Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

by Charles Nordhoff

Among the licenses the monopoly of opium selling brings the Government $22,248, a prodigious sum when it is considered that there are but 2500 Chinese in the Islands; these being the chief, though not the only consumers. There is, besides, a duty of ten per cent. on the opium when imported, and the merchant must make his profit. I had the curiosity to look a little into the opium consumption. It is said that its use is slowly spreading among the natives, particularly where these are employed with Chinese on the plantations. But the quantity used by the Chinese themselves is prodigious. I was shown one man, a cook, whose wages, fourteen dollars per month, were entirely spent on opium; and whose master supplied the poor creature with clothes, because he had nothing left out of his pay. In other cases the amount spent was nearly as great.

Eight thousand two hundred and sixty-five dollars were also realized for awa licenses. Awa is a root the use of which produces a frightful kind of intoxication, in which the victim falls into stupor, his features are contorted, and he has seizures resembling epilepsy. The body of the habitual awa drinker becomes covered with white scales; and it is said that awa drinking predisposes to leprosy. The manner of preparing awa is peculiarly disgusting. The root is chewed by women, and they spit out well-chewed mouthfuls into a calabash. Here it settles, and the liquor is then drunk. It is said that in old times the chiefs used to get together the prettiest young girls to chew awa for them.

The king receives a salary of $22,500 per annum; the cabinet ministers and the chief-justice receive $5000, and the two associate justices $4000 per annum. These are the largest salaries paid; and in general the public service of the Islands is very cheaply as well as ably and conscientiously conducted. There is an opportunity for retrenchment in abolishing some of the offices; but the saving which could thus be effected would after all not be great. The present Government means, I have been told, to undertake some reforms; these will probably consist in getting the king to turn the crown lands into public lands, to be sold or leased for the benefit of the treasury. They are now leased, and the income is a perquisite of the king, a poor piece of policy, for the chiefs from among whom a sovereign is selected are all wealthy; the present king, for instance, has an income of probably $25,000 per annum from private property of his own. It is also proposed to lessen the number of cabinet ministers; but this will scarcely be done. They are but four in number now, having charge of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and the Interior and Law Departments.

There is a debt of about $300,000 which is entirely held within the kingdom; and the public property is of value sufficient to pay three times this sum. It is probable, however, that, like many other governments, the Hawaiian ministry will have to deal with a deficit when the next Legislature meets; and this will probably bring reform and retrenchment before them. There is not much hope of increasing the revenue from new and still untouched sources, for there are but few such.

The taxable industries and wealth of the Islands can not be very greatly increased. Finding yourself in a tropical country, with a charming and equable climate, and with abundant rains, you are apt to think that, given only a little soil, many things would grow and could be profitably raised. It is one of the surprises of a visitor to the Hawaiian group to discover that in reality very few products succeed here.

Coffee was largely planted, and promised to become a staple of the Islands; but a blight attacked the trees and proved so incurable that the best plantations were dug up and turned into sugar; and the export of coffee, which has been very variable, but which rose to 415,000 pounds in 1870, fell to 47,000 pounds in the next year, and to 39,276 pounds in 1872.

Sea-island cotton would yield excellent crops if it were not that a caterpillar devours the young plants, so that its culture has almost ceased. Only 10,000 pounds were exported in 1872. The orange thrives in so few localities on the Islands that it is not an article of commerce: only two boxes were exported last year, though San Francisco brings this fruit from Otaheite by a voyage of thirty days. A burr worse than any found in California discourages the sheep-raiser in some of the Islands. The cacao-tree has been tried, but a blight kills it. In the garden of Dr. Hillebrandt, near Honolulu, I saw specimens of the cinnamon and allspice trees; but again I was told that the blight attacked them, and did not allow them to prosper. Wheat and other cereals grow and mature, but they are subject to the attacks of weevil, so that they can not be stored or shipped; and if you feed your horse oats or barley in Honolulu, these have been imported from California. Silk-worms have been tried but failed. Rice does well, and its culture is increasing.

Moreover, there is but an inconsiderable local market. A farmer on Maui told me he had sent twenty bags of potatoes to Honolulu, and so overstocked the market that he got back only the price of his bags. Eggs and all other perishable products, for the same reason, vary much in price, and are at times high-priced and hardly attainable. It will not do for the farmer to raise much for sale. The population is not only divided among different and distant islands, but it consists for much the largest part of people who live sufficiently well on taro, sweet-potatoes, fish, pork, and beef—all articles which they raise for themselves, and which they get by labor and against disadvantages which few white farmers would encounter.

For instance, the Puna coast of Hawaii is a district where for thirty miles there is so little fresh water to be found that travelers must bring their own supplies in bottles; and Dr. Coan told me that in former days the people, knowing that he could not drink the brackish stuff which satisfied them, used to collect fresh water for his use when he made the missionary tour, from the drippings of dew in caves. Wells are here out of the question, for there is no soil except a little decomposed lava, and the lava lets through all the water which comes from rains. There are few or no streams to be led down from the mountains. There are no fields, according to our meaning of the word.

Formerly the people in this district were numbered by thousands: even yet there is a considerable population, not unprosperous by any means. Churches and schools are as frequent as in the best part of New England. Yet when I asked a native to show me his sweet-potato patch, he took me to the most curious and barren-looking collection of lava you can imagine, surrounded, too, by a very formidable wall made of lava, and explained to me that by digging holes in the lava where it was a little decayed, carrying a handful of earth to each of these holes, and planting there in a wet season, he got a very satisfactory crop. Not only that, but being desirous of something more than a bare living, this man had planted a little coffee in the same way, and had just sold 1600 pounds, his last crop. He owned a good wooden house; politely gave up his own mats for me to sleep on; possessed a Bible and a number of other works in Hawaiian; after supper called his family together, who squatted on the floor while he read from his Scriptures, and, after singing a hymn, knelt in family prayers; and finally spent half an hour before going to bed in looking over his newspaper. This man, thoroughly respectable, of good repute, hospitable, comfortable in every way so far as I could see, lived, and lived well, on twenty or thirty acres of lava, of which not even a Vermonter would have given ten cents for a thousand acres; and which was worthless to any one except a native Hawaiian.