"Perhaps it is in the providential plan of the world's great Ruler, that the Sandwich Islands should yet be adopted into the Great American Confederacy. Won as they have been from the lowest barbarism by American missionaries,—having had expended upon them in the process nearly a million and a half of dollars from America, and the services of fifty families now possessing there valuable homesteads,—harboring a permanent American population, foremost in energy and influence, now little short of one thousand, besides a floating American population that touch and recruit annually to the number of fifteen thousand, in whaleships and merchantmen, and consuming yearly a million of dollars' worth of American merchandise; on all these grounds there would seem to be a propriety in their enjoying an American Protectorate, if not an admission under the flag of the American Republic.
"'American enterprise,' says a writer[7] who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, 'both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance—bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, and civilization—and will soon add to these gifts language; for the English tongue is rapidly superseding the Hawaiian. The Islanders have thus a moral claim upon the American nation for protection. In no way can this be more efficiently bestowed than by receiving them into the family of this great republic. The native population are as well prepared to be American citizens as the multitude of European emigrants. Unlike the generality of them, they can read and write, and have already acquired democratic ideas under the operation of their own liberal constitution of government, which will readily enable them to incorporate themselves under our institutions. They are destined to be supplanted in numbers and power by a foreign race. They desire us to be their successors and protectors. The present revenues of the Islands are more than adequate to the expenses of their government—time, opportunity, the interests of the inhabitants and ourselves point to this result.' Events will soon determine whether they are to retain their independency, or to be merged in the nation that has civilized them."
The work abounds in interesting details of Island Life, and we regret that our limits will not permit us to enrich the International with more liberal extracts. We can at present add but the following paragraphs on a sport for which the islanders have been celebrated ever since the days of Cook:
"It is highly amusing to a stranger to go out into the south part of this town, some day when the sea is rolling in heavily over the reef, and to observe there the evolutions and rapid career of a company of surf-players. The sport is so attractive and full of wild excitement to Hawaiians, and withal so healthful, that I cannot but hope it will be many years before civilization shall look it out of countenance, or make it disreputable to indulge in this manly though dangerous exercise. Many a man from abroad who has witnessed this exhilarating play, has no doubt only wished that he was free and able to share in it himself. For my part, I should like nothing better, if I could do it, than to get balanced on a board just before a great rushing wave, and so be hurried in half or a quarter of a mile landward with the speed of a race-horse, all the time enveloped in foam and spray, but without letting the roller break and tumble over my head.
"In this consists the strength of muscle and sleight of hand, to keep the head and shoulders just ahead and clear of the great crested wall that is every moment impending over one, and threatening to bury the bold surf-rider in its watery ruin. The natives do this with admirable intrepidity and skill, riding in, as it were, upon the neck and mane of their furious charger; and when you look to see them, their swift race run, dashed upon the rocks or sand, behold, they have slipped under the belly of the wave they rode, and are away outside, waiting for a cruise upon another. Both men and women, girls and boys, have their times for this diversion. Even the huge Premier (Auhea) has been known to commit her bulky person to a surf-board; and the chiefs generally, when they visit Lahaina, take a turn or two at this invigorating sport with billows and board. For a more accurate idea of it than can be conveyed by any description, the reader is referred to the engraving.
"I have no doubt it would run away with dyspepsia from many a bather at Rockaway or Easthampton, if they would learn, and dare to use a surf-board on those great Atlantic rollers, as the Hawaiians do on the waves of the Pacific. But there is wanting on the Atlantic sea-board that delicious, bland temperature of the water, which within the tropics, while it makes sea-bathing equally a tonic, renders it always safe.
"The missionaries at these islands, and foreigners generally, are greatly at fault in that they do not avail themselves more of this easy and unequalled means of retaining health, or of restoring it when enfeebled. Bathing in fresh water, in a close bath-house, is not to be compared to it as an invigorating and remedial agent; and it is unwise, not to say criminal, in such a climate, to neglect so natural a way of preserving health, as washing and swimming in the sea. In those who live close to the water, and on the leeward side of the Islands, it is the more inexcusable, for it could be enjoyed without exposure in the dewless evenings; or in some places a small house might be built on stone abutments over the water, and facilities so contrived that both sexes could enjoy this great luxury of a life within the tropics."
The volume has several spirited engravings, and is excellently printed.
HAWAIIAN SPORT OF SURF PLAYING