[begin page 475]
Bound
Ⓐ for Hawaii, (a hundred and fifty miles distant,)Ⓐ to visit the great volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish
thatⒶ island above the remainder of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain Saturday
afternoon, in the good schooner BoomerangⒺ.
The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide as one. She
was so small
(though she was larger than the majority of the inter-island coasters) that when I
stood on her deck I felt but little smaller than the
Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had a man-of-war under him. I could reach
the water when she lay over under a strong breeze.
When the captainⒶ and my comrade (a Mr. Billings)Ⓔ,Ⓐ myself and four other personsⒶ were all assembled on the little after portion of the deck which is sacred to the
cabin passengers, it was full—there was
not room for any more quality folks. Another section of the deck, twice as large as
ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their
customary dogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other luxuries
and baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set
sail the natives all layⒶ down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen, and smoked, conversed, andⒶ spit on each other, and were truly sociable.
The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse, and as dark as
a vault. It
had two coffins on each side—I mean two bunksⒶ. A small table, capable of accommodating three persons at dinner, stood against the
forward bulkhead, and over it hung the
dingiest whale-oil lantern that ever peopled the obscurity of a dungeon with ghostlyⒶ shapes. The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One might swing a cat in it,
perhaps, but not a long catⒶ. The hold forward of the bulkhead had but little freight in it, and from morning
till night a portlyⒶ old rooster, with a voice like
Balaam’sⒶ
[begin page 476] assⒺ, and the same disposition to use it, strutted
up and down in that part of the vessel and crowed. He usually took dinner at sixⒶ o’clock, and then, after an hour devoted to meditation, he mounted a barrel and crowed
a good part of the night. He got
hoarser and hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any personal consideration
to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors
in defiance of threatened diphtheria.
Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a source of genuine
aggravation
and annoyanceⒶ. It was worse than useless to shout at him or apply offensive epithets to him—he
only took these things for applause, and
strained himself to make more noise. Occasionally, during the day, I threw potatoes
at him through an aperture in the bulkhead, but he
only dodgedⒶ and went on crowing.
The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp swinging to the
rolling of
the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of bilge water, I felt something gallop
over me. I turned
out promptlyⒶ. However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently something galloped
over me once more. I knew it was not a
rat this time, and I thought it might be a centipede, because the captainⒶ had killed one on deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at the pillow
showed me a repulsive sentinel perched
upon each end of it—cockroaches as large as peach leaves—fellows with long, quivering
antennæ and fiery, malignant
eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied
about something. I had often heard that these
reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors’ toe nails down to the quick,
and I would not get in the bunk any
more. I layⒶ down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession
of cockroaches arrived and camped in my
hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of
fleas were throwing double summersetsⒶ about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they struck.
I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got
up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
[begin page 477] The above is not overdrawn; it
isⒶ a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life. There is no such thing as keeping
a vessel in elegant conditionⒶ, when she carries molasses and Kanakas.
ItⒶ was compensation for myⒶ sufferings to come unexpectedly upon so beautiful a scene as met my eye—to step suddenly
out of the sepulchral gloom of
the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon—in the centreⒶ, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquidsilver—Ⓐ to see the broad sails straining in the gale, the ship heeledⒶ over on her side, the angry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets
of spray dashing high over her bows and
raining upon her decks; to brace myself and hang fast to the first object that presented
itself, with hat jammed down and coat tails
whipping in the breeze, and feel that exhilaration that thrills in one’s hair and
quivers down his back-boneⒶ when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through
the wavesⒶ at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no obscurity there. All was
brightness, every object was vividly
defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; every
puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead;
every object, however minute, showed sharp and distinct in its every [begin page 478] outline; and the shadow of the broad
mainsail lay black as a pall upon the deck, leaving
Billings’sⒶ white upturned faceⒺ glorified and his body in a total eclipse.Ⓐ
Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its high mountains were
in
view—Mauna Loa and
HualalaiⒶ. The latter is an imposing peak, but being only ten thousand feet high is seldom
mentioned or heard of. Mauna Loa is said to be sixteenⒶ thousand feet highⒺ. The rays of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its
summit like a claw, looked refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we were
in. One could stand on that mountain (wrapped up
in blankets and furs to keep warm), and while he nibbled a snow-ball or an icicle
to quench his thirst he could look down the long
sweep of its sides and see spots where plants are growing that grow only where the
bitter cold of winterⒶ prevails; lower down he could see sections devoted to productions that thrive in
the temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of
the mountain he could see the home of the tufted cocoa palms and other species of
vegetation that grow only in the sultry atmosphere of
eternal summerⒶ. He could see all the climes of the world at a single glance of the eye, and that
glance would only pass over a distance of
four or fiveⒶ miles as the bird flies!
By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, designing
to ride horseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, and rejoin
the vessel at a point some leagues distantⒺ. This journey is well worth taking. The trail passesⒶ along on high ground—say a thousand feet above sea level—and usually about a mile
distant from the ocean, which is
always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself buried in the forest in
the midst of a rank, tropical vegetation and a dense
growth of trees, whose great boughsⒶ overarch the road and shut out sun and sea and everything, and leave you in a dim,
shady tunnel, haunted with invisible singing
birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant to ride occasionally
in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the
everchanging panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many tints, its
softened lights and shadows, its billowyⒶ undulations sweeping gently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also,
at intervals, to leave the sultry sun and
pass into the cool, green depths of this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections
under the inspiration of its brooding twilight
and its whispering foliage.
[begin page 479]
[begin page 480]
We rode through one orange
grove that had ten thousand trees in it! They were all laden with fruit.Ⓔ
Ⓐ
AtⒶ one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavorⒶ. This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands. It takes
a sort of almond shape, and is small and
bitter. It needs frost, they say, and perhaps it does; if this be so, it will have
a good opportunity to go on needing it, as it will
not be likely to get it. The trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of came
had been planted and replanted
sixteen times
Ⓐ, and to this treatment the proprietor of the orchard attributed his success.
We passed several sugar plantations—new ones and not
very extensive. The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [Note.—The first crop is called
“plant cane;” subsequent crops which spring from the original roots, without replanting,Ⓐ are called “rattoons.”] Almost everywhere on the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures
in twelve months, both
rattoons and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels, no
doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it
until about four months afterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground
is
two tons
Ⓐ of sugar, they say. This is only a moderate yield for these islands, but would be
astoundingⒶ for Louisiana and most other sugar growing countries. The plantations in Kona being
on pretty high ground—up among the
light and frequent rains—no irrigation whatever is required.Ⓔ
Ⓔ
Ⓐ
Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 69
Ⓐ
Dogs . . . CHAPTER 69 (C) ●
Dogs . . . CHAPTER LXIX. (A)
not in (SU)
Ⓐ
Bound
(A) ●
indented from right
Honolulu,
July, 1866.
centered
At Sea Again. [¶]
Bound (SU)
Ⓐ
(a hundred and fifty miles distant,) (A) ●
not in
(SU)
Ⓐ
captain (C) ●
Captain (SU)
Ⓐ
my comrade (a Mr. Billings), (A) ●
Brown and (SU)
Ⓐ
persons (A) ●
gentlemen and the wheelsman (SU)
Ⓐ
smoked, conversed, and (A) ●
smoked and conversed and captured vermin and eat them, (SU)
Ⓐ
bunks (A) ●
bunks—though Mr. Brown, with that spirit of irreverence which is so sad a feature
of his nature, preferred to call
the bunk he was allotted his shelf (SU)
Ⓐ
ghostly (A) ●
grim and ghostly (SU)
Ⓐ
not a long cat (A) ●
then it would be fatal to the cat to do it (SU)
Ⓐ
portly (A) ●
villainous (SU)
Ⓐ
Balaam’s (C) ●
Baalam’s (SU A)
Ⓐ
annoyance (A) ●
annoyance to me (SU)
Ⓐ
only dodged (A) ●
simply dodged them (SU)
Ⓐ
I turned out promptly (A) ●
Lazarus did not come out of his sepulchre with a more cheerful alacrity than I did
out of mine (SU)
Ⓐ
captain (C) ●
Captain (SU)
Ⓐ
summersets (SU) ●
somersaults (A)
Ⓐ
overdrawn; it is (A) ●
an attempt to be spicy; it is simply an attempt to give (SU)
Ⓐ
condition (A) ●
condition, I think (SU)
Ⓐ
It (A) ●
centered
“Roll On, Silver
Moon.” [¶] It (SU)
Ⓐ
centre (A) ●
center (SU)
Ⓐ
silver— (A) ●
silver, (SU)
Ⓐ
heeled (C) ●
keeled (SU A)
Ⓐ
back-bone (C) ●
back bone (SU)
Ⓐ
waves (A) ●
billows (SU)
Ⓐ
Billings’s (A) ●
Brown’s (SU)
Ⓐ
eclipse. (A) ●
eclipse.
centered
I Endeavor to
Entertain the Seasick Man. [¶] I turned to look down upon the sparkling animalculæ of the South Seas and watch
the
train of jeweled fire they made in the wake of the vessel. I——[¶] “Oh, me!” [¶] “What
is
the matter, Brown?” [¶] “Oh, me!” [¶] “You said that before, Brown. Such
tautology——” [¶] “Tautology be hanged! This is no time to talk to a man about tautology
when he is
sick—so sick—oh, my! and has vomited up his heart and—ah, me—oh hand me that soup
dish, and don’t
stand there hanging to that bulkhead looking like a fool!” [¶] I handed him the absurd
tin shaving-pot, called
“berth-pan,” which they hang by a hook to the edge of a berth for the use of distressed
landsmen with unsettled
stomachs, but all the sufferer’s efforts were fruitless—his tortured stomach refused
to yield up its cargo. [¶] I
do not often pity this bitter enemy to sentiment—he would not thank me for it, anyhow—but
now I did pity him; and I
pitied him from the bottom of my heart. Any man, with any feeling, must have been
touched to see him in such misery. I did not try to
help him—indeed I did not even think of so unpromising a thing—but I sat down by him
to talk to him and so cause the
tedious hours to pass less wearily, if possible. I talked to him for some time, but
strangely enough, pathetic narratives did not move
his emotions, eloquent declamation did not inspirit him, and the most humorous anecdotes
failed to make him even smile. He seemed as
distressed and restless, at intervals—albeit the rule of his present case was to seem
to look like an allegory of unconditional
surrender—hopeless, helpless and indifferent—he seemed as distressed and restless
as if my conversation and my anecdotes
were irksome to him. It was because of this that at last I dropped into poetry. I
said I had been writing a poem—or rather,
been paraphrasing a passage in Shakspeare—a passage full of wisdom, which I thought
I might remember easier if I reduced it to
rhyme—hoped it would be pleasant to him—said I had taken but few liberties with the
original; had preserved its brevity
and terseness, its language as nearly as possible, and its ideas in their regular
sequence—and proceeded to read it to him, as
follows:
PALONIUS’ ADVICE TO HIS SON—
PARAPHRASED FROM HAMLET.
Beware of the spoken word! Be wise;
Bury thy thoughts in thy breast;
Nor let thoughts that are unnatural
Be ever in acts expressed.
Be thou courteous and kindly toward all—Be
familiar and vulgar with none;
But the friends thou hast proved in thy need,
Hold thou fast till life’s mission is done!
Shake not thy faith by confiding
In every new-begot friend.
Beware thou of quarrels—but, in them,
Fight them out to the bitter end.
Give thine ear unto all that would seek it,
But to few thy voice impart;
Receive and consider all censure,
But thy judgment seal in thy heart.
Let thy habit be ever as costly
As thy purse is able to span;
Never gaudy, but rich—for the raiment
Full often proclaimeth the man.
Neither borrow nor lend—oft a loan
Both loseth itself and a friend,
And to borrow relaxeth the thrift
Whereby husbandry gaineth its end.
But lo! above all set this law:
Unto thyself be thou true!
Then never toward any canst thou
The deed of a false heart do.
[¶] As I finished, Brown’s stomach cast up its contents, and in a minute or two he
felt entirely relieved
and comfortable. He then said that the anecdotes and the eloquence were “no good,”
but if he got seasick again he would
like some more poetry.
centered
The Zones of the
Earth Concentrated.
(SU)
Ⓐ
Hualalai (SU) ●
Hualaiai (A)
Ⓐ
said to be sixteen (A) ●
fourteen (SU)
Ⓐ
winter (C) ●
Winter (SU)
Ⓐ
summer (C) ●
Summer (A)
Summers (SU)
Ⓐ
four or five (A) ●
eight or ten (SU)
Ⓐ
flies! . . . passes (A) ●
flies.
centered
The Refuge for the
Weary. [¶] We landed at Kailua (pronounced Ki-loo-ah), a little collection of native grass
houses reposing under tall
cocoanut trees—the sleepiest, quietest, Sundayest looking place you can imagine. Ye
weary ones that are sick of the labor and
care, and the bewildering turmoil of the great world, and sigh for a land where ye
may fold your tired hands and slumber your lives
peacefully away, pack up your carpet-sacks and go to Kailua! A week there ought to
cure the saddest of you all. [¶] An old ruin
of lava-block walls down by the sea was pointed out as a fort built by John Adams
for Kamehameha I, and mounted with heavy
guns—some of them 32-pounders—by the same sagacious Englishman. I was told the fort
was dismantled a few years ago, and
the guns sold in San Francisco for old iron—which was very improbable. I was told
that an adjacent ruin was old
Kamehameha’s sleeping-house; another, his eating-house; another, his god’s house;
another, his wife’s
eating-house—for by the ancient
tabu system, it was death for man and woman to eat together. Every
married man’s premises comprised five or six houses. This was the law of the land.
It was this custom, no doubt, which has left
every pleasant valley in these islands marked with the ruins of numerous house inclosures,
and given strangers the impression that the
population must have been vast before those houses were deserted; but the argument
loses much of its force when you come to consider
that the houses absolutely necessary for half a dozen married men were sufficient
in themselves to form one of the deserted
“villages” so frequently pointed out to the “Californian” (to the natives all whites
are
haoles—how-ries—that is, strangers, or, more properly, foreigners; and to the white residents
all white new comers
are “Californians”—the term is used more for convenience that anything else). [¶]
I was told, also, that
Kailua was old Kamehameha’s favorite place of residence, and that it was always a
favorite place of resort with his successors.
Very well, if Kailua suits these Kings—all right. Every man to his taste; but, as
Brown observed in this connection,
“You’ll excuse
me.”
centered
Stewed Chicken—Miraculous Bread. [¶] I was told a good many other things concerning
Kailua—not one of which interested me in the least. I was weary and worn with the
plunging of the Boomerang in the always
stormy passages between the islands; I was tired of hanging on by teeth and toe-
| nails; and, above all, I was tired of stewed
chicken. All I wanted was an hour’s rest on a foundation that would let me stand up
straight without running any
risk—but no information; I wanted something to eat that was not stewed chicken—I didn’t
care what—but no
information. I took no notes, and had no inclination to take any. [¶] Now, the foregoing
is nothing but the feverish irritability
of a short, rough sea-voyage coming to the surface—a voyage so short that it affords
no time for you to tone down and grow
quiet and reconciled, and get your stomach in order, and the bad taste out of your
mouth, and the unhealthy coating off your tongue. I
snarled at the old rooster and the cockroaches and the national stewed chicken all
the time—not because these troubles could be
removed, but only because it was a sanitary necessity to snarl at something or perish.
One’s salt-water spleen must be growled
out of the system—there is no other relief. I pined—I longed—I yearned to growl at
the Captain himself, but there
was no opening. The man had had such passengers before, I suppose, and knew how to
handle them, and so he was polite and pains-taking
and accommodating—and most exasperatingly patient and even-tempered. So I said to
myself “I will take it out of your old
schooner, anyhow; I will blackguard the Boomerang in the public prints, to pay for
your shameless good-nature when your passengers are
peevish and actually need somebody to growl at for very relief!” [¶] But now that
I am restored by the land breeze, I
wonder at my ingratitude; for no man ever treated me better than Captain Kangaroo
did on board his ship. As for the stewed
chicken—that last and meanest substitute for something to eat—that soothing rubbish
for toothless infants—that
diet for cholera patients in the rice-water stage—it was of course about the best
food we could have at sea, and so I only
abused it because I hated it as I do sardines or tomatoes, and because it was stewed
chicken, and because it was such a relief to
abuse somebody or something. But Kangaroo—I never abused Captain Kangaroo. I hope
I have a better heart than to abuse a man
who, with the kindest and most generous and unselfish motive in the world, went into
the galley, and with his own hands baked for me
the worst piece of bread I ever ate in my life. His motive was good, his desire to
help me was sincere, but his execution was
damnable. You see, I was not sick, but nothing would taste good to me; the Kanaka
cook’s bread was particularly unpalatable; he
was a new hand—the regular cook being sick and helpless below—and Captain Kangaroo,
in the genuine goodness of his
heart, felt for me in my distress and went down and made that most infernal bread.
I ate one of those rolls—I would have eaten
it if it had killed me—and said to myself: “It is on my stomach; ’tis well; if it
were on my conscience, life
would be a burden to me.” I carried one up to Brown and he ate a piece, but declined
to experiment further. I insisted, but he
said no, he didn’t want any more ballast. When the good deeds of men are judged in
the Great Day that is to bring bliss or
eternal woe unto us all, the charity that was in Captain Kangaroo’s heart will be
remembered and rewarded, albeit his bread
will have been forgotten for ages.
centered
The
Famous Orange and Coffee Region. [¶] It was only about fifteen miles from Kailua to Kealakekua Bay, either by sea
or land,
but by the former route there was a point to be weathered where the ship would be
the sport of contrary winds for hours, and she would
probably occupy the entire day in making the trip, whereas we could do it on horseback
in a little while and have the cheering benefit
of a respite from the discomforts we had been experiencing on the vessel. We hired
horses from the Kanakas, and miserable affairs they
were, too. They had lived on meditation all their lives, no doubt, for Kailua is fruitful
in nothing else. I will mention, in this
place, that horses are plenty everywhere in the Sandwich Islands—no Kanaka is without
one or more—but when you travel
from one island to another, it is necessary to take your own saddle and bridle, for
these articles are scarce. It is singular baggage
for a sea voyage, but it will not do to go without it. [¶] The ride through the district
of Kona to Kealakekua Bay took us
through the famous coffee and orange section. I think the Kona coffee has a richer
flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and
call it by what name you please. At one time it was cultivated quite extensively,
and promised to become one of the great staples of
Hawaiian commerce; but the heaviest crop ever raised was almost entirely destroyed
by a blight, and this, together with heavy American
customs duties, had the effect of suddenly checking enterprise in this direction.
For several years the coffee-growers fought the
blight with all manner of cures and preventives, but with small success, and at length
some of the less persevering abandoned
coffee-growing altogether and turned their attention to more encouraging pursuits.
The coffee interest has not yet recovered its
former importance, but is improving slowly. The exportation of this article last year
was over 263,000 pounds, and it is expected that
the present year’s yield will be much greater. Contrast the progress of the coffee
interest with that of sugar, and the
demoralizing effects of the blight upon the former will be more readily seen.
exportations.
|
1852. |
1865. |
Coffee, pounds . . . . |
117,000 |
263,000 |
Sugar, pounds . . . . . |
730,000 |
15,318,097 |
[¶] Thus the sugar yield of last year was more than twenty times what it was in 1852,
while the coffee yield has
scarcely more than doubled. [¶] The coffee plantations we encountered in our short
journey looked well, and we were told that the
crop was unusually promising. [¶] There are no finer oranges in the world than those
produced in the district of Kona; when new
and fresh they are delicious. The principal market for them is California, but of
course they lose much of their excellence by so long
a voyage. About 500,000 oranges were exported last year against 15,000 in 1852. The
orange culture is safe and sure, and is being more
and more extensively engaged in every year. We passed one orchard that contained ten
thousand orange trees. [¶] There are many
species of beautiful trees in Kona—noble forests of them—and we had numberless opportunities
of contrasting the orange
with them. The verdict rested with the orange. Among the varied and handsome foliage
of the Ko, Koa, Kukui, bread-
| fruit,
mango, guava, peach, citron, ohia and other fine trees, its dark, rich green cone
was sure to arrest the eye and
compel constant exclamations of admiration. So dark a green is its foliage, that at
a distance of a quarter of a mile the orange tree
looks almost black.
centered
Woodland Scenery.
[¶] The ride from Kailua to Kealakekua Bay is worth taking. It passes (SU)
Ⓐ
billowy (A) ●
hillowy (SU)
Ⓐ
We . . . fruit. (A) ●
no ¶
The jaunt through Kona
will always be to me a happy memory.
indented from right MARK
TWAIN. (SU)
Ⓐ
At (A) ●
indented from right
Kona
(Sandwich Islands), July, 1866.
centered
Still in
Kona—Concerning Matters and Things. [¶] At (SU)
Ⓐ
flavor (A) ●
flavor while on our horseback ride through Kona (SU)
Ⓐ
sixteen times
(A) ●
over and over again (SU)
Ⓐ
replanting, (A) ●
replanting
⁁
(SU)
Ⓐ
two tons
(A) ●
two tons (SU)
Ⓐ
astounding (A) ●
extraordinary (SU)
Ⓐ
required. (A) ●
required. [¶] In Central Kona there is but little idle cane land now, but there is
a good deal in North and South
Kona. There are thousands of acres of cane land unoccupied on the island of Hawaii,
and the prices asked for it range from one dollar
to a hundred and fifty an acre. It is owned by common natives, and is lying “out of
doors.” They make no use of it
whatever, and yet, here lately, they seem disinclined to either lease or sell it.
I was frequently told this. In this connection it
may not be out of place to insert an extract from a book of Hawaiian travels recently
published by a visiting minister of the gospel:
[¶] “Well, now,
I wouldn’t, if I was you.” [¶] “Brown, I
wish you wouldn’t look over my shoulder when I am writing; and I wish you would indulge
yourself in some
little respite from my affairs and interest yourself in your own business sometimes.”
[¶] “Well, I don’t
care. I’m disgusted with these mush-and-milk preacher travels, and I wouldn’t make
an extract from one of them. Father
Damon has got stacks of books shoemakered up by them pious bushwhackers from America,
and they’re the flattest
reading—they are sicker than the smart things children say in the newspapers. Every
preacher that gets lazy comes to the
Sandwich Islands to ‘recruit his health,’ and then he goes back home and writes a
book. And he puts in a lot of history,
and some legends, and some manners and customs, and dead loads of praise of the missionaries
for civilizing and Christianizing the
natives, and says in considerable chapters how grateful the savage ought to be; and
when there is a chapter to be filled out, and they
haven’t got anything to fill it out with, they shovel in a lot of Scripture—now
don’t
they? You just look at Rev. Cheever’s book and Anderson’s—and when they come to the
volcano, or any sort of heavy
scenery, and it is too much bother to describe it, they shovel in another lot of Scripture,
and wind up with ‘Lo! what God hath
wrought!’ Confound their lazy melts! Now,
I wouldn’t make extracts out of no such bosh.”
[¶] “Mr. Brown, I brought you with me on this voyage merely because a newspaper correspondent
should travel in some degree
of state, and so command the respect of strangers; I did not expect you to assist
me in my literary labors with your crude ideas. You
may desist from further straining your intellect for the present, Mr. Brown, and proceed
to the nearest depot and replenish the
correspondent fountain of inspiration.” [¶] “Fountain dry now, of course. Confound
me if I ever chance an opinion
but I’ve got to trot down to the soda factory and fill up that cursed jug again. It
seems to me that you need more
inspiration——” [¶] “Good afternoon, Brown.” [¶] The extract I was speaking of reads
as
follows: [¶] “We were in North Kona
The arable uplands in both the Konas are owned chiefly by
foreigners. Indeed, the best of the lands on all the islands appear to be fast going
into foreign hands; and one of the allegations
made to me by a foreign resident against the missionaries was that their influence
was against such a transfer. The Rev. Mr.
—— told me, however, that to prevent the lands immediately about him, once owned by
the admirable Kapiolani, from going
to strangers he knew not who, he had felt obliged to invest his own private funds
in them.” [¶] We naturally swell with
admiration when we contemplate a sacrifice like this. But while I read the generous
last words of that extract, it fills me with
inexpressible satisfaction to know that the Rev. Mr. —— had his reward. He paid fifteen
hundred dollars for one of those
pieces of land; he did not have to keep it long; without sticking a spade into it
he sold it to a foreigner for ten thousand dollars
in gold. Yet there be those among us who fear to trust the precious promise, “Cast
thy bread upon the waters and it shall
return unto thee after many days.” [¶] I have since been told that the original $1,500
belonged to a ward of the
missionary, and that inasmuch as the latter was investing it with the main view to
doing his charge the best service in his power, and
doubtless would not have felt at liberty to so invest it merely to protect the poor
natives, his glorification in the book was not
particularly gratifying to him. The other missionaries smile at the idea of their
tribe “investing their own private
funds” in this free and easy, this gay and affluent way—buying fifteen hundred dollars
worth of land at a dash (salary
$400 a year), and merely to do a trifling favor to some savage neighbor. (SU)
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 69
Ⓔ
[begin page 726]
Bound . . . fruit.] Mark Twain based this portion of the text on his
letter in the Sacramento
Union of 18 August 1866, revising it for inclusion in
Roughing
It (
SLC 1866bb).
Ⓔ we sailed from Honolulu
. . . in the good schooner Boomerang] Clemens sailed for the island of Hawaii on Saturday,
26 May, aboard the
schooner
Emeline, and returned to Honolulu three weeks later. The
Roughing It account
somewhat skews the chronology of Clemens’s Sandwich Islands sojourn.
His attendance at the
funeral of Princess Victoria on 30 June, described in chapter 68, actually followed
his trip to Hawaii; and his trip to Maui,
mentioned briefly in chapters 76 and 77, in fact preceded the Hawaii trip (
N&J1
, 101; Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “Departures,” 2 June 66, 2;
“Passengers,” 16 June 66, 2).
Ⓔ the captain and my
comrade (a Mr. Billings)] The
Emeline’s skipper was Captain Crane, not further identified. Mark
Twain altered his traveling companion’s name from “Brown” to “Billings” when revising
his 18 August
Union letter; see the note at 447.31 (“Departures,” Honolulu
Pacific Commercial
Advertiser, 2 June 66, 2;
SLC 1866bb,
1866gg).
Ⓔ Balaam’s
ass] Numbers 22:21–33.
Ⓔ Billings’s white upturned
face] In revising his 18 August
Union letter Mark Twain deleted a passage beginning here in which he
made clear that Brown/Billings was lying seasick on the deck (
SLC 1866bb).
Ⓔ Hualalai
. . . being only ten thousand feet high . . . Mauna Loa is said to be sixteen thousand
feet high]
Modern measurements give elevations of 8,276 and 13,680 feet, respectively, for Hualalai
and Mauna Loa. In his 18 August
Union letter, Mark Twain gave Mauna Loa’s elevation more accurately as 14,000 feet, then
apparently revised
the figure upward for
Roughing It.
The sources for his rather high figures
are not known for certain, but two possibilities have been identified. James D. Dana
of the 1838–42 United States Exploring
Expedition (see the note at 523.30–31) estimated the elevation of Hualalai as “not
far from 10,000 feet” (
Dana, 156), a figure echoed by Rufus Anderson in
The Hawaiian Islands: Their
Progress and Condition under Missionary Labors, a book that Clemens is known to have consulted (he quoted a passage from it,
without specific attribution, in his
Union letter published on 24 August). Captain James King, in the final
volume of Cook’s
Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784), reported Mauna Loa to be “at least 16,020
feet high” (
Cook and King, 3:103;
SLC 1866bb–cc;
Rufus Anderson, 128).
Ⓔ we . . .
went ashore at Kailua, designing to . . . rejoin the vessel at a point some leagues
distant] On 28 May Clemens,
apparently accompanied by another passenger on the
Emeline, went ashore at the
[begin page 727] village of Kailua, in the Kona district on the west shore of Hawaii.
They rode overland on
horseback about fifteen miles to Kealakekua Bay, south of Kailua, reboarding the
Emeline there around midnight.
The
Roughing It account of this journey omits many details found in Mark Twain’s
Union letters published on 18, 24, and 30 August (
MTH
, 62;
SLC 1866bb–cc
,
1866ee).
Ⓔ At . . .
required.] Mark Twain based this portion of the text on the first half of his letter
in the Sacramento
Union of 24 August 1866, revising it for inclusion in
Roughing It; he reserved the second half for use in
chapter 71 (
SLC 1866cc; see the note at 489.1–491.24).
Ⓔ We passed several
sugar plantations . . . no irrigation whatever is required] Mark Twain confined his
remarks in
Roughing It on the subject of the islands’ sugar production to this paragraph.
He made
no use of his
Union letter published on 26 September, which—possibly at the behest of the
Union—was largely devoted to the subject. Many years later he asserted, “Circumstance and
the
Sacramento
Union sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six months, to write up sugar. I did
it; and threw
in a good deal of extraneous matter that hadn’t anything to do with sugar” (
SLC
1910,
1866hh).