High, pretty hills rise behind the metropolis to the shore on the other side, and the view of the city obtained from some of these, stretching out at the base and beyond to the turquoise blue sea, with light green fields of sugar-cane to the right extending to Pearl Harbor, and Diamond Head to the left; beautiful verdure and attractive homes in between, together with the seductiveness of the balmy air and tropical growth, holds one in Hawaii when better success might be achieved in a more rugged clime.
Among the attractions of Honolulu is its aquarium. Some of the beautifully colored fish swimming about the glass tanks look more like pretty birds than fish. There is also a good museum; a beach, where natives, standing on boards, disport themselves while the breakers are rolling in; parks scattered about the city, in one of which a native band plays every evening; forts, which may be visited, located close to the city, and a trip around Oahu Island is a very pleasant one.
I was offered work at good wages, but as the time at my disposal could be better utilized in familiarizing myself with the country, and having no desire to remain, energy was reserved until the mainland was reached. Two English dailies, four Japanese, one Chinese, and a semi-weekly Portuguese newspaper are published in Honolulu.
The Hawaiian Islands were discovered by Captain James Cook, the noted navigator, in 1778, who had planted the English flag in Botany Bay, near Sydney, Australia, seven years earlier, and who claimed Tasmania and New Zealand for England; he also discovered the Tongan group. The Kanaka, true to Polynesian custom, welcomed the captain and his crew on their first visit. A year later, however, upon the return of the skipper, he got in trouble with the natives, who killed him. A monument is erected to the memory of the great navigator on the Island of Hawaii.
David Kalakaua was the last of the native kings; he died in San Francisco, Cal., in 1891, his sister, Liliuokalani, being proclaimed Queen. Two years later, in 1893, the Queen was deposed, when the islands virtually became an American possession. In 1898 it became a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as its first governor. What was once the royal palace of the rulers of Hawaii is now the capital building. Liliuokalani lived for years in Honolulu in a white-painted house, built in beautiful grounds.
Eight islands compose the group, namely, Kauai, Niihau, Oahu, Molokai, Maui, Lanai, Kahoolawe, and Hawaii, the latter, from which the territory takes its name, having an area of 4,015 square miles; the other seven combined have not the area of Hawaii, the eight totalling 6,449 square miles. Captain James Cook first gave the name Sandwich Islands—now obsolete—to the group.
Leaving Honolulu for Kilauea crater, soon we rounded Diamond Head, and some time later Molokai, on which the territorial leprosy colony is located, appeared on our left. A portion of this island is utilized for stock grazing purposes, but the grass was white from drought, and cattle were dying for want of water. Maui was next reached, where what should have proved a nice land view also was blighted by the drought. Later we sailed alongside Hawaii, its vegetation offering a more inviting scene than those left behind. A number of stops were made during the journey, passengers leaving and others boarding the vessel. Most of the white travelers were Americans. After several landings in Hawaii, Hilo was reached, where all passengers left the ship. Hilo, next in size to Honolulu, has a population of 7,000, mostly of color. A large tonnage of sugar is shipped from this port, where the harbor, the best in the group, has been improved by a good breakwater.
From Hilo a start was made for Kilauea crater, which may be reached by train or motor-car. The train was taken, and it proved even slower than the ones traveled on during the short trips from Manila. Some excuse might be offered for the Hilo train, as the route is up-grade, while the railways in Luzon are as flat as a table. Finally the train "stuck" at a steep grade, and the conductor, who was a Kanaka, did not know what to do to get it started. He was "waiting for orders from Hilo," he said. The train was later detached, however, and, when the parts had been taken over the humpback and linked together again, it crawled slowly through large sugar plantations, past tree ferns, and other attractive landscape scenes, until we reached Glenwood, the end of the railway line, where a mail motor car was ready to take passengers to the hotel, nine miles beyond. An elevation of 4,000 feet had been traveled from Hilo to the object of our mission. Many passengers had wended their way to this place, and it seemed odd, after having been in black countries for three years, to find every one at the hotel locking the door to his room at midday. In some countries passed through the room doors were not closed even at night.
Looking down upon and over a depression in the earth, bastioned by deep walls of rocks on each side, 7¾ miles in circumference and containing an area of 4¼ square miles, there spreads out for three miles a fissured, hillocked, corrugated, gnarled, steam-emitting surface of slate-colored and black lava. This is the first view one obtains of Kilauea crater. The scene is very unusual, and interest is sharpened to a keen edge. Later a journey is taken over that strange lava wake, when the leaven from the fire-boiling underworld suggested the tremendous force contained below the sphere on which man treads. We had looked at the teeming volumes of water being ejected from geysers in Yellowstone Park; but water washes away and will eventually become purified as the stream it joins leaves the geyser zone. But here the lake-like, deep, black earth deposit remains, although, like the water from the geysers, for a time it had been a moving stream also. An acre of land area with similar deposit would attract scientists from great distances, but here there are over four square miles of that subterranean deposit. One obtains a side view, as it were, of a portion of the world turned inside out by nature's force at Kilauea crater. There was no soil, no rock, no trees—the substance under, before, all about us was weirdly foreign to what is natural to the upper crust of the earth and to the sky above. Further on the fissures became wider, the hillocks higher, and the substance warm. Still yet ahead steam—or white smoke—is issuing from the cracks in the alien deposit, and when these are reached canny, hissing, and gurgling sounds from underneath are heard. From every side appears varied formations, molded while the lava was changing from liquid to solid matter. Some of these resemble mummies, great coils of rope, petrified trees, columns of iron, and other shapes. Beyond appears a large volume of smoke, reminding one of a great geyser basin on a calm, early morning. Approaching, the air becomes sulphur-laden, a hand is put to the nostrils, and natural breathing for the time is withheld, to prevent one from choking from the netherworld fumes. The wind now whirls the noxious odors away, and a still further advance finds one on the rim of a deep, yawning maw. Unearthly fumes again envelop the onlooker, but a friendly breeze again wafts the poisonous vapor to other parts, when the awful vent in Kilauea's deep, leaden crust reappears. Boom! comes from below, and smoke envelops the gaping chasm. A draught of wind sweeps the smoke from the pit of the fiery abyss, and——A black and red stream of fire is seen swirling across the strange floor below! It is Halemaumau, the greatest active volcano in the world, termed "the safety valve of the Pacific." The volcano is about a thousand feet in circumference, and the fire swirls several hundred feet below the lava-crusted rim. How many persons have had the rare privilege of looking into an active volcano? There it was—Halemaumau, in Kilauea crater.
Locating to the windward of the volcano, the demon-like river of fire was, for the time being, holding revelry in quiet volcano fashion—but volcanic fashion. Boom! came from below, as if from ordnance in action nearby, and fiery rocks were hurled against the lava-scaled sides. Ah! A clear stream of liquid fire now runs across the base as a river. Then sulphurous smoke envelops all. There (after the smoke has lifted) now runs what seems like a river of thick, black dirt; but small explosions are taking place. A red seam next shows through the volcanic dross. A clear red river of fire——Boom! The sides of the crater, like icicles—flushed by the rays of a scarlet sun—on a rock-faced coast, formed from a surging sea, are gorgeous with dripping lava. Were a black panel implanted across a morning aurora—that is how Halemaumau's strange river looks now. The current runs but one way and comes from the same side of the fomenting maw. Where does the lava stream come from? Into what outlet does it empty? Boom! Boom! The burning depths seem to rise on a platform of fire. Listen to the splash as the red, upheaved rocks fall back into the furious maelstrom! What a pretty, clear stream of carmine liquid! It has passed away, and the black, dross-like course has again taken the red flow's place.