Jack finds endless source of amusement in his skipper and the irrepressible Schwank, who, it seems, once sailed together. The experience evidently has not endeared one to the other, and all our gravity is taxed when the pair display their divergent ways of showing dislike and contempt. Rosehill is a man of few words; but words are not needed when Schwank’s name is mentioned. The sound of that raucous proper noun curdles the old sailor’s sober and asymmetrical features. On the other hand, Schwank is voluble and expressive. Never in his wildest tales of that ill-starred voyage with Rosehill has he hinted that he was ship’s cook under Rosehill. When he recounts how the vessel was wrecked, one would conclude that Schwank had been in command instead of the other, and, in giving this intentional twist, he loses sight of the fact that it looks much as if he, Schwank, must be responsible for the loss. “I told Rosehill to brace up,” he will roar pompously, throwing a mighty chest. He always appears about to rise triumphant from the solid earth. Nor has he lost all of his piratical tendencies. From his acre of fruitful soil, he sells produce at extortionate prices, and is clever enough to vend the same through his most beautiful offspring. When Maria-of-the-Seraph-Smile or Ysabel-of-the-Divine-Gaze stands before me in the very artistry of colorful and revealing tatters, proffering a scraggly pineapple or an abortive tomato, valued at Israelitic sums, they are not to be gainsaid. The pleasure is mine to be robbed.
Pearl Lochs, June 7.
When you come to Hawaii, do not fail to visit one of the big sugar plantations, to see the working of this foremost industry of the Territory, for nowhere in the world has it been brought to such perfection. Mr. Ford had arranged a trip to the Ewa Plantation, a short distance by rail southwest of the Lochs. With him came a young South African millionaire, who was much more bent upon discussing socialism with Jack London than inspecting sugar mills—although in the varied nationalities among the laborers he might find a rare mine of sociological data.
The railroad traverses a level of country dotted with pretty villages peopled by imported human breeds. In my mind’s eye lingers one wee hamlet like a jewel in the sun—a cluster of little Portuguese shacks covered with brilliant flowering vines and hedged with scarlet hibiscus, all imaged in an unrippled stream that brimmed even with its green banks. Not for nothing were these sunny-blooded children of Portugal blessed with wide and beautiful eyes; for they can see no virtue in a dwelling that is not surrounded and entwined with living color. No matter how squalid their circumstance, they do not rest until growing things begin to weave a covering of beauty. The tourist could not please himself more than by hunting out these adoptive spots of color in Hawaii.
Our station was in the center of the Plantation, which embraces about 5,000 acres. It was the far-sighted sire of Princess Kawananakoa, Mr. Campbell, who only ten years ago bought this property for one dollar an acre. Last year its output of sugar was over 29,000 tons. One alone of the underground pumping plants which we wandered through, cost $180,000; and every day 70,000,000 gallons of water are pumped on this Plantation.
The manager devoted his day to our party. It must be more or less of a satisfaction, however, to a man of his patent capabilities, lord over the complicated affairs of such a project and its horde of workers, to display his achievement to men who can comprehend its enormousness and possibilities.
In comfortable chairs on a flat car drawn by a small locomotive, over a network of tracks that intersect the property, we rode from point to point, meanwhile simmering gently in the moist hot air thick with odor of growing cane, or, near the huge mill, of sugar in the making. The land reminded us of Southern California in springtime, with tree-arbored roads and flower-drifted banks and fine irrigating ditches. We want to spend a day on horseback at Ewa, in the lanes and byways with their lovely vistas. Judging from Mr. Renton’s own leisurely enjoyment of the occasion and frequent halting of the car that we might gather wildflowers and wild red tomatoes the size of cranberries, one would not have dreamed how busy a man he is.
It is hard, in the peaceful heart of this agricultural prospect, to realize that not long ago it was a place dark with pain and blood and terror. For here, a hundred and eleven years ago, Kamehameha the Great dedicated a temple, heiau, with human sacrifices, preparatory to sailing for Kauai on conquest bent.
Sugar cane is classified as a “giant perennial grass,” but, unlike most members of the grass family, has solid stems, and grows from eight to twenty feet high. The origin of cane in these islands is unknown though it is thought to have been introduced from the South Sea Islands by early native navigators in their exploring canoes. It was used as an article of diet at the time white men first set foot in Hawaii, but not made into sugar until about 1828; and less than a decade afterward the first exportation of sugar was shipped. Primitive stone or wooden rollers pressed out the sweet juice, which was boiled in crude iron vessels. Present-day processes have been brought to a high state of scientific excellence, and probably no plant in the world has been so exhaustively exploited. The red lava soil, decomposed through the ages, has been found through experimentation to be the most productive, and the irrigation scheme of one of these large plantations, with its artesian wells and mountain reservoirs whence water is carried great distances, is a colossal feat of engineering.
A man once wrote that agriculture in the tropics consisted of not hindering the growth of things. But the raising and converting into sugar of these vast areas of rustling sugar-in-the-stem is not such smooth luck, for either employer or employed. He who would manufacture sugar has many formidable if infinitesimal foes to success, among which are named the nimble leaf hopper, the cane borer, the leaf roller, the mole cricket, the mealy bug, the cypress girdler, and Fisher’s rose beetle, known locally as the Olinda bug. To discover the natural enemies of these pests requires an able corps of entomologists seeking over the face of the globe, as well as working sedulously in the Experiment Station in Honolulu.