commerce, what may be the animadversions or
sarcasms of those few unenlightened minds that may peevishly demand,
"what beneficial consequences, if any, have followed, or are likely
to follow to the discoverers, or to the discovered, to the common
interests of humanity, or to the increase of useful knowledge, from
all our boasted attempts to explore the distant recesses of the
globe?" The learned editor (Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury)
who has so justly anticipated this injudicious remark, has, in his
very comprehensive introduction to Captain Cook's last voyage, from
whence the above quotation is extracted, given to the public not
only a complete and satisfactory answer to that question, but has
treated every other part of the subject of discovery so ably as to
render any further observations on former voyages of this description
wholly unnecessary, for the purpose of bringing the reader acquainted
with what had been accomplished, previously to my being honored with
His Majesty's commands to follow up the labors of that illustrious
navigator Captain James Cook; to whose steady, uniform, indefatigable
and undiverted attention to the several objects on which the success
of his enterprises ultimately depended, the world is indebted for
such eminent and important benefits."

Captain George Vancouver pays, in the introduction of his report,
a remarkable tribute to Captain Cook, that should become familiar
to the American people, for it is one of the features of prevalent
Hawaiian literature that the great navigator is much disparaged,
and denounced. One of the favorite theories of the missionaries has
been that Cook's death at the hands of the savages was substantially
the punishment inflicted by God, because the Captain allowed himself
to be celebrated and worshipped as a god by the heathen, consenting
to their idolatry when he should have preached to them, as was done
with so much efficiency nearly half a century later. The fact is the
natives had a great deal of "religion" of their own, and defended
their superstitions with skill and persistence before yielding to
the great simplicities of the Christian faith. Captain Cook, it must
be admitted, did not attempt to preach the gospel. The gentleness of
the natives turned out to contain a great deal that was most horrible.

The closing years of the last century were those of rapid progress
in the art of navigation, and Captain Vancouver gives this striking
summary of testimony:

"By the introduction of nautical astronomy into marine education,
we are taught to sail on the hypothenuse, instead of traversing
two sides of a triangle, which was the usage in earlier times; by
this means the circuitous course of all voyages from place to place
is considerably shortened; and it is now become evident that sea
officers of the most common rate abilities who will take the trouble
of making themselves acquainted with the principles of this science,
will, on all suitable occasions, with proper and correct instruments,
be enabled to acquire a knowledge of their situation in the Atlantic,
Indian or Pacific Oceans, with a degree of accuracy sufficient to
steer on a meridianal or diagonal line, to any known spot, provided
it be sufficiently conspicuous to be visible at any distance from
five to ten leagues.

"This great improvement, by which the most remote parts of the
terrestrial globe are brought so sasily within our reach, would
nevertheless have been of comparatively little utility had not those
happy means been discovered for preserving the lives and health of the
officers and seamen engaged in such distant and perilous undertakings;
which were so peacefully practiced by Captain Cook, the first great
discoverer of this salutary system, in all his latter voyages around
the globe. But in none have the effect of his wise regulations,
regimen and discipline been more manifest than in the course of the
expedition of which the following pages are designed to treat. To an
unremitting attention, not only to food, cleanliness, ventilation,
and an early administration of antiseptic provisions and medicines,
but also to prevent as much as possible the chance of indisposition,
by prohibiting individuals from carelessly exposing themselves to the
influence of climate, or unhealthy indulgences in times of relaxation,
and by relieving them from fatigue and the inclemency of the weather
the moment the nature of their duty would permit them to retire, is
to be ascribed the preservation of the health and lives of sea-faring
people on long voyages."

"Those benefits did not long remain unnoticed by the commercial
part of the British nation. Remote and distant voyages being now no
longer objects of terror, enterprises were projected and carried into
execution, for the purpose of establishing new and lucrative branches
of commerce between Northwest America and China; and parts of the
coast of the former that had not been minutely examined by Captain
Cook became now the general resort of the persons thus engaged."

The special zeal and consistency with which Cook is defended by
the English navigators who knew him and were competent to judge of
the scope of his achievements is due in part to the venom of his
assailants. The historian of the Sandwich Islands, Sheldon Dibble,
says: "An impression of wonder and dread having been made, Captain Cook
and his men found little difficulty in having such intercourse with the
people as they chose. In regard to that intercourse, it was marked,
as the world would say, with kindness and humanity. But it cannot be
concealed that here and there at this time, in the form of loathsome
disease, was dug the grave of the Hawaiian nation; and from so deep an
odium it is to be regretted that faithful history cannot exempt even
the fair name of Captain Cook himself, since it was evident that he
gave countenance to the evil. The native female first presented to
him was a person of some rank; her name was Lelemahoalani. Sin and
death were the first commodities imported to the Sandwich Islands."

We have already quoted Captain Cook's first words on this subject. He
had much more to say giving in detail difficulties rather too searching
to be fully stated. As for the charge that Cook personally engaged
in debauchery, it rests upon the tradition of savages, who had no
more idea than wild animals of the restraint of human passion. It was
debated among the islanders whether the white men should be assailed
by the warriors, and it was on the advice of a native queen that the
women were sent to make friends with the strangers; and this was the
policy pursued. As for the decline of the natives in numbers, and the
"digging the grave of the nation." the horror of the islands was the
destruction of female infants, and also the habit of putting aged
and helpless men and women to death. The general indictment against
Captain Cook is that this amiable race was just about prepared
for Christianity when he thrust himself forward as a god, and with
his despotic licentiousness destroyed immediate possibilities of
progress. In Sandwich Island notes by "a Haole" (that is to say,
a white person) we see what may be said on the other side of the
picture: "It becomes an interesting duty to examine their social,
political and religious condition. The first feature that calls the
attention to the past is their social condition, and a darker picture
can hardly be presented to the contemplation of man. They had their
frequent boxing matches on a public arena, and it was nothing uncommon
to see thirty or forty left dead on the field of contest.

"As gamblers they were inveterate. The game was indulged in by
every person, from the king of each island to the meanest of his
subjects. The wager accompanied every scene of public amusement. They
gambled away their property to the last vestige of all they
possessed. They staked every article, of food, their growing crops,
the dollies they wore, their lands, wives, daughters, and even the
very bones of their arms and legs--to be made into fishhooks after they
were dead. These steps led to the most absolute and crushing poverty.

"They had their dances, which were of such a character as not to be
conceived by a civilized mind, and were accompanied by scenes which
would have disgraced even Nero's revels. Nearly every night, with
the gathering darkness, crowds would retire to some favorite spot,
where, amid every species of sensual indulgence they would revel
until the morning twilight. At such times the chiefs would lay aside
their authority, and mingle with the lowest courtesan in every degree
of debauchery.

"Thefts, robberies, murders, infanticide, licentiousness of the most
debased and debasing character, burying their infirm and aged parents
alive, desertion of the sick, revolting cruelties to the unfortunate
maniac, cannibalism and drunkenness, form a list of some of the traits
in social life among the Hawaiians in past days.

"Their drunkenness was intense. They could prepare a drink, deadly
intoxicating in its nature, from a mountain plant called the awa
(Piper methysticum). A bowl of this disgusting liquid was always
prepared and served out just as a party of chiefs were sitting down to
their meals. It would sometimes send the victim into a slumber from
which he never awoke. The confirmed awa drinker could be immediately
recognized by his leprous appearance.

"By far the darkest feature in their social condition was seen
in the family relation. Society, however, is only a word of mere
accommodation, designed to express domestic relations as they then
existed. 'Society' was, indeed, such a sea of pollution as cannot be
well described. Marriage was unknown, and all the sacred feelings which
are suggested to our minds on mention of the various social relations,
such as husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister,
were to them, indeed, as though they had no existence. There was,
indeed, in this respect, a dreary blank--a dark chasm from which the
soul instinctively recoils. There were, perhaps, some customs which
imposed some little restraint upon the intercourse of the sexes,
but those customs were easily dispensed with, and had nothing of the
force of established rules. It was common for a husband to have many
wives, and for a wife also to have many husbands. The nearest ties
of consanguinity were but little regarded, and among the chiefs,
especially, the connection of brother with sister, and parent with
child, were very common. For husbands to interchange wives, and
for wives to interchange husbands, was a common act of friendship,
and persons who would not do this were not considered on good terms
of sociability. For a man or woman to refuse a solicitation was
considered an act of meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly
wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of
the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding their
better knowledge, that to comply was generous, liberal, and social,
and to refuse reproachful and niggardly. It would be impossible to
enumerate or specify the crimes which emanated from this state of
affairs. Their political condition was the very genius of despotism,
systematically and deliberately conducted. Kings and chiefs were
extremely jealous of their succession, and the more noble their blood,
the more they were venerated by the common people."

Mr. Sheldon Dibble is a historian whose work was published in 1843. He
complains most bitterly that the natives bothered the missionaries
by trying to give them the benefit of native thought. They wanted
to do some of the talking, and said very childish things, and were
so intent on their own thoughts that they would not listen to the
preachers. But it ought not to have been held to be an offense for
a procession of heathen to march to a missionary's house and tell
him their thoughts. That was an honest manifestation of profound
interest--the slow ripening of a harvest field. Mr. Dibble's book
is printed by the Mission Seminary, and Mr. Dibble says, page 21:
"We know that all the inhabitants of the earth descended from Noah,"
therefore, the Hawaiians "must once have known the great Jehova
and the principles of true religion." But the historian says on the
next page that the Hawaiians were heathen from time immemorial, for,
"Go back to the very first reputed progenitor of the Hawaiian race,
and you find that the ingredients of their character are lust, anger,
strife, malice, sensuality, revenge and the worship of idols." This
is the elevation upon which Mr. Dibble places himself to fire upon
the memory of the English navigator Captain James Cook. The first
paragraph of the assault on Cook is this:

"How unbounded the influence of foreign visitors upon the ignorant
inhabitants of the Pacific! If the thousands of our countrymen
who visit this ocean were actuated by the pure principles of the
religion of Jesus, how immense the good they might accomplish! But,
alas! how few visitors to the Western hemisphere are actuated by
such principles."

This is preparatory to the condemnation of Cook in these terms:
"Captain Cook allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. The people
of Kealakeakua declined trading with him, and loaded his ship freely
with the best productions of the island. The priests approached him
in a crouching attitude, uttering prayers, and exhibiting all the
formalities of worship. After approaching him with prostration the
priests cast their red kapas over his shoulders and then receding a
little, they presented hogs and a variety of other offerings, with
long addresses rapidly enunciated, which were a repetition of their
prayers and religious homage.

"When he went on shore most of the people fled for fear of him, and
others bowed down before him, with solemn reverence. He was conducted
to the house of the gods, and into the sacred enclosure, and received
there the highest homage. In view of this fact, and of the death of
Captain Cook, which speedily ensued, who can fail being admonished
to give to God at all times, and even among barbarous tribes, the
glory which is his due? Captain Cook might have directed the rude and
ignorant natives to the great Jehovah, instead of receiving divine
homage himself.

"Kalaniopuu, the king, arrived from Maui on the 24th of January,
and immediately laid a tabu on the canoes, which prevented the women
from visiting the ship, and consequently the men came on shore in
great numbers, gratifying their infamous purposes in exchange for
pieces of iron and small looking-glasses. Some of the women washed
the coating from the back of the glasses much to their regret, when
they found that the reflecting property was thus destroyed.

"The king, on his arrival, as well as the people, treated Captain
Cook with much kindness, gave him feather cloaks and fly brushes and
paid him divine honors. This adoration, it is painful to relate,
was received without remonstrance. I shall speak here somewhat
minutely of the death of Captain Cook, as it develops some traits
of the heathen character, and the influence under which the heathen
suffer from foreign intercourse."

After setting forth the horrible character of the natives, Captain
Cook is condemned and denounced because he did not refuse the homage
of the ferocious savages, paid him as a superior creature. One of
Cook's troubles was the frantic passion the islanders had to steal
iron. The common people were the property of the chiefs, and they had
no other sense of possession. They gave away what they had, but took
what they wanted.

Mr. Dibble shows his animus when he charges that Cook did not give
the natives the real value of their hogs and fruit, and also that he
had no right to stop pilferers in canoes by declaring and enforcing a
blockade. This is a trifling technicality much insisted upon. Dibble's
account of the death of Cook is this:

"A canoe came from an adjoining district, bound within the bay. In the
canoe were two chiefs of some rank, Kekuhaupio and Kalimu. The canoe
was fired upon from one of the boats and Kalimu was killed. Kekuhaupio
made the greatest speed till he reached the place of the king, where
Captain Cook also was, and communicated the intelligence of the death
of the chief. The attendants of the king were enraged and showed
signs of hostility, but were restrained by the thought that Captain
Cook was a god. At that instant a warrior, with a spear in his hand,
approached Captain Cook and was heard to say that the boats in the
harbor had killed his brother, and he would he revenged. Captain Cook,
from his enraged appearance and that of the multitude, was suspicious
of him, and fired upon him with his pistol. Then followed a scene
of confusion, and in the midst Captain Cook being hit with a stone,
and perceiving the man who threw it, shot him dead. He also struck a
certain chief with his sword, whose name was Kalaimanokahoowaha. The
chief instantly seized Captain Cook with a strong hand, designing
merely to hold him and not to take his life; for he supposed him
to be a god and that he could not die. Captain Cook struggled to
free himself from the grasp, and as he was about to fall uttered a
groan. The people immediately exclaimed, "He groans--he is not a god,"
and instantly slew him. Such was the melancholy death of Captain Cook.

"Immediately the men in the boat commenced a deliberate fire upon the
crowd. They had refrained in a measure before, for fear of killing
their Captain. Many of the natives were killed."

"Historian Dibble does not notice the evidence that Cook lost his life
by turning to his men in the boats, ordering them not to fire. It
was at that moment he was stabbed in the back. Dibble represents
the facts as if to justify the massacre of the great navigator,
because he allowed the heathen to think he was one of their gang of
gods. But this presumption ought not to have been allowed to excuse
prevarication about testimony. The importance of Dibble's history is
that it is representative. He concludes with this eloquent passage:
"From one heathen nation we may learn in a measure the wants of
all. And we ought not to restrict our view, but, look at the wide
world. To do then for all nations what I have urged in behalf of the
Sandwich Islands, how great and extensive a work! How vast the number
of men and how immense the amount of means which seem necessary to
elevate all nations, and gain over the whole earth to the permanent
dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ! Can 300,000,000 of pagan children
and youth be trained and instructed by a few hands? Can the means
of instructing them be furnished by the mere farthings and pence of
the church? Will it not be some time yet before ministers and church
members will need to be idle a moment for the want of work? Is there
any danger of our being cut off from the blessed privilege either
of giving or of going? There is a great work yet to be done--a noble
work--a various and a difficult work--a work worthy of God's power,
God's resources, and God's wisdom. What Christendom has as yet done
is scarcely worthy of being called a commencement. When God shall
bring such energies into action as shall be commensurate with the
greatness of the work--when he shall cause every redeemed sinner,
by the abundant influence of His Holy Spirit, to lay himself out
wholly in the great enterprise, then there will be a sight of moral
sublimity that shall rivet the gaze of angels."

We quote this writer as to what became of the remains of Cook: "The
body of Captain Cook was carried into the interior of the island,
the bones secured according to their custom, and the flesh burned in
the fire. The heart, liver, etc., of Captain Cook, were stolen and
eaten by some hungry children, who mistook them in the night for the
inwards of a dog. The names of the children were Kupa, Mohoole and
Kaiwikokoole. These men are now all dead. The last of the number
died two years since at the station of Lahaina. Some of the bones
of Captain Cook were sent on board his ship, in compliance with the
urgent demands of the officers; and some were kept by the priests as
objects of worship." The "heart, liver, etc.," were of course given
to the children to eat! The bones are still hidden, and presumably not
much worshiped. The first of the remains of Captain Cook given up was a
mass of his bloody flesh, cut as if from a slaughtered ox. After some
time there were other fragments, including one of his hands which had
a well known scar, and perfectly identified it. Along with this came
the story of burning flesh, and denials of cannibalism. Mr. Dibble
speaks of Cook's "consummate folly and outrageous tyranny of placing
a blockade upon a heathen bay, which the natives could not possibly
be supposed either to understand or appreciate." That blockade,
like others, was understood when enforced. The historian labors to
work out a case to justify the murder of Cook because he received
worship. As to the acknowledgment of Cook as the incarnation of Lono,
in the Hawaiian Pantheon, Captain King says:

"Before I proceed to relate the adoration that was paid to Captain
Cook, and the peculiar ceremonies with which he was received on this
fatal island, it will be necessary to describe the Morai, situated,
as I have already mentioned, at the south side of the beach at
Kakooa (Kealakeakua). It was a square solid pile of stones, about
forty yards long, twenty broad, and fourteen in height. The top was
flat and well paved, and surrounded by a wooden rail, on which were
fixed the skulls of the captives sacrificed on the death of their
chiefs. In the center of the area stood a ruinous old building of
wood, connected with the rail on each side by a stone wall, which
next divided the whole space into two parts. On the side next the
country were five poles, upward of twenty feet high, supporting an
irregular kind of scaffold; on the opposite side toward the sea,
stood two small houses with a covered communication.

"We were conducted by Koah to the top of this pile by an easy ascent
leading from the beach to the northwest corner of the area. At the
entrance we saw two large wooden images, with features violently
distorted, and a long piece of carved wood of a conical form inverted,
rising from the top of their heads; the rest was without form and
wrapped round with red cloth. We were here met by a tall young man
with a long beard, who presented Captain Cook to the images, and
after chanting a kind of hymn, in which he was joined by Koah, they
led us to that end of the Morai where the five poles were fixed. At
the foot of them were twelve images ranged in a semicircular form,
and before the middle figure stood a high stand or table, exactly
resembling the Whatta of Othaheiti, on which lay a putrid hog, and
under it pieces of sugar cane, cocoanuts, bread fruit, plantains
and sweet potatoes. Koah having placed the Captain under the stand,
took down the hog and held it toward him; and after having a second
time addressed him in a long speech, pronounced with much vehemence
and rapidity, he let it fall on the ground and led him to the
scaffolding, which they began to climb together, not without great
risk of falling. At this time we saw coming in solemn procession,
at the entrance of the top of the Morai, ten men carrying a live
hog and a large piece of red cloth. Being advanced a few paces, they
stopped and prostrated themselves; and Kaireekeea, the young man above
mentioned, went to them, and receiving the cloth carried it to Koah,
who wrapped it around the Captain, and afterwards offered him the hog,
which was brought by Kaireekeea with the same ceremony.

"Whilst Captain Cook was aloft in this awkward situation, swathed
round with red cloth, and with difficulty keeping his hold amongst
the pieces of rotten scaffolding, Kaireekeea and Koah began their
office, chanting sometimes in concert and sometimes alternately. This
lasted a considerable time; at length Koah let the hog drop, when he
and the Captain descended together. He then led him to the images
before mentioned, and, having said something to each in a sneering
tone, snapping his fingers at them as he passed, he brought him to
that in the center, which, from its being covered with red cloth,
appeared to be in greater estimation than the rest. Before this
figure he prostrated himself and kissed it, desiring Captain Cook to
do the same, who suffered himself to be directed by Koah throughout
the whole of this ceremony.

"We were now led back to the other division of the Morai, where there
was a space ten or twelve feet square, sunk about three feet below
the level of the area. Into this we descended, and Captain Cook was
seated between two wooden idols, Koah supporting one of his arms,
whilst I was desired to support the other. At this time arrived a
second procession of natives, carrying a baked hog and a pudding,
some bread fruit, cocoanuts and other vegetables. When they approached
us Kaireekeea put himself at their head, and presenting the pig to
Captain Cook in the usual manner, began the same kind of chant as
before, his companions making regular responses. We observed that
after every response their parts became gradually shorter, till,
toward the close, Kaireekeea's consisted of only two or three words,
while the rest answered by the word Orono.

"When this offering was concluded, which lasted a quarter of an hour,
the natives sat down fronting us, and began to cut up the baked hog,
to peel the vegetables and break the cocoanuts; whilst others employed
themselves in brewing the awa, which is done by chewing it in the
same manner as at the Friendly Islands. Kaireekeea then took part of
the kernel of a cocoanut, which he chewed, and wrapping it in a piece
of cloth, rubbed with it the Captain's face, head, hands, arms and
shoulders. The awa was then handed around, and after we had tasted it
Koah and Pareea began to pull the flesh of the hog in pieces and put
it into our mouths. I had no great objection to being fed by Pareea,
who was very cleanly in his person, but Captain Cook, who was served
by Koah, recollecting the putrid hog, could not swallow a morsel;
and his reluctance, as may be supposed, was not diminished when the
old man, according to his own mode of civility had chewed it for him.

"When this ceremony was finished, which Captain Cook put an end to
as soon as he decently could, we quitted the Moral."

Evidently the whole purpose of Captain Cook in permitting this
performance, was to flatter and gratify the natives and make himself
strong to command them. The Captain himself was sickened, and got away
as quickly as he could without giving offense. This was not the only
case in which the native priests presented the navigator as a superior
being. Perhaps the view the old sailor took of the style of ceremony
was as there were so many gods, one more or less did not matter. Cook
never attached importance to the freaks of superstition, except so
far as it might be made useful in keeping the bloody and beastly
savages in check. Bearing upon this point we quote W.D. Alexander's
"Brief History of the Hawaiian People," pages 33-34:

"Infanticide was fearfully prevalent, and there were few of the older
women at the date of the abolition of idolatry who had not been guilty
of it. It was the opinion of those best informed that two-thirds of
all the children born were destroyed in infancy by their parents. They
were generally buried alive, in many cases in the very houses occupied
by their unnatural parents. On all the islands the number of males was
much greater than that of females, in consequence of the girls being
more frequently destroyed than the boys. The principal reason given
for it was laziness--unwillingness to take the trouble of rearing
children. It was a very common practice for parents to give away
their children to any persons who were willing to adopt them.

"No regular parental discipline was maintained, and the children
were too often left to follow their own inclinations and to become
familiar with the lowest vices.

"Neglect of the helpless. Among the common people old age was
despised. The sick and those who had become helpless from age were
sometimes abandoned to die or put to death. Insane people were also
sometimes stoned to death."

Again we quote Alexander's History, page 49:

"Several kinds of food were forbidden to the women on pain of death,
viz., pork, bananas, cocoanuts, turtles, and certain kinds of fish,
as the ulua, the humu, the shark, the hihimanu or sting-ray, etc. The
men of the poorer class often formed a sort of eating club apart
from their wives. These laws were rigorously enforced. At Honannau,
Hawaii, two young girls of the highest rank, Kapiolani and Keoua,
having been detected in the act of eating a banana, their kahu, or
tutor, was held responsible, and put to death by drowning. Shortly
before the abolition of the tabus, a little child had one of her eyes
scooped out for the same offense. About the same time a woman was
put to death for entering the eating house of her husband, although
though she was tipsy at the time."

Captain Cook seems to have committed the unpardonable sin in not
beginning the stated work of preaching the gospel a long generation
before the missionaries arrived, and the only sound reason for this
is found in Dibble's History, in his statement that the islanders
steadily degenerated until the missions were organized.

Writers of good repute, A. Fornander, chief of them, are severe with
Captain Cook on account of his alleged greed, not paying enough for
the red feathers woven into fanciful forms. Perhaps that is a common
fault in the transactions of civilized men with barbarians. William
Penn is the only man with a great reputation for dealing fairly with
American Red Men, and he was not impoverished by it. Cook gave nails
for hogs, and that is mentioned in phrases that are malicious. Iron
was to the islanders the precious metal, and they were not cheated. A
long drawn out effort has been made to impress the world that Cook
thought himself almost a god, and was a monster. The natives gave to
the wonderful people who came to them in ships, liberally of their
plenty, and received in return presents that pleased them, articles
of utility. Beads came along at a later day. The natives believed
Cook one of the heroes of the imagination that they called gods. He
sought to propitiate them and paid for fruit and meat in iron and showy
trifles. His policy of progress was to introduce domestic animals.

Note the temper of Mr. Abraham Fornander, a man who has meant honesty
of statement, but whose information was perverted:

"And how did Captain Cook requite this boundless hospitality, that
never once made default during his long stay of seventeen days in
Kealakeakua, these magnificent presents of immense value, this delicate
and spontaneous attention to every want, this friendship of the chiefs
and priests, this friendliness of the common people? By imposing on
their good nature to the utmost limit of its ability to respond to
the greedy and constant calls of their new friends; by shooting at one
of the king's officers for endeavoring to enforce a law of the land,
an edict of his sovereign that happened to be unpalatable to the new
comers, and caused them some temporary inconvenience, after a week's
profusion and unbridled license; by a liberal exhibition of his force
and the meanest display of his bounty; by giving the king a linen
shirt and a cutlass in return for feather cloaks and helmets, which,
irrespective of their value as insignia of the highest nobility in the
land, were worth, singly at least from five to ten thousand dollars, at
present price of the feathers, not counting the cost of manufacturing;
by a reckless disregard of the proprieties of ordinary intercourse,
even between civilized and savage man, and a wanton insult to what he
reasonably may have supposed to have been the religious sentiments of
his hosts." This is up to the mark of a criminal lawyer retained to
prove by native testimony that Captain James Cook was not murdered, but
executed for cause. The great crime of Cook is up to this point that of
playing that he was one of the Polynesian gods. Fornander says: "When
the sailors carried off, not only the railing of the temple, but also
the idols of the gods within it, even the large-hearted patience of
Kaoo gave up, and he meekly requested that the central idol at least,
might be restored. Captain King failed to perceive that the concession
of the priests was that of a devotee to his saint. The priests would
not sell their religious emblems and belongings for "thirty pieces
of silver," or any remuneration, but they were willing to offer up
the entire Heiau, and themselves on the top of it, as a holocaust to
Lono, if he had requested it. So long as Cook was regarded as a god
in their eyes they could not refuse him. And though they exhibited no
resentment at the request, the want of delicacy and consideration on
the part of Captain Cook is none the less glaring. After his death,
and when the illusion of godship had subsided, his spoliation of the
very Heiau in which he had been deified was not one of the least of
the grievances which native annalists laid up against him."

Contrast this flagrancy in advocacy of the cause of the barbarous
natives with the last words Cook wrote in his journal. We quote from
"A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean," by Captain James Cook, F.R.S.,
(Vol. II., pages 251-252):

"As it was of the last importance to procure a supply of provisions
at these islands; and experience having taught me that I could have
no chance to succeed in this, if a free trade with the natives were
to be allowed; that is, if it were left to every man's discretion to
trade for what he pleased, and in what manner he pleased; for this
substantial reason, I now published an order prohibiting all persons
from trading, except such as should be appointed by me and Captain
Clarke; and even these were enjoined to trade only for provisions and
refreshments. Women were also forbidden to be admitted into the ships,
except under certain restrictions. But the evil I intended to prevent,
by this regulation, I soon found had already got amongst them.

"I stood in again the next morning till within three or four miles
of the land, where we were met with a number of canoes laden with
provisions. We brought to, and continued trading with the people in
them till four in the afternoon, when, having got a pretty good supply,
we made sail and stretched off to the northward.

"I had never met with a behavior so free from reserve and suspicion
in my intercourse with any tribe of savages as we experienced in the
people of this island. It was very common for them to send up into
the ship the several articles they brought for barter; afterward, they
would come in themselves and make their bargains on the quarter-deck.

"We spent the night as usual, standing off and on. It happened that
four men and ten women who had come on board the preceding day still
remained with us. As I did not like the company of the latter, I
stood in shore toward noon, principally with a view to get them out
of the ship; and, some canoes coming off, I took that opportunity of
sending away our guests.

"In the evening Mr. Bligh returned and reported that he had found
a bay in which was good anchorage, and fresh water in a situation
tolerably easy to be come at. Into this bay I resolved to carry the
ships, there to refit and supply ourselves with every refreshment
that the place could afford. As night approached the greater part
of our visitors retired to the shore, but numbers of them requested
our permission to sleep on board. Curiosity was not the only motive,
at least with some, for the next morning several things were missing,
which determined me not to entertain so many another night.

"At eleven o'clock in the forenoon we anchored in the bay, which is
called by the natives Karakaooa, (Kealakeakua), in thirteen fathoms
water, over a sandy bottom, and about a quarter of a mile from the
northeast shore. In this situation the south point of the bay bore
south by west, and the north point west half north. We moored with
the stream-anchor and cable, to the northward, unbent the sails and
struck yards and topmasts. The ships continued to be much crowded
with natives, and were surrounded by a multitude of canoes. I had
nowhere, in the course of my voyages, seen so numerous a body of people
assembled in one place. For, besides those who had come off to us in
canoes, all the shore of the bay was covered with spectators, and many
hundreds were swimming around the ships like shoals of fish. We could
not but be struck with the singularity of this scene, and perhaps there
were few on board who lamented our having failed in our endeavors to
find a northern passage homeward last summer. To this disappointment
we owed our having it in our power to revisit the Sandwich Islands,
and to enrich our voyage with a discovery which, though the last,
seemed in many respects to be the most important that had hitherto
been made by Europeans, throughout the extent of the Pacific Ocean."

This is the end of Cook's writing. His murder followed immediately. He
fell by the hands of people for whom his good will was shown in
his last words. The concluding pages of the journal answer all the
scandals his enemies have so busily circulated.

There is a gleam of humor that shows like a thread of gold in the
midst of the somber tragedies of the Sandwich Islands, and we must not
omit to extract it from "The Voyage of Discovery Around the World" by
Captain George Vancouver, when he spent some time in Hawaii, and gives
two bright pictures--one of a theatrical performance, and the other
the happy settlement of the disordered domestic relations of a monarch.

_A Gifted Native Actress and Some Royal Dramatists._

"There was a performance by a single young woman of the name of
Puckoo, whose person and manners were both very agreeable. Her dress,
notwithstanding the heat of the weather, consisted of an immense
quantity of cloth, which was wreaths of black, red and yellow feathers;
but, excepting these, she wore no dress a manner as to give a pretty
effect to the variegated pattern of the cloth; and was otherways
disposed with great taste. Her head and neck were decorated with
wreaths of black, red and yellow feathers; but, excepting these,
she wore no dress from the waist upwards. Her ankles, and nearly half
way up her legs, were decorated with several folds of cloth, widening
upwards, so that the upper parts extended from the leg at least four
inches all round; this was encompassed by a piece of net work, wrought
very close, from the meshes of which were hung the small teeth of
dogs, giving this part of her dress the appearance of an ornamented
funnel. On her wrists she wore bracelets made of the tusks of the
largest hogs. These were highly polished and fixed close together in
a ring, the concave sides of the tusks being outwards; and their ends
reduced to a uniform length, curving naturally away from the center,
were by no means destitute of ornamental effect. Thus equipped, her
appearance on the stage, before she uttered a single word, excited
considerable applause.

"These amusements had hitherto been confined to such limited
performances; but this afternoon was to be dedicated to one of a more
splendid nature, in which some ladies of consequence, attendants on the
court of Tamaahmaah, were to perform the principal parts. Great pains
had been taken, and they had gone through many private rehearsals, in
order that the exhibition this evening might be worthy of the public
attention; on the conclusion of which, I purposed by a display of
fireworks, to make a return for the entertainment they had afforded us.

"About four o'clock we were informed it was time to attend the royal
dames; their theatre, or rather place of exhibition, was about a
mile to the southward of our tents, in a small square, surrounded
by houses, and sheltered by trees, a situation as well chosen for
the performance, as for the accommodations of the spectators; who,
on a moderate computation, could not be estimated at less than four
thousand, of all ranks and descriptions of persons.

"The dress of the actresses was something like that worn by Puckoo,
though made of superior materials, and disposed with more taste and
elegance. A very considerable quantity of their finest cloth was
prepared for the occasion; of this their lower garment was formed,
which extended from their waist half down their legs, and was so
plaited as to appear very much like a hoop petticoat. This seemed
the most difficult part of their dress to adjust, for Tamaahmaah,
who was considered to be a profound critic, was frequently appealed
to by the women, and his directions were implicitly followed in many
little alterations. Instead of the ornaments of cloth and net-work,
decorated with dogs' teeth, these ladies had each a green wreath made
of a kind of bind weed, twisted together in different parts like a
rope, which was wound round from the ankle, nearly to the lower part
of the petticoat. On their wrists they wore no bracelets nor other
ornaments, but across their necks and shoulders were green sashes,
very nicely made, with the broad leaves of the tee, a plant that
produces a very luscious sweet root, the size of a yam. This part of
their dress was put on the last by each of the actresses; and the party
being now fully attired, the king and queen, who had been present the
whole time of their dressing, were obliged to withdraw, greatly to
the mortification of the latter, who would gladly have taken her part
as a performer, in which she was reputed to excel very highly. But
the royal pair were compelled to retire, even from the exhibition, as
they are prohibited by law from attending such amusements, excepting
on the festival of the new year. Indeed, the performance of this
day was contrary to the established rules of the island, but being
intended as a compliment to us, the innovation was permitted.

"As their majesties withdrew, the ladies of rank and the principal
chiefs began to make their appearance. The reception of the former by
the multitude was marked by a degree of respect that I had not before
seen amongst any inhabitants of the countries in the Pacific Ocean. The
audience assembled at this time were standing in rows, from fifteen
to twenty feet deep, so close as to touch each other; but these ladies
no sooner approached in their rear, in any accidental direction, than
a passage was instantly made for them and their attendants to pass
through in the most commodious manner to their respective stations,
where they seated themselves on the ground, which was covered with
mats, in the most advantageous situation for seeing and hearing the
performers. Most of these ladies were of a corpulent form, which,
assisted by their stately gait, the dignity with which they moved,
and the number of their pages, who followed with fans to court the
refreshing breeze, or with fly-flaps to disperse the offending insects,
announced their consequence as the wives, daughters, sisters, or other
near relations of the principal chiefs, who, however, experienced no
such marks of respect or attention themselves; being obliged to make
their way through the spectators in the best manner they were able.

"The time devoted to the decoration of the actresses extended
beyond the limits of the quiet patience of the audience, who
exclaimed two or three times, from all quarters, "Hoorah, hoorah,
poaliealee," signifying that it would be dark and black night before
the performance would begin. But the audience here, like similar ones
in other countries, attending with a pre-disposition to be pleased,
was in good humor, and was easily appeased, by the address of our
faithful and devoted friend Trywhookee, who was the conductor of the
ceremonies, and sole manager on this occasion. He came forward and
apologized by a speech that produced a general laugh, and, causing
the music to begin, we heard no further murmurs.

"The band consisted of five men, all standing up, each with a highly
polished wooden spear in the left, and a small piece of the same
material, equally well finished, in the right hand; with this they
beat on the spear, as an accompaniment to their own voices in songs,
that varied both as to time and measure, especially the latter;
yet their voices, and the sounds produced from the rude instruments,
which differed according to the place on which the tapering spear was
struck, appeared to accord very well. Having engaged us a short time
in this vocal performance, the court ladies made their appearance,
and were received with shouts of the greatest applause. The musicians
retired a few paces, and the actresses took their station before them.

"The heroine of the piece, which consisted of four or five acts, had
once shared the affections and embraces of Tamaahmaah, but was now
married to an inferior chief, whose occupation in the household was
that of the charge of the king's apparel. This lady was distinguished
by a green wreath round the crown of the head; next to her was the
captive daughter of Titeeree; the third a younger sister to the queen,
the wife of Crymamahoo, who, being of the most exalted rank, stood in
the middle. On each side of these were two of inferior quality, making
in all seven actresses. They drew themselves up in a line fronting
that side of the square that was occupied by ladies of quality and
the chiefs. These were completely detached from the populace, not
by any partition, but, as it were, by the respectful consent of the
lower orders of the assembly; not one of which trespassed or produced
the least inaccommodation.

"This representation, like that before attempted to be described, was
a compound of speaking and singing; the subject of which was enforced
by gestures and actions. The piece was in honor of a captive princess,
whose name was Crycowculleneaow; and on her name being pronounced,
every one present, men as well as women, who wore any ornaments above
their waists, were obliged to take them off, though the captive lady
was at least sixty miles distant. This mark of respect was unobserved
by the actresses whilst engaged in the performance; but the instant
any one sat down, or at the close of the act, they were also obliged
to comply with this mysterious ceremony.

"The variety of attitudes into which these women threw themselves,
with the rapidity of their action, resembled no amusement in any
other part of the world within my knowledge, by a comparison with
which I might be enabled to convey some idea of the stage effect
thus produced, particularly in the three first parts, in which there
appeared much correspondence and harmony between the tone of their
voices and the display of their limbs. One or two of the performers
being not quite so perfect as the rest, afforded us an opportunity
of exercising our judgment by comparison; and it must be confessed,
that the ladies who most excelled, exhibited a degree of graceful
action, for the attainment of which it is difficult to account.

"In each of these first parts the songs, attitudes and actions appeared
to me of greater variety than I had before noticed amongst the people
of the great South Sea nation on any former occasion. The whole, though
I am unequal to its description, was supported with a wonderful degree
of spirit and vivacity; so much indeed that some of their exertions
were made with such a degree of agitating violence as seemed to carry
the performers beyond what their strength was able to sustain; and had
the performance finished with the third act, we should have retired
from their theatre with a much higher idea of the moral tendency of
their drama, than was conveyed by the offensive, libidinous scene,
exhibited by the ladies in the concluding part. The language of the
song, no doubt, corresponded with the obscenity of their actions;
which were carried to a degree of extravagance that were calculated
to produce nothing but disgust, even to the most licentious."

From "A Voyage of Discovery," by Captain George Vancouver:

_The Reconciliation by Strategy of a King With One of His Queens._

"Tahowmotoo was amongst the most constant of our guests; but his
daughter, the disgraced queen, seldom visited our side of the bay. I
was not, however, ignorant of her anxious desire for a reconciliation
with Tamaahmaah; nor was the same wish to be misunderstood in the
conduct and behavior of the king, in whose good opinion and confidence
I had now acquired such a predominancy that I became acquainted with
his most secret inclinations and apprehensions.

"His unshaken attachment and unaltered affection for Tahowmannoo was
confessed with a sort of internal self conviction of her innocence. He
acknowledged with great candor that his own conduct had not been
exactly such as warranted his having insisted upon a separation from
his queen; that although it could not authorize, it in some measure
pleaded in excuse for her infidelity; and for his own, he alleged,
that his high rank and supreme authority was a sort of license for
such indulgences.

"An accommodation which I considered to be mutually wished by both
parties was urged in the strongest terms by the queen's relations. To
effect this desirable purpose, my interference was frequently solicited
by them; and as it concurred with my own inclination, I resolved on
embracing the first favorable opportunity to use my best endeavors for
bringing a reconciliation about. For although, on our former visit,
Tahowmannoo had been regarded with the most favorable impressions,
yet, whether from her distresses, or because she had really improved
in her personal accomplishments, I will not take upon me to determine,
but certain it is that one or both of these circumstances united had so
far prepossessed us all in her favor, and no one more so than myself,
that it had long been the general wish to see her exalted again to her
former dignities. This desire was probably not a little heightened by
the regard we entertained for the happiness and repose of our noble and
generous friend Tamaahmaah, who was likely to be materially affected
not only in his domestic comforts, but in his political situation,
by receiving again and reinstating his consort in her former rank
and consequence.

"I was convinced beyond all doubt that there were two or three of
the most considerable chiefs of the island whose ambitious views were
inimical to the interests and authority of Tamaahmaah; and it was much
to be apprehended that if the earnest solicitations of the queen's
father (whose condition and importance was next in consequence to that
of the king) should continue to be rejected, that there could be little
doubt of his adding great strength and influence to the discontented
and turbulent chiefs, which would operate highly to the prejudice,
if not totally to the destruction, of Tamaahmaah's regal power;
especially as the adverse party seemed to form a constant opposition,
consisting of a minority by no means to be despised by the executive
power, and which appeared to be a principal constituent part of the
Owhyean politics.

"For these substantial reasons, whenever he was disposed to listen to
such discourse, I did not cease to urge the importance and necessity
of his adopting measures so highly essential to his happiness as a
man, and to his power, interest and authority as the supreme chief of
the island. All this he candidly acknowledged, but his pride threw
impediments in the way of a reconciliation, which were hard to be
removed. He would not himself become the immediate agent; and although
he considered it important that the negotiation should be conducted
by some one of the principal chiefs in his fullest confidence with
disdain, was equally hard to reconcile to his feelings. I stood
nearly in the same situation with his favorite friends; but being
thoroughly convinced of the sincerity of his wishes, I spared him
the mortification of soliciting the offices he had rejected, by again
proffering my services. To this he instantly consented, and observed
that no proposal could have met his mind so completely; since, by
effecting a reconciliation through my friendship, no umbrage could
be taken at his having declined the several offers of his countrymen
by any of the individuals; whereas, had this object been accomplished
by any one of the chiefs, it would probably have occasioned jealousy
and discontent in the minds of the others.

"All, however, was not yet complete; the apprehension that some
concession might be suggested, or expected, on his part, preponderated
against every other consideration; and he would on no account consent,
that it should appear that he had been privy to the business, or that
it had been by his desire that a negotiation had been undertaken for
this happy purpose, but that the whole should have the appearance of
being purely the result of accident.

"To this end it was determined that I should invite the queen, with
several of her relations and friends, on board the Discovery, for the
purpose of presenting them with some trivial matters, as tokens of my
friendship and regard; and that, whilst thus employed, our conversation
should be directed to ascertain whether an accommodation was still an
object to be desired. That on this appearing to be the general wish,
Tamaahmaah would instantly repair on board in a hasty manner, as if
he had something extraordinary to communicate; that I should appear
to rejoice at this accidental meeting, and by instantly uniting their
hands, bring the reconciliation to pass without the least discussion
or explanation on either side. But from his extreme solicitude lest
he should in any degree be suspected of being concerned in this
previous arrangement, a difficulty arose how to make him acquainted
with the result of the proposed conversation on board, which could not
be permitted by a verbal message; at length, after some thought, he
took up two pieces of paper, and of his own accord made certain marks
with a pencil on each of them, and then delivered them to me. The
difference of these marks he could well recollect; the one was to
indicate that the result of my inquiries was agreeable to his wishes,
and the other that it was contrary. In the event of my making use of
the former, he proposed that it should not be sent on shore secretly,
but in an open and declared manner, and by way of a joke, as a present
to his Owhyhean majesty. The natural gaiety of disposition which
generally prevails among these islanders, would render this supposed
disappointment of the king a subject for mirth, would in some degree
prepare the company for his visit, and completely do away with every
idea of its being the effect of a preconcerted measure.

"This plan was accordingly carried into execution on the following
Monday. Whilst the queen and her party, totally ignorant of the
contrivance, were receiving the compliments I had intended them,
their good humor and pleasantry were infinitely heightened by the jest
I proposed to pass upon the king, in sending him a piece of paper
only, carefully wrapped up in some cloth of their own manufacture,
accompanied by a message; importing, that as I was then in the act of
distributing favors to my Owhyhean friends, I had not been unmindful
of his majesty.

"Tamaahmaah no sooner received the summons, than he hastened on board,
and, with his usual vivacity, exclaimed before he made his appearance
that he was come to thank me for the present I had sent him, and for
my goodness in not having forgotten him on this occasion. This was
heard by everyone in the cabin before he entered; and all seemed to
enjoy the joke except the poor queen, who appeared to be much agitated
at the idea of being again in his presence. The instant that he saw
her his countenance expressed great surprise, he became immediately
silent, and attempted to retire; but, having posted myself for the
especial purpose of preventing his departure, I caught his hand and,
joining it with the queen's, their reconciliation was instantly
completed. This was fully demonstrated, not only by the tears that
involuntarily stole down the cheeks of both as they embraced each
other and mutually expressed the satisfaction they experienced; but
by the behavior of every individual present, whose feelings on the
occasion were not to be repressed; whilst their sensibility testified
the happiness which this apparently fortuitous event had produced.

"A short pause, produced by an event so unexpected, was succeeded by
the sort of good humor that such a happy circumstance would naturally
inspire; the conversation soon became general, cheerful and lively,
in which the artifice imagined to have been imposed upon the king
bore no small share. A little refreshment from a few glasses of wine
concluded the scene of this successful meeting.

"After the queen had acknowledged in the most grateful terms the
weighty obligations which she felt for my services on this occasion,
I was surprised by her saying, as we were all preparing to go on shore,
that she had still a very great favor to request; which was, that I
should obtain from Tamaahmaah a solemn promise that on her return to
his habitation he would not beat her. The great cordiality with which
the reconciliation had taken place, and the happiness that each of
them had continued to express in consequence of it, led me at first
to consider this entreaty of the queen as a jest only; but in this I
was mistaken, for, notwithstanding that Tamaahmaah readily complied
with my solicitation, and assured me nothing of the kind should take
place, yet Tahowmannoo would not be satisfied without my accompanying
them home to the royal residence, where I had the pleasure of seeing
her restored to all her former honors and privileges, highly to the
satisfaction of all the king's friends, but to the utter mortification
of those who by their scandalous reports and misrepresentations had
been the cause of the unfortunate separtion.

"The domestic affairs of Tamaahmaah having thus taken so happy a turn,
his mind was more at liberty for political considerations; and the
cession of Owhyhee to his Britannic Majesty now became an object of
his serious concern."





Captain Cook makes a strong plea in his journal that he was the
very original discoverer of the Sandwich Islands. Referring to the
wonderful extent of the surface of the earth in which the land is
occupied by the Polynesial race, he exclaims:

"How shall we account for this nation's having spread itself,
in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other,
in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean! We find it, from New Zealand
in the South, as far as the Sandwich Islands, to the North! And, in
another direction, from Easter Islands to the Hebrides! That is, over
an extent of sixty degrees of latitude, or twelve hundred leagues,
North and South! And eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen
hundred and sixty leagues, East and West! How much farther, in either
direction, its colonies reach, is not known; but what we know already,
in consequence of this and our former voyage, warrants our pronouncing
it to be, though perhaps not the most numerous, certainly, by far,
the most extensive, nation upon earth.

"Had the Sandwich Islands been discovered at an early period by
the Spaniards, there is little doubt that they would have taken
advantage of so excellent a situation, and have made use of Atooi,
or some other of the islands, as a refreshing place to the ships,
that sail annually from Acapulco for Manilla. They lie almost midway
between the first place and Guam, one of the Ladrones, which is at
present their only port in traversing this vast ocean; and it would not
have been a week's sail out of their common route to have touched at
them; which could have been done without running the least hazard of
losing the passage, as they are sufficiently within the verge of the
easterly trade wind. An acquaintance with the Sandwich Islands would
have been equally favorable to our Buccaneers, who used sometimes to
pass from the coast of America to the Ladrones, with a stock of food
and water scarcely sufficient to preserve life. Here they might always
have found plenty, and have been within a month's sure sail of the
very part of California which the Manilla ship is obliged to make,
or else have returned to the coast of America, thoroughly refitted,
after an absence of two months. How happy would Lord Anson have been,
and what hardships he would have avoided, if he had known that there
was a group of islands half way between America and Tinian, where
all his wants could have been effectually supplied; and in describing
which the elegant historian of that voyage would have presented his
reader with a more agreeable picture than I have been able to draw
in this chapter."

And yet there seems to be reason for believing that there was a
Spanish ship cast away on one of the Hawaiian group, and that their
descendants are distinctly marked men yet: There was also a white man
and woman saved from the sea at some unknown period, of course since
Noah, and they multiplied and replenished, and the islanders picked
up somewhere a knack for doing things in construction of boats and
the weaving of mats that hint at a crude civilization surviving in
a mass of barbarianism.

Captain George Dixon names the islands discovered by Captain Cook on
his last voyage:

"Owhyhee (Hawaii), the principal, is the first to the southward and
eastward, the rest run in a direction nearly northwest. The names of
the principals are Mowee (Maui), Morotoy (Molokai), Ranai (Lanai),
Whahoo (Oahu), Attooi (Kauai), and Oneehow (Niihau)."

This account Dixon gives of two curious and rather valuable words:
"The moment a chief concludes a bargain, he repeats the word Coocoo
thrice, with quickness, and is immediately answered by all the people
in his canoe with the word Whoah, pronounced in a tone of exclamation,
but with greater or less energy, in proportion as the bargain he has
made is approved."

The great and celebrated Kamehameha, who consolidated the government
of the islands, did it by an act of treachery and murder, thus told
in Alexander's history:

"The Assassination of Keoua.--Toward the end of the year 1791 two of
Kamehameha's chief counsellors, Kamanawa and Keaweaheulu, were sent
on an embassy to Keoua at Kahuku in Kau. Keoua's chief warrior urged
him to put them to death, which he indignantly refused to do.

"By smooth speeches and fair promises they persuaded him to go to
Kawaihae, and have an interview with Kamehameha, in order to put an end
to the war, which had lasted nine years. Accordingly he set out with
his most intimate friends and twenty-four rowers in his own double
canoe, accompanied by Keaweaheulu in another canoe, and followed by
friends and retainers in other canoes.

"As they approached the landing at Kawaihae, Keeaumoku surrounded
Keoua's canoe with a number of armed men. As Kamakau relates: 'Seeing
Kamehameha on the beach, Keoua called out to him, "Here I am," to which
he replied, "Rise up and come here, that we may know each other."'

"As Keoua was in the act of leaping ashore, Keeaumoku killed him
with a spear. All the men in Keoua's canoe and in the canoes of
his immediate company were slaughtered but one. But when the second
division approached, Kamehameha gave orders to stop the massacre. The
bodies of the slain were then laid upon the altar of Puukohola as an
offering to the blood-thirsty divinity Kukailimoku. That of Keoua had
been previously baked in an oven at the foot of the hill as a last
indignity. This treacherous murder made Kamehameha master of the whole
island of Hawaii, and was the first step toward the consolidation of
the group under one government."

This is one of those gentle proceedings of an amiable race, whose
massacre of Captain Cook has been so elaborately vindicated by alleged
exponents of civilization.

There is found the keynote of the grevious native government in
an incident of the date of 1841 by which "the foreign relations
of the government became involved with the schemes of a private
firm. The firm of Ladd & Co. had taken the lead in developing the
agricultural resources of the islands by their sugar plantation
at Koloa and in other ways, and had gained the entire confidence
of the king and chiefs. On the 24th of November, 1841, a contract
was secretly drawn up at Lahaina by Mr. Brinsmade, a member of the
firm, and Mr. Richards, and duly signed by the king and premier,
which had serious after-consequences. It granted to Ladd & Co. the
privilege of "leasing any now unoccupied and unimproved localities"
in the islands for one hundred years, at a low rental, each millsite
to include fifteen acres, and the adjoining land for cultivation in
each locality not to exceed two hundred acres, with privileges of
wood, pasture, etc. These sites were to be selected within one year,
which term was afterwards extended to four years from date."

Of course there are many safeguards, particularly in this case,
but the points of the possession of land conceded, the time for the
people to recover their rights never comes.

One of the difficulties in the clearing up of the foggy chapters of
the history of the Hawaiian islands is that within the lifetime of men
who were young at the close of the last century, the Hawaiian tongue
became a written language, and made the traditions of savages highly
colored stories, in various degrees according to ignorance, prejudice
and sympathy, accepted as historical. The marvels accomplished by
the missionaries influenced them to deal gently with those whose
conversion was a recognized triumph of Christendom, and there was
an effort to condemn Captain Cook, who had affected to nod as a God,
as a warning to blasphemers. Still, the truth of history is precious
as the foundations of faith to men of all races and traditions, and
the Englishman who surpassed the French, Spaniards and Portuguese
in discoveries of islands in the vast spaces of the Pacific Ocean,
should have justice at the hands of Americans who have organized
states and built cities by that sea, and possess the islands that
have been named its paradise because endowed surpassingly with the
ample treasures of volcanic soil and tropical climate. There the trade
winds bestow the freshness of the calm and mighty waters, and there
is added to the bounty of boundless wealth the charms of luxuriant
beauty. All Americans should find it timely to be just to Captain Cook,
and claim him as one of the pioneers of our conquering civilization.



CHAPTER XXII

The Start for the Land of Corn Stalks.

Spain Clings to the Ghost of Her Colonies--The Scene of War Interest
Shifts from Manila--The Typhoon Season--General Merritt on the Way
to Paris--German Target Practice by Permission of Dewey--Poultney
Bigelow with Canoe, Typewriter and Kodak--Hongkong as a Bigger and
Brighter Gibraltar.

When Spain gave up the ghosts of her American colonies, and the war
situation was unfolded to signify that the fate of the Philippines was
referred to a conference, and Aguinaldo announced the removal of his
seat of government to Molones, one hour and a half from Manila, the
scene of greatest interest was certainly not in the city and immediate
surroundings. Then it was plain the American army must remain for
some time, and would have only guard duty to perform. The Spaniards
had succumbed and were submissive, having laid down their arms and
surrendered all places and phases of authority. The insurgents'
removal of their headquarters declared that they had abandoned all
claim to sharing in the occupation of the conquered city, and their
opposition to the United States, if continued in theory, was not to be
that in a practical way. Between the American, Spanish and Philippine
forces there was no probability of disputed facts or forms that could
be productive of contention of a serious nature. There was but one
question left in this quarter of the world that concerned the people
of the United States, and that whether they would hold their grip,
snatched by Dewey with his fleet, and confirmed by his government in
sending an army, making our country possessors of the physical force
to sustain our policy, whatever it might be, on the land as well as
on the sea. Whether we should stay or go was not even to be argued in
Manila, except in general and fruitless conversation. Then came the
intelligence that General Merritt had been called to Paris and General
Greene to Washington, and there was a deepened impression that the
war was over. It was true that the army was in an attitude and having
experiences that were such as travelers appreciate as enjoyable,
and that no other body of soldiers had surroundings so curious and
fascinating. The most agreeable time of the year was coming on, and the
sanitary conditions of the city, under the American administration,
would surely improve constantly, and so would! the fare of the men,
for the machinery in all departments was working smoothly. The boys
were feeling pretty well, because they found their half dollars
dollars--the Mexican fifty-cent piece, bigger and with more silver
in it than the American standard dollar, was a bird. A dollar goes
further if it is gold in Manila than in an American city, and if our
soldiers are not paid in actual gold they get its equivalent, and the
only money question unsettled is whether the Mexican silver dollar
is worth in American money fifty cents or less. One of the sources of
anxieties and disappointment and depression of the American soldiers
in Manila has been the irregularity and infrequency with which they get
letters. If one got a letter or newspaper from home of a date not more
than six weeks old he had reason to be congratulated. The transports
trusted with the mails were slow, and communications through the old
lines between Hongkong and San Francisco, Yokohama and Vancouver,
were not reliably organized. There were painful cases of masses of
mail on matter precious beyond all valuation waiting at Hongkong for
a boat, and an issue whether the shorter road home was not by way of
Europe. This is all in course of rapid reformation. There will be no
more mystery as to routes or failures to connect. The soldiers, some of
whom are ten thousand miles from home, should have shiploads of letters
and papers. They need reading matter almost as much as they do tobacco,
and the charming enthusiasm of the ladies who entertained the soldier
boys when they were going away with feasting and flattery, praise and
glorification, should take up the good work of sending them letters,
papers, magazines and books. There is no reason why soldiers should be
more subject to homesickness than sailors, except that they are not so
well or ill accustomed to absence. The fact that the soldiers are fond
of their homes and long for them can have ways of expression other
than going home. A few days after the news of peace reached Manila,
the transports were inspected for closing up the contracts with them
under which they were detained, and soon they began to move. When
the China was ordered to San Francisco, I improved the opportunity to
return to the great republic. There was no chance to explore the many
islands of the group of which Manila is the Spanish Capital. General
Merritt changed the course of this fine ship and added to the variety
of the voyage by taking her to Hongkong to sail thence by way of the
China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Suez
Canal and the Mediterranean, to Paris. Our route to San Francisco,
by way of Hongkong, Nagasaki, Sunanaski, Kobe and the Yokohama light,
was 6,905 knots, about seven thousand seven hundred statute miles,
and gave us glimpses of the Asia shore, the west coast of Formosa
and the great ports of Hongkong and Nagasaki. The first thing on
the Sea of China, in the month of September, is whether we shall
find ourselves in the wild embrace of a typhoon. It was the season
for those terrible tempests and when we left Manila the information
that one was about due was not spared us. We heard later on that the
transport ahead of us four days, the Zealandia, was twenty-eight hours
in a cyclone and much damaged--wrung and hammered and shocked until
she had to put into Nagasaki for extensive repairs. The rainfall was
so heavy during the storm that one could not see a hundred yards from
the ship, and she was wrung in so furious a style in a giddy waltz,
that the Captain was for a time in grave doubt whether she would not
founder. The rule is when one is in the grasp of the oriental whirl
to run through it, judging from the way of the wind, the shortest
way out. There is a comparatively quiet spot in the center, and if
the beset navigator can find the correct line of flight, no matter
which way as relates to the line of his journey, he does well to take
it. Often in this sea, as in this case, there were uncertainties as to
directions. The rain narrowed observation like a dense fog, and there
was danger of running upon some of the islands and snags of rocks. The
battered vessel pulled through a cripple, with her boats shattered,
her deck cracked across by a roller, and her crew were happy to find
a quiet place to be put in order. "To be or not to be" an American
instead of a Spanish or Asiatic city was the parting thought as the
China left Manila Bay, and the dark rocks of Corrigedor faded behind
us, and the rugged rocks that confront the stormy sea loomed on our
right, and the violet peaks of volcanic mountains bounded our eastern
horizon. The last view we had of the historic bay, a big German warship
was close to the sentinel rock, that the Spaniards thought they had
fortified, until Dewey came and saw and conquered, swifter than Caesar,
and the Germans, venturing some target practice, by permission of
Dewey, who relaxes no vigilance of authority. Hongkong is 628 miles
from Manila, and the waters so often stirred in monstrous wrath,
welcomed us with a spread of dazzling silk. The clumsy junks that
appeared to have come down from the days of Confucius, were languid
on the gentle ripples. The outstanding Asian islands, small and grim,
are singularly desolate, barren as if splintered by fire, gaunt and
forbidding. Hongkong is an island that prospers under the paws of
the British lion, and it is a city displayed on a mountain side,
that by day is not much more imposing than the town of Gibraltar,
which it resembles, but at night the lights glitter in a sweeping
circle, the steep ascent of the streets revealed by many lamps, and
here and there the illumination climbs to the tops of the mountains
that are revealed with magical efforts of color and form. The harbor
is entered by an ample, but crooked channel, and is land-locked,
fenced with gigantic bumps that sketch the horizon, and with their
heads and shoulders are familiar with the sky. Here General Merritt,
with his personal staff, left us, and between those bound from this
port east and west, we circumnavigated the earth.

Mr. Poultney Bigelow, of Harper's Weekly, who dropped in by the way
just to make a few calls at Manila, and has a commission to explore
the rivers and lagoons of China with his canoe, left us, in that
surprising craft, plying his paddle in the fashion of the Esquimaux,
pulling right and left, hand over hand, balancing to a nicety on the
waves and going ashore dry and unruffled, with his fieldglass and
portfolio, his haversack and typewriter machine that he folds in a
small box as if it was a pocket comb, and his kodak, with which he
is an expert. He has not only ransacked with his canoe the rivers of
America, but has descended the Danube and the Volga. He puts out in
his canoe and crosses arms of the sea, as a pastime, makes a tent of
his boat if it rains, fighting the desperadoes of all climes with the
superstition, for which he is indebted to their imagination for his
safety in running phenomenal hazards, that he is a magician. Marco Polo
was not so great a traveler or so rare an adventurer as Bigelow, and,
having left Florida under a thunder cloud of the scowl of an angry
army for untimely criticisms, he has invaded the celestial empire
in his quaint canoe, and he can beat the Chinese boatmen on their
own rivers, and sleep like a sea bird on the swells of green water,
floating like a feather, and safe in his slumbers as a solon goose
with his head under his wing. However, he has not a winged boat, a
bird afloat sailing round the purple peaks remote, as Buchanan Reed
put it in his "Drifting" picture of the Vesuvian bay, for Bigelow
uses a paddle. There has been a good deal of curiosity as well as
indignation about his papers on the handling of our Cuban expedition
before it sailed, and it is possible he was guilty of the common fault
of firing into the wrong people. He was in Washington in June, and
he and I meeting on the Bridge of Spain over the Pesang in Manila in
August, we had, between us, put a girdle about the earth. Some say such
experiences are good to show how small the earth is, but I am more than
ever persuaded that it is big enough to find mankind in occupation and
subsistence until time shall be no more. In the dock at Hongkong was
Admiral Dewey's flagship Olympia, and while she had the grass scratched
from her bottom, the gallant crew were having a holiday with the zest
that rewards those who for four months were steadily on shipboard
with arduous cares and labors. H.B.M.S. Powerful, of 12,000 tons
displacement, with four huge flues and two immense military masts,
presided at Hongkong under orders to visit Manila. The mingling
of the English and Chinese in Hongkong is a lively object lesson,
showing the extent of the British capacity to utilize Asiatic labor,
and get the profit of European capital and discipline, an accumulation
that requires an established sense of safety--a justified confidence
in permanency.

The contrast between the city of Hongkong and that of Manila is one
that Americans should study now, to be instructed in the respective
colonial systems of England and Spain. Hongkong is clean and solid,
with business blocks of the best style of construction, the pavements
excellent in material and keeping, shops full of goods, all the
appliances of modern times--a city up to date. There are English
enough to manage and Chinese enough to toil. There are two British
regiments, one of them from India, the rank and file recruited from
the fighting tribes of northern mountaineers. There are dark, tall
men, with turbans, embodiment of mystery, and Parsees who have a
strange spirituality of their own, and in material matters maintain
a lofty code of honor, while their pastime is that of striving while
they march to push their heads into the clouds. There are no horses in
Hongkong, the coolies carrying chairs on bamboo poles, or trotting with
two-wheelers, an untiring substitute for quadrupeds, and locomotion
on the streets or in the boats is swift and sure. I had an address to
find in the city, on a tip at Manila of the presence, of a literary
treasure, and my chairmen carried me, in a few minutes, to a tall
house on a tall terrace, and the works of a martyr to liberty in the
Philippines were located. The penalty for the possession of these books
in Manila was that of the author executed by shooting in the back in
the presence of a crowd of spectators. The cost of the carriers was
thirty cents in silver--fifteen cents in United States money--and the
men were as keen-eyed as they were sure-footed, and the strength of
their tawny limbs called for admiration. They were not burdened with
clothes, and the play of the muscles of their legs was like a mechanism
of steel, oiled, precise, easy and ample in force. The China took on a
few hundred tons of coal, which was delivered aboard from heavy boats
by the basketful, the men forming a line, and so expert were they at
each delivery, the baskets were passed, each containing about half a
bushel--perhaps there were sixty baskets to the ton--at the rate of
thirty-five baskets in a minute. Make due allowances and one gang
would deliver twenty tons of coal an hour. The China was anchored
three-quarters of a mile from the landing, and a boat ride was ten
cents, or fifteen if you were a tipster. The boats are, as a rule,
managed by a man and his wife; and, as it is their own, they keep the
children at home. The average families on the boats--and I made several
counts--were nine, the seven children varying from one to twelve years
of age. The vitality of the Chinese is not exhausted, or even impaired.



CHAPTER XXIII

Kodak Snapped at Japan.

Glimpses of China and Japan on the Way Home from the
Philippines--Hongkong a Greater Gibraltar--Coaling the China--Gangs
of Women Coaling the China--How the Japanese Make Gardens of the
Mountains--Transition from the Tropics to the Northern Seas--A
Breeze from Siberia--A Thousand Miles Nothing on the Pacific--Talk
of Swimming Ashore.

Formosa was so far away eastward--a crinkled line drawn faintly with a
fine blue pencil, showing as an artistic scrawl on the canvass of the
low clouds--we could hardly claim when the sketch of the distant land
faded from view, that we had seen Japan. When Hongkong, of sparkling
memory, was lost to sight, the guardian walls that secluded her
harbor, closing their gates as we turned away, and the headlands of
the celestial empire grew dim, a rosy sunset promised that the next
day should be pleasant, our thoughts turned with the prow of the
China to Japan. We were bound for Nagasaki, to get a full supply of
coal to drive us across the Pacific, having but twelve hundred tons
aboard, and half of that wanted for ballast. It was at the mouth of
the harbor of Nagasaki that there was a settlement of Dutch Christians
for some hundreds of years. An indiscreet letter captured on the way
to Holland by a Portuguese adventurer and maliciously sent to Japan,
caused the tragic destruction of the Christian colony. The enmity of
Christian nations anxious to add to their properties in the islands
in remote seas was so strong that any one preferred that rather than
his neighbors might aggrandize the heathen should prevail. The first
as well as the last rocks of Japan to rise from and sink into the
prodigous waters, through which we pursued our homeward way, bathing
our eyes in the delicious glowing floods of eastern air, were scraggy
with sharp pinnacles, and sheer precipices, grim survivals of the
chaos that it was, before there was light. I have had but glimpses
of the extreme east of Asia, yet the conceit will abide with me that
this is in geology as in history the older world, as we classify our
continents, that a thousand centuries look upon us from the terrible
towers, lonesome save for the flutter of white wings, that witness the
rising of the constellations from the greater ocean of the globe. But
there are green hills as we approach Nagasaki, and on a hillside to the
left are the white walls of a Christian church with a square tower,
stained with traditions of triumphs and suffering and martyrdom long
ago. Nagasaki is like Hongkong in its land-locked harbor, in clinging
to a mountain side, in the circle of illumination at night and the
unceasing paddling of boats from ship to ship and between the ships and
landings. One is not long in discovering that here are a people more
alert, ingenious, self-confident and progressive than the Chinese. As
we approached the harbor there came to head us off, an official steam
launch, with men in uniform, who hailed and commanded us to stop. Two
officers with an intense expression of authority came aboard, and we
had to give a full and particular account of ourselves. Why were we
there? Coaling. Where were we from? Manila and Hongkong. Where were we
going? San Francisco. Had we any sickness on board? No. We must produce
the ship doctor, the list of passengers, and manifest of cargo. We had
no cargo. There were a dozen passengers. It was difficult to find fault
with us. No one was ill. We wanted coal. What was the matter? We had
no trouble at Hongkong. We could buy all the coal we wanted there,
but preferred this station. We had proposed to have our warships
cleaned up at Nagasaki, but there were objections raised. So the job
went to the docks at Hongkong, and good gold with it. Why was this? Oh
yes; Japan wanted, in the war between the United States and Spain,
to be not merely formally, but actually neutral! The fact is that the
Japanese Empire is not pleased with us. They had, in imperial circles,
a passion for Honolulu, and intimated their grief. Now they are annoyed
because that little indemnity for refusing the right to land Japanse
labor was paid by the Hawaiian Government before the absorption into
the United States. As the Hawaiian diplomatic correspondence about this
was conducted with more asperity than tact, if peace were the purpose,
it was a good sore place for the Japanese statesmen to rub, and they
resent in the newspapers the facile and cheap pacification resulting
from the influence of the United States. In addition the Japanese
inhabitants, though they have a larger meal than they can speedily
digest in Formosa, are not touched with unqualified pleasurable feeling
because we have the Philippines in our grasp. If Japan is to be the
great power of the Pacific, it is inconvenient to her for us to hold
the Hawaiian, the Aleutian and the Philippine groups of islands. The
Philippines have more natural resources than all the islands of Japan,
and our Aleutian Islands that are waiting for development would
probably be found, if thoroughly investigated, one of our great and
good bargains. The average American finds himself bothered to have to
treat the Japanese seriously, but we must, for they take themselves so,
and are rushing the work on new ships of war so that they will come out
equal with ourselves in sea power. They have ready for war one humdred
thousand men. If we did not hold any part of the Pacific Coast, this
might be a matter of indifference, but we have three Pacific States,
and there is no purpose to cede them to the Japanese. It would not
be statesmanship to give up the archipelagoes we possess, even if we
consider them as lands to hold for the hereafter. It is not deniable
that the Japanese have good reason to stand off for strict examination
the ships of other nations that call at their ports. The British and
Chinese have had an experience of the bubonic plague at Hongkong,
and the Japanese are using all the power of arms and the artifice
of science they possess to keep aloof from the disastrous disease,
which is most contagious. The China had called at Hongkong, and
hence the sharp attentions at a coaling station where there are about
seventy-five thousand inhabitants of the Japanese quarters, which are
an exhibit of Old Japan, and most interesting. Nagasaki has, indeed,
the true Japanese flavor. If there had been a sick man on our ship we
should have been quarantined. Further on we were halted in the night
off the city of Kobe, to the sound of the firing of a cannon, for we
had dropped there a passenger, Mr. Tilden, the Hongkong agent of the
Pacific Mail line, and if our ship had been infected with plague he
might have passed it on to Japan! I had gone to bed, and was called
up to confront the representative of the Imperial Government of the
Japanese, and make clear to his eyes that I had not returned on account
of the plague. Authorities of Japan treat people who are quarantined
in a way that removes the stress of disagreeableness. All are taken
ashore and to a hospital. There is furnished a robe of the country,
clean and tidy in all respects. The common clothing is removed and
fumigated. It is necessary for each quarantined person to submit to
this and also to a bath, which is a real luxury, and after it comes a
cup of tea and a light lunch. There was an actual case of plague on an
American ship at this city of Kobe not long ago, at least, it was so
reported with pretty strong corroborative evidence. The symptom in the
case on the ship was that of a fever, probably pneumonia. The man was
landed and examined. The plague fever resembles pneumonia at an early
stage. The Japanese physicians found signs of plague and the end came
soon. The sick man, taken ashore in the afternoon, at nine o'clock
was dead, transferred at once to the crematory, in two hours reduced
to ashes, and the officers of the ship informed that if they wanted
to carry the "remains" to America they would be sealed in a jar and
certified. The ship's officers did not want ashes, and the Japs hold
the jar. They are so "advanced" that cremation is becoming a fad with
them. It would not be surprising to find that the impending danger of
the Japanese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to
be exactly the right thing for them. They have reached a point where it
is worth while to examine the claim of new things with much care before
adopting them. We have very high authority to examine all things for
goodness sake, before committing ourselves to hold them fast. We had
to take aboard eighteen hundred tons of coal at Nagasaki. A fleet of
arks with thirty tons of Japanese coal approached and gathered around
the ship, which has sixteen places to throw coal into the bunkers. So
the coal business was carried on by from twelve to fifteen gangs, each
of about ten men and twenty women! The latter were sturdy creatures,
modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts. There were not far from
thirty bamboo baskets to the gang. One man stood at the porthole, and
each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it
back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to
catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling. There
were three men of a gang next the ship, the third one standing in the
barge, served with baskets by two strings of women. At the end of the
string furthest from the ship the coal was shoveled into the baskets
by four men, and there were two who lifted and whirled them to the
women. The numbers and order of the laborers varied a little at times
from this relation, yet very little, but frequently a lump of coal was
passed without using a basket. The work of coaling was carried on all
night, and about thirty-six hours of labor put in for a day. There was
a great deal of talking among the laborers during the few moments of
taking places, and some of it in tones of high excitement, but once
the human machine started there was silence, and then the scratching
of the shovels in the coal, and the crash of the coal thrown far
into the ship were heard. It is, from the American contemplation,
shocking for women to do such work, but they did their share with
unflinching assiduity, and without visible distress. When the night
work was going on they were evidently fatigued, and at each change
that allowed a brief spell of waiting, they were stretched out on the
planks of the boats, the greater number still, but some of the younger
ones talking and laughing. There did not seem to be much flirtation,
nothing like as much as when both sexes of Europeans are engaged in
the same wheat or barley field harvesting. There were, it is needful
to remark, neither lights nor shadows to invite the blanishments of
courting. The coal handling women were from fifteen to fifty years
of age, and all so busy the inevitable babies must have been left
at home. I have never seen many American or European babies "good"
as weary mothers use the word, as the commonest Japanese kids. They
do not know how to cry, and a girl of ten years will relieve a mother
of personal care by carrying a baby, tied up in a scarf, just its
head sticking out (I wish they could be induced to use more soap and
water on the coppery heads, from which pairs of intent eyes stare out
with sharp inquiry, as wild animals on guard). The girl baby bearer,
having tied the child so that it appears to be a bag, slings it over
her shoulder, and it interferes but slightly with the movements of
the nurse; does not discernibly embarrass her movements. The men
colliers, it must be admitted, are a shade reckless in the scarcity
of their drapery when they are handling baskets in the presence
of ladies. They do usually wear shirts with short tails behind,
and very economical breechcloths, but their shirts are sleeveless,
and the buttons are missing on collar and bosom. The only clothing
beneath the knees consists of straw sandals. The precipitation of
perspiration takes care of itself. There are no pocket handkerchiefs.

Nagasaki has good hotels, a pleasant, airy European quarter, and shops
stored with the goods of the country, including magnificent vases and
other pottery that should meet the appreciation of housekeepers. There
is no city in Japan more typically Japanese, few in which the line
is so finely and firmly drawn between the old and the new, and that
to the advantage of both.

It is hardly possible for those who do not visit Japan to realize
what a bitter struggle the people have had with their native land,
or how brilliant the victory they have won. The passage of the China
through the inner sea and far along the coast gave opportunity to
see, as birds might, a great deal of the country. The inner sea
is a wonderfully attractive sheet of water, twice as long as Long
Island Sound, and studded with islands, a panorama of the picturesque
mountains everywhere, deep nooks, glittering shoals, fishing villages
by the sea, boats rigged like Americans, flocks of white sails by day,
and lights at night, that suggest strings of street lamps. The waters
teem with life. Evidently the sea very largely affords industry and
sustenance to the people, for there is no botlom or prairie land, as
we call the level or slightly rolling fields in America. There was not
a spot from first to last visible in Japan, as seen from the water,
or in an excursion on the land, where there is room to turn around a
horse and plow. The ground is necessarily turned up with spades and
mellowed with hoes and cakes, all, of course, by human hands. This is
easy compared with the labor in constructing terraces. The mountains
have been conquered to a considerable extent in this way, and it is
sensational to see how thousands of steep places have been cut and
walled into gigantic stairways, covering slopes that could hardly
answer for goat pasture, until the shelves with soil placed on them
for cultivation have been wrought, and the terraces are like wonderful
ladders bearing against the skies. So rugged is the ground, however,
that many mountains are unconquerable, and there are few traces
of the terraces, though here and there, viewed from a distance,
the evidences that land is cultivated as stairways leaning against
otherwise inaccessible declivities. I have never seen elsewhere
anything that spoke so unequivocably of the endless toil of men,
women and children to find footings upon which to sow the grain
and fruit that sustain life. It is not to be questioned that the
report, one-twelfth, only of the surface of Japan is under tillage,
is accurate. The country is more mountainous than the Alleghenies,
and some of it barren as the wildest of the Rockies on the borders of
the bad lands, and it is volcanic, remarkably so, even more subject
to earthquakes than the Philippines. The whole of Japan occupies
about as much space as the two Dakotas or the Philippines, and the
population is forty-two millions. With work as careful and extensive
as that of the agricultural mountaineers of Japan, the Dakotas would
support one hundred million persons. But they would have to present the
washing away of the soil and the waste through improvident ignorance
or careless profligacy of any fertilizer, or of any trickle of water
needed for irrigation. One of the features of the terraces is that
the rains are saved by the walls that sustain the soil, and the
gutters that guide the water conserve it, because paved with pebbles
and carried down by easy stages, irrigating one shelf after another
of rice or vegetables, whatever is grown, until the whole slope not
irreclaimable is made to blossom and the mountain torrents saved in
their descent, not tearing away the made ground, out of which the
means of living grows, but percolating through scores of narrow beds,
gardens suspended like extended ribbons of verdure on volcanic steeps,
refreshing the crops to be at last ripened by the sunshine. This is
a lesson for the American farmer--to be studied more closely than
imitated--to grow grass, especially clover, to stop devastation by
creeks, with shrubbery gifted with long roots to save the banks of
considerable streams, and, where there is stone, use it to save the
land now going by every freshwater rivulet and rivers to the seas, to
the irreparable loss of mankind. It is the duty of man who inherits
the earth that it does not escape from him, that his inheritance
is not swept away by freshets. We are growing rapidly, in America,
in the understanding of this subject, beginning to comprehend the
necessity of giving the land that bears crops the equivalent of that
which is taken from it, that the vital capital of future generations
may not be dissipated and the people grow ever poor and at last perish.

A ride in a jinrikisha, a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles
for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing
village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start
through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and
busy, many diligent in light manufacturing work, and all scant in
clothing--the journey continuing in sharp climbs alongside steep places
and beside deep ravines, the slopes elaborately terraced, and again
skirting the swift curves of a rapid brook from the mountains, that
presently gathered and spread over pretty beds of gravel, providing
abundant fresh water bathing, in which a school of boys, leaving a
small guard for a light supply of clothing ashore--the ride ending
in a village of fishermen that, by the count of the inhabitants,
should be a town--permitted close observation of the Japanese in a
city and a village, on their sky-scraping gardens and in the road,
going to and coming from market, as well as in places of roadside
entertainment; and at last a seaside resort, in whose shade a party
of globetrotters were lunching, some of them, I hear, trying to eat
raw fish. There could hardly have been contrived a more instructive
exhibit of Japan and the Japanese. The road was obstructed in several
places by cows bearing bales of goods from the city to the country,
and produce from the hanging gardens to the streets, an occasional
horse mustered in, and also a few oxen. The beast of burden most
frequently overtaken or encountered was the cow, and a majority of
the laborers were women. There were even in teams of twos and fours,
carrying heavy luggage, men and women, old, middle-aged and young,
barefooted or shod with straw, not overloaded, as a rule, and some
walking as if they had performed their tasks and were going home. On
the road it was patent there was extraordinary freedom from care as
to clothing, and no feeling of prejudice or dismay if portions of it
esteemed absolutely essential in North America and Europe had been
left behind or was awaiting return to the possessor. This applies to
both sexes. The day was warm, even hot, and the sun shone fiercely on
the turnpike--for that is what we would call it--making walking, with
or without loads, a heating exercise. Even the bearing of baskets,
and the majority of the women carried them, was justification
under the customs of the country for baring the throat and chest
to give ample scope for breathing, and there is no restriction in
the maintenance of the drooping lines of demarkation, according to
the most liberal fashionable allowances, in dispensing with all the
misty suggestions of laces to the utmost extent artists could ask,
for the study of figures. Beauty had the advantage of the fine curves
of full inhalations of the air that circulated along the dusty paths
between the sea and the mountains. It is a puzzle that the artists of
Japan have not better improved the unparalleled privilege of field and
wall sketching, that they enjoy to a degree not equalled within the
permission of the conventional construction of that which is becoming
in the absence of the daylight habilaments of any great and polite
people. The art schools of Japan, out of doors, on the highway, even,
cannot fail to produce atmospheric influences of which the world will
have visions hereafter, and the Latin quarter of Paris will lose its
reputation that attracts and adjusts nature to inspiration.

When we had succeeded, at Kobe, in convincing the authorities that none
of the passengers on the China had picked up the plague at Hongkong,
we put out into the big sea, and shaped our course for the fairer
land so far away, not exactly a straight line, for the convexity of
the earth that includes the water, for the ocean--particularly the
Pacific--is rounded so that the straightest line over its surface is
a curved line, if astronomically mentioned. We struck out on the great
Northern circle, purposing to run as high as the forty-eighth parallel,
almost to our Alutian Islands, and pursued our course in full view,
the bald cliffs of Japan changing their color with the going down of
the sun. When morning came the purple bulk of the bestirring little
empire still reminded us of the lights and shadows of Asia and the
missionary labors of Sir Edwin Arnold, which have a flavor of the
classics and a remembrance of the Scriptures. "Yonder," said the
Captain, "is the famous mountain of Japan, Fugeyana. It is not very
clearly seen, for it is distant. Oh, you are looking too low down and
see only the foot-hills--that is it, away up in the sky!" It was there,
a peak so lofty that it is solitary. We were to have seen it better
later, but as the hours passed there was a dimness that the light of
declining day did not disperse, and the mountain stayed with us in
a ghostly way, and held its own in high communion.

As we were leaving Asian waters there came a demand for typhoons
that the Captain satisfied completely, saying he was not hunting
for them, but the worst one he ever caught was five hundred miles
east of Yokohama. The tourists were rather troubled. The young man
who had been in the wild waltz of the Zealandia did not care for
a typhoon. We had been blessed with weather so balmy and healing,
winds so soft and waves so low, that the ship had settled down steady
as a river steamboat. We pushed on, but the best the China could do
was fourteen knots and a half an hour, near 350 knots a day, with a
consumption of 135 tons of coal in twenty-four hours. So much for not
having been cleaned up so as to give the go of the fine lines. The
China had been in the habit of making sixty miles a day more than of
this trip, burning less than 100 tons of coal. As we climbed in the
ladder of the parallels of latitude, we began to notice a crispness
in the air, and it was lovely to the lungs. It was a pleasure, and
a stimulant surpassing wine, to breathe the north temperate ozone
again, and after a while to catch a frosty savor on the breeze. We
had forgotten, for a few days, that we were not in a reeking state of
perspiration. Ah! we were more than a thousand miles north of Manila,
and that is as far as the coast of Maine to Cuba. The wind followed
us, and at last gained a speed greater than our own; then it shifted
and came down from the northwest. It was the wind that swept from
Siberia, and Kamschatka's grim peninsula pointed us out. The smoke
from our funnels blew black and dense away southeast, and did not
change more than a point or two for a week. The Pacific began to look
like the North Atlantic. There came a "chill out of a cloud" as in
the poetic case of Annabel Lee. There had been, during our tropical
experience, some outcries for the favor of a few chills, but now they
were like the typhoons. When it was found that they might be had we
did not want them. After all, warm weather was not so bad, and the
chills that were in the wind that whistled from Siberia were rather
objectionable. It was singular to call for one, two, three blankets,
and then hunt up overcoats. White trousers disappeared two or three
days after the white coats. Straw hats were called for by the wind. One
white cap on an officer's head responded alone to the swarm of white
caps on the water. The roll of the waves impeded our great northern
circle. We could have made it, but we should have had to roll with
the waves. We got no higher than 45 degrees. We had our two Thursdays,
and thought of the fact that on the mystical meridian 180, where three
days get mixed up in one! The Pacific Ocean, from pole to pole, so free
on the line where the dispute as to the day it is, goes on forever,
that only one small island is subject to the witchery of mathematics,
and the proof in commonplace transactions unmixed with the skies that
whatever may be the matter with the sun--the earth do move, is round,
do roll over, and does not spill off the sea in doing so. At last came
shrill head winds, and as we added fifteen miles an hour to this speed,
the harp strings in the rigging were touched with weird music, and we
filled our lungs consciously and conscientiously with American air,
experiencing one of the old sensations, better than anything new.

It was figured out that we were within a thousand miles of the
continent, and were getting home. When one has been to the Philippines,
what's a thousand miles or two! "Hello, Captain Seabury! It is only
about a thousand miles right ahead to the land. You know what land
it is, don't you? Well, now, you may break the shaft or burst the
boilers, fling the ship to the sperm whales, like the one that was
the only living thing we saw since Japan entered into the American
clouds of the West. We are only a thousand miles away from the solid,
sugary sweet, redolent, ripe American soil, and if there is anything
the matter we do not mind, why we will just take a boat and pull
ashore." But we would have had a hard time if the Captain had taken
us up in the flush of the hilarity that laughed at a thousand miles,
when the breeze brought us the faint first hints that we were almost
home, after a voyage of five thousand leagues. The wind shifted to
the south and increased until it roared, and the waves were as iron
tipped with blue and silver, hurling their salty crests over our
towering ship; and we were in the grasp--


On the Pacific of the terrific
Storm King of the Equinox.


Mr. Longfellow mentioned the storm wind gigantic, that shook the
Atlantic at the time of the equinox--the one that urges the boiling
surges bearing seaweed from the rocks; and all those disappointed
because they had not bounded on the billows of the briny enough for
healthy exercises, were satisfied in the reception by the tremendous
Pacific when nigh the shore, which was once the western boundary,
but is so no more, of that blessed America, of which her sons grow
fonder the farther they roam. God's country, as the boys and girls
call it reverently, when they are sailing the seas, was veiled from
us in a fog that blanketed the deep. For five thousand miles our ship
had been in a remorseless solitude. No voice had come to us; no spark
of intelligence from the universe touched us, save from the stars and
the sun, but at the hour of the night, and the point of the compass,
our navigator had foretold, we should hear the deep-throated horn on
Reyes point--it came to us out of the gloomy abyss--and science had
not failed. Across the trackless waste we had been guided aright,
and there was music the angels might have envied in the hoarse notes
of the fog-horn that welcomed the wanderers home.


CHAPTER XXIV

Our Picture Gallery.

Annotations and Illustrations--Portraits of Heroes of the War in the
Army and Navy, and of the Highest Public Responsibilities--Admirals
and Generals, the President and Cabinet--Photographs of Scenes
and Incidents--The Characteristics of the Filipinos--Their Homes,
Dresses and Peculiarities in Sun Pictures--The Picturesque People of
Our New Possessions.

The portrait of President McKinley is from the photograph that seems to
his friends upon the whole the most striking of his likenesses. That of
the Secretary of State, the Honorable John Hay, is certainly from the
latest and best of his photos. The Postmaster General, the Honorable
Charles Emory Smith, and Secretary Bliss, are presented in excellent
form and the whole Cabinet with unusual faithfulness. Our naval and
military heroes in the war that has introduced the American nation
to the nations of the earth as a belligerent of the first class,
cannot become too familiar to the people, for they are of the stuff
that brightens with friction, and the more it is worn gives higher
proof that it is of both the precious metals in war, gold and steel.

Admiral Dewey, as we have set forth in this volume, is not thus
far fairly dealt with in the pictures that have been taken. He is a
surprise to those who meet him face to face--so far has photography
failed to adequately present him, but the portrait we give is the
best that has been made of him.

Major-General Merritt retains the keen, clear cut face, and the
figure and bearing of an ideal soldier that has characterized him
since, as a youth just from West Point, he entered the army and
won his way by his courage and courtesy, his brilliant conduct and
excellent intelligence, his dashing charges and superb leadership,
to a distinguished position and the affectionate regard of the army
and the people. In the Indian wars, after the bloody struggle of the
States was over, he outrode the Indians on the prairies and was at once
their conqueror and pacificator. He ranks in chivalry with the knights,
and his work at Manila was the perfection of campaigning that produced
conclusive results with a comparatively small shedding of blood.

The likeness of the Archbishop of Manila was presented me by His Grace
at the close of a personal interview, and represents him as he is. The
chapter devoted to him is meant to do him simple justice as a man and
priest. The fact that he bestowed upon me in the inscription with which
he greatly increased the value of his portrait a military dignity to
which I have no title is an expression only of his friendliness. He
frankly stated his pleasure in meeting an American who would convey
to the President of the United States the message he gave me about the
American army, to which he was indebted for security and peace of mind.

General Aguinaldo gave me his photograph, and the flag of the Filipinos
with him in the effort to establish an independent government,
republican in form. One is not always sure of that which happens
in the Philippines, even when one reads about it. I am prepared to
believe that there is much truth in the dispatch saying a majority
of the Congress of the insurgents at Molores favor annexation to the
United States. The whole truth probably is that they would gladly
have this country their Protector at large, supreme in the affairs
international, they to legislate in respect to local affairs. They
need to know, however, that their Congress must become a territorial
legislature, and that the higher law for them is to be the laws of
Congress. The Philippine flag is oriental in cut and color, having
red and blue bars--a white obtuse angle--the base to the staff, and a
yellow moon with fantastic decorations occupying the field. This flag
is one that Admiral Dewey salutes with respect. General Aguinaldo
is giving much of his strength to the production of proclamations,
and his literary labors should be encouraged.

On a September morning two years ago, Dr. Jose Rizal was shot by
a file of soldiers on the Manila Luneta, the favorite outing park,
bordering on the bay. The scene was photographed at the moment the
Doctor stood erect before the firing squad, and the signal from
the officer in command awaited for the discharge of the volley
killing the most intellectual man of his race. Dr. Rizal is known
as the Tagalo Martytr. The Tagalos are of the dominant tribe of
Malays. General Aguinaldo is of this blood, as are the great majority
of the insurgents. The Doctor is more than the martyr of a tribe. He
is the most talented and accomplished man his people and country
has produced. A history of Luzon from his pen is a hulky volume
full of facts. I was not able to procure all of his books. Anyone
in Manila found in possession of one of them during Spanish rule,
would have been taken to the ground selected for human butchery in
the appointed place of festivity, and shot as he was, making a holiday
for the rulers of the islands. He wrote two novels, "Touch Us Not" and
"The Filibusters," the latter a sequel of the former. These are books
using the weapons put into the hand of genius to smite oppressors in
command of the force of arms. The novels are said to be interesting
as novels,--rather sensational in their disregard of the personal
reputation of his foes, the friars, but all along between the lines
there was argument, appeals for the freedom of the Filipinos, for
freedom of speech, conscience and country. There are pamphlets printed
the size of an average playing card, from thirty to forty pages each,
one "Don Rodriguez," and another "The Telephone." These I obtained
in Hongkong from the hands of the niece--daughter of the sister of
the Doctor,--and she presented me also his poem written when in the
shadow of death, of which this volume gives a prose translation. The
poem is the farewell of the author to his friends, his country and the
world. It is given in prose because in that style the spirit of the
poet, indeed the poetry itself, can be rendered with better results,
than by striving to sustain the poetic form. The poem would be regarded
as happy and affecting in the thought that is in it, the images in
which the ideas gleam, the pathos of resignation, the ascendency of
hope, if there were nothing in the attendant circumstances that marked
it with the blood of historic tragedy. This poetry that it would have
been high treason to own in Manila, for it would not have been safe
in any drawer however secret, was treasured by the relatives of the


 


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