Leaving Haleiwa next morning, we deserted the seashore for very different country. The motor ascended steadily toward the southwest, on a fine red road—so red that on ahead the very atmosphere was tinged. Looking back as we climbed, many a lovely surf-picture rewarded the quest of our eyes, white breakers ruffling the creamy beaches, with a sea bluer than the deep blue sky.
At an elevation of about eight hundred feet one strikes the rolling green prairieland of the “Plains,” where the ocean is visible northwest and southeast, on two sides of the island. It is a wonderful plateau, between mountain-walls, swept by the freshening northeast trade—miles upon miles of rich grazing, and hill upon hill ruled with blue-green lines of pineapple growth. At one plantation we stopped to look around at the fabulously promising industry. Mr. Kellogg, the manager, gave an interesting demonstration of how simple is the cultivation of the luscious “pines,” and held stoutly that a woman, unaided, could earn a good living out of a moderate patch. The first “pine” plantation in Hawaii was established in Manoa valley, back of Honolulu, by a Devonshire man, Captain John Kidwell. He started in the early ‘80’s with native shoots from the Kona Coast, later importing old stumps from Florida. In 1892 a hundred thousand plants were growing, and the Hawaiian Fruit and Packing Company was established, the second canning industry in Hawaii—fish-canning having been the only other.
Although like prairie seen from a distance, we discovered that this section of Oahu is serrated by enormous gullies, in character resembling our California barrancas, but of vastly greater proportions. A huge dam has been constructed for the purpose of conserving the water for irrigation.
Something went wrong with one of our machines and we were obliged to telephone from Wahiawa to Honolulu for some parts. Think of this old savage isle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where, from its high interior, one may talk over a wire to a modern city, for modern parts of a “horseless carriage,” to be sent by steam over a steel track! It is stimulating once in a day to ponder the age in which we live.
And on one of these ridges near Wahiawa, not so long ago, there preyed a regular ogre, a robber-chief whose habit it was to lie in wait in a narrow pass, and pounce upon his victims, whom he slew on a large, flat rock, and ate them—the only sure-enough cannibal in Hawaiian history.
June 29.
“Have you been in the Cleghorn Gardens?” is a frequent question to the malihini, and only another way of asking if one has seen the gardens of the late Princess Victoria Kaiulani, lovely hybrid flower of Scottish and Polynesian parentage, daughter of a princess of Hawaii, Miriam Likelike (sister of Liliuokalani and Kalakaua) and the Honorable Archibald Scott Cleghorn. We are too late by twenty years to be welcomed by Likelike, and eight years behind time to hear the merriment of Kaiulani in her father’s house—Kaiulani, who would now be of the same age as Jack London. King Kalakaua died at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on January 20, 1891, and when his remains arrived in Honolulu from the U. S. S. Charleston nine days later, and his sister Liliuokalani was proclaimed his successor, the little Princess Kaiulani, their niece, was appointed heir apparent.
The house, Ainahau, is not visible from the Avenue. Here the bereft consort of Likelike lives in solitary state with his servants, amid the relics of unforgotten days. He receives few visitors, and we felt as if breaking his privacy were an intrusion, even though by invitation. But the commandingly tall, courtly Scot, wide brown eyes smiling benevolently under white hair and beetling brows, paced halfway down his palm-pillared driveway in greeting, and led our little party about the green-shady ways of the wonderland of flowers and vines, lily ponds and arbors, “Where Kaiulani sat,” or sewed, or read, or entertained—all in a forest of high interlacing trees of many varieties, both native and foreign. I was most fascinated by a splendid banyan, a tree which from childhood I had wanted to see. This pleased the owner, whose especial pride it is—“Kaiulani’s banyan”; although he is obliged to trim it unmercifully lest its predatory tentacles capture the entire park.
Into nurseries and vegetable gardens we followed him, and real grass huts that have stood untouched for years. Another pride of Mr. Cleghorn’s is his sixteen varieties of hibiscus, of sizes and shapes and tints that we would hardly have believed possible—magic puffs of exquisite color springing like miracles from slender green stems that are often too slight, and snap under the full blossom-weight. Honolulu holds an annual hibiscus exhibition, in which many leading citizens compete.
The portion of the house once occupied by the vanished Princess is never opened to strangers, nor used in any way. Only her father wanders there, investing the pretty suite of rooms with recollection of her tuneful young presence. For she was little over twenty when she died.