Transcriber’s notes:

1. This text is based on the Internet Archive scan with the identifier “ourhawaiiislands00lond”.

2. Variant spellings and hyphenations are retained throughout; only a few simple printing errors have been remedied.

3. All illustrations are full-page in the original.

4. The book lacks a clear layout in its use of major headings. All headings and thought breaks (horizontal rules) have been retained as printed (centered or right-aligned). Footnotes are gathered at the end of sections.

Young Hawaii

OUR HAWAII

(Islands and Islanders)

BY

CHARMIAN LONDON

(Mrs. Jack London)

AUTHOR OF “THE LOG OF THE SNARK”

“THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON”

New and Revised Edition

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1922

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1917 and 1922,

By CHARMIAN K. LONDON

Set up and Electrotyped. Published December, 1917

New and Revised Edition; February, 1922

FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY

NEW YORK CITY

TO MY HAWAII

FOREWORD

This book was originally part of the jottings I kept during a two years’ cruise of Jack London and myself in the forty-five-foot ketch Snark into the fabulous South Seas, by way of the Hawaiian Islands. The seafaring portion of my notes was published in 1915 as “The Log of the Snark.” The record of five months spent in the Paradise of the Pacific, Hawaii, I made into another book, “Our Hawaii,” issued in 1917.

The present volume is a revision of the other, from which I have eliminated the bulk of personal memoirs, by now incorporated into my “Book of Jack London,” a thoroughgoing biography. I have substituted more detail concerning the Territory of Hawaii, and endeavored to bring my subject up to date. Also, instead of making an independent work out of Jack London’s three articles, written in 1916, entitled, “My Hawaiian Aloha,” I am making them a part of my book, placing them first, because of their peculiar value with regard to vital points of view on Hawaii. These articles, published in 1916 in The Cosmopolitan Magazine, were pronounced by one citizen of Honolulu, eminent under more than two forms of government in the troublous past of the Group, as of a worth to Hawaii not to be estimated in gold and silver.

“They don’t know what they’ve got!” Jack London said of the American public, when, in the Snark, he made Hawaii his first port of call, and threw himself into the manifold beauty and wonder of this territory of Uncle Sam. And “They don’t know what they’ve got,” he repeated to each new unscrolling of its wonder and beauty during those months of enjoyment and study of land and people. On his fourth visit, after the breaking out of the Great War, he amended: “Because they have no other place to go, they are just beginning to realize what they’ve got.”

The knowledge of the average American is woefully scant concerning this islands possession, and woefully he distorts its very name, in conversation and song, into something like Haw-way’-ah. To an adept in the musical language there are fine nuances in the vowelly word; but simple Hah-wy’-ee serves well.

What does the average middle-aged American know of the amazing history of this amazing “native” people who vote as American citizens and sit in the seats of government? The name Hawaii calls to memory vague dots on a map of the Pacific Ocean, bearing a vaguely gastronomic caption that in no wise reminds him of the Earl of Sandwich, Lord of the British Admiralty, and patron of the intrepid discoverer, Captain Cook, whose valiant bones even now rest on the Kona Coast. Savage, remote, alluring, adventurous, are the impressions. Few have grasped the fact that that pure Polynesian, Kamehameha I, the Charlemagne of Hawaii, deserves to rank as one of the most remarkable figures of all time for his revolutionary genius, unaided by outland influences. Dying in 1819, little more than a year before the first missionaries sailed from Boston, he had fought his way to the consolidation under one government of the group of eight islands, ended feudal monarchy, abolished idolatry, and all unknowing made land and inhabitants ripe for Christian civilization and exploitation.

Of the many whom I have questioned, only one ever heard that, even previous to the discovery of gold in California and the starting of our forbears over the Plains by ox-team or across the Isthmus of Panama, early settlers in California were sending their children to the excellent missionary schools of these isles of inconsequential name. Also they imported their wheat from the same “savage” strand.

In this my journal, covering those few months spent a decade ago in Hawaii, concluding with a resume of experiences there in 1915, 1916, 1919 and 1920, I have tried to limn a picture of the charm of the Hawaiian Islander as he was, and of his becoming, together with the enchantment of his lofty isles and their abundant hospitality.

Men will continue to sorrow because circumstances may hold them from exploring the South Pacific; meantime they neglect the romance and loveliness that is close at hand, less than a week’s voyage from the mainland.

Charmian London.

Jack London Ranch,
Glen Ellen, California.
1921.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Young HawaiiFrontispiece
Facing page
Map: Hawaii.[1]
(1) The Peninsula. (2) The Bungalow. (3) The Snark, and the Owner Ashore.[24]
(1) Damon Gardens, Honolulu. (2) Rice Fields on Kauai.[50]
(1) Working Garb in Elysium. (2) Duke Kahanamoku, 1915.[74]
(1) Old Hawaiian. (2) The Sudden Vision. (3) The Mirrored Mountains. (Painting by Hitchcock)[96]
(1) Diamond Head. (2) A Pair of Jacks—Atkinson and London. (3) Ahiumanu.[116]
(1) Princess Likelike (Mrs. Cleghorn). (2) Princess Victoria Kaiulani. (3) Kaiulani at Ainahau. (4) “Kaiulani’s Banyan.”[138]
(1) Landing at Kalaupapa, 1907. (2) The Forbidden Pali Trail, 1907. (3) Coast of Molokai—Federal Leprosarium on Shore. (4) American-Hawaiian. (5) Father Damien’s Grave, 1907.[162]
(1) Hana. (2) The Ruin of Haleakala. (3) Von and Kakina.[184]
(1) Prince Cupid. (2) Original “Monument.” (3) The Prince’s Canoe. (4) At Keauhou, Preparing the Feast. (5) Jack at Cook Monument. (6) King Kalakaua and Robert Louis Stevenson. (7) Kealakekua Bay—Captain Cook Monument at +.[202]
(1) Where the Queen Composed “Aloha Oe.” (2) A Hair-raising Bridge on the Ditch Trail. (3) A Characteristic Mountain Trail in Hawaii.[224]
(1) Iao Valley, Island of Maui. (2) Rainbow Falls, Hawaii.[246]
(1) Alika Lava Flow, 1919. (2) Pit of Halemaumau.[272]
(1) Kahilis at Funeral of Prince David Kawananakoa. (2) Kamehameha the Great. (3) and (4) Sports of Kings.[294]
(1) Jack and Charmian London, Waikiki. (2) A Race Around Oahu. (3) Sailor Jack Aboard the Hawaii. (4) Pa’-u-Rider.[316]
(1) Queen Lydia Kamakaeha Liliuokalani. (2) Governor John Owen Dominis, the Queen’s Consort. (3) A Honolulu Garden—Residence of Queen Emma.[336]