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Hilo Homes—Hilo Gossip—Foreign Life—The
National Dish— Pelikia Aloha—Surf-board Riding
Hilo, Hawaii
The white population here, which
constitutes "society," is very small. There are two venerable
missionaries, "Father Coan" and "Father Lyman," the former pastor of a
large native congregation, which, though much shrunk, is not only
self-sustaining, but contributes $1200 a year to foreign missions, and
the latter, though very old and frail, the indefatigable head of an
industrial school for native young men. Their houses combine the
trimness of New England, with the luxuriance of the tropics; they are
cool retreats, embowered among breadfruit, tamarind, and bamboo, through
whose graceful leafage the blue waters of the bay are visible.
Innumerable exotics are domesticated round these fair homesteads. Two of
" Father Lyman's" sons are influential residents, one being the
Lieutenant-Governor of the island. Other sons of former missionaries are
settled here in business, and there are a few strangers who have been
attracted hither. Dr. Wetmore, formerly of the mission, is a typical New
Englander of the old orthodox school. It is pleasant to see him brighten
into almost youthful enthusiasm on the subject of Hawaiian ferns. My
host, a genial, social, intelligent American, is sheriff of Hawaii,
postmaster, etc., and with his charming wife (a missionary's daughter),
and some friends who live with them, make their large house a centre of
kindliness, friendliness, and hospitality. There are hardly any young
ladies, and very few young men, but plenty of rosy, blooming children,
who run about barefoot all the year. Besides the Hilo residents, there
are some planters' families within seven miles, who come in to sewing
circles, church, etc. There is a small class of reprobate white men who
have ostracised themselves by means of drink and bad morals, and are a
curse to the natives. The half whites, among whom "Bill Ragsdale" is the
leading spirit, are not numerous. Hilo has no carriage roads and no
carnages: everyone must ride, or travel in a litter. People are very
kind to each other. Horses, dresses, patterns, books, and articles of
domestic use, are lent and borrowed continually. The smallness of the
society and the close proximity are too much like a ship. People know
everything about the details of each other's daily life, income, and
expenditure, and the day's doings of each member of the little circle
are matters for conversation. Indeed, were it not for the volcano and
its doings, conversation might degenerate into mere gossip. There is an
immense deal of personal talk; the wonder is that there is not more
ill-nature. Not only is what everybody does in Hilo common property, but
the sayings, doings, goings, comings, and purchases of every one in all
the other islands are common property also, made so by letters and oral
communication. It is all very amusing, but not always kindly, and human
interests are always interesting; but it has its perilous side. The
foreigners are very kind to each other. There is no distress which is
not alleviated. There is no nurse, and in cases of sickness the ladies
take it by turns to wait on the sufferer by day and night for weeks, and
even months. Such inevitable mutual dependence of course promotes
friendliness.
The foreigners live very simply. The
eating-rooms are used solely for eating, the "parlours" are always
cheerful and tasteful, and the bedrooms very pretty, adorned with all
manner of knick-knacks made by the ladies, who are indescribably deft
with their fingers. Light Manilla matting is used instead of carpets. A
Chinese man-cook, who leaves at seven in the evening, is the only
servant, except in one or two cases, where, as here, a native woman
condescends to come in during the day as a nurse. In the morning, the
ladies in their fresh pretty wrappers and ruffled white aprons, sweep
and dust the rooms, and I never saw women look more truly graceful and
refined than they do, when engaged in the plain prose of these domestic
duties. They make all their own dresses, and when any lady is busy and
wants a dress in a hurry, two or three of them meet and make it for her.
I never saw people live such easy, pleasant lives. They have such good
health, for one thing, partly no doubt because their domestic duties
give them wholesome exercise without pressing upon them. They have
abounding leisure for reading, music, choir practising, drawing, fern
printing, fancy work, picnics, riding parties, and enjoy sociability
thoroughly. They usually ride in dainty bloomer costumes even when they
don't ride astride. All the houses are pretty, and it takes little to
make them so in this climate. One novel fashion is to decorate the walls
with festoons of the beautiful Microlepia tenuifolia, which are renewed
as soon as they fade, and every room is adorned with a profusion of
bouquets, which are easily obtained where flowers bloom all the year.
Many of the residents possess valuable libraries, and these, with
cabinets of minerals, volcanic specimens, shells, and coral, with
weapons, calabashes, ornaments, and cloth of native manufacture, almost
furnish a room in themselves. Some of the volcanic specimens and the
coral are of almost inestimable value, as well as of exquisite beauty.
The gentlemen don't seem to have near so
much occupation as the ladies. There are two stores on the beach, and at
these and at the Court-house they congregate, for lack of club-house and
exchange. Business is not here a synonym for hurry, and official duties
are light; so light, that in these morning hours I see the governor,
sheriff, and judge, with three other gentlemen, playing an interminable
croquet game on the Courthouse lawn. They purvey gossip for the ladies,
and how much they invent, and how much they only circulate, can never be
known!
There is a large native population in
the village, along the beach, and on the heights above the Wailuku
River. Frame houses with lattices, and grass houses with deep verandahs,
peep out everywhere from among the mangoes and bananas. The governess of
Hawaii, the Princess Keelikolani, has a house on the beach shaded by a
large umbrella-tree and a magnificent clump of bamboos, 70 feet in
height. The native life with which one comes constantly in contact, is
very interesting.
The men do whatever hard work is done in
cultivating the kalo patches and pounding the kalo. This kalo, the Arum
esculentum, forms the national diet. A Hawaiian could not exist without
his calabash of poi. The root is an object of the tenderest solicitude,
from the day it is planted until the hour when it is lovingly eaten. The
eating of poi seems a ceremony of profound meaning; it is like the
eating salt with an Arab, or a Masonic sign. The kalo root is an ovate
oblong, as bulky as a Californian beet, and it has large leaves, shaped
like a broad arrow, of a singularly bright green. The best kinds grow
entirely in water. The patch is embanked and frequently inundated, and
each plant grows on a small hillock of puddle earth. The cutting from
which it grows is simply the top of the plant, with a little of the
tuber. The men stand up totheir knees in water while cultivating the
root. It is excellent when boiled and sliced; but the preparation of poi
is an elaborate process. The roots are baked in an underground oven, and
are then laid on a slightly hollowed board, and beaten with a stone
pestle. It is hard work, and the men don't wear any clothes while
engaged in it. It is not a pleasant-looking operation. They often dip
their hands in a calabash of watei to aid them in removing the sticky
mass, and they always look hot and tired. When it is removed from the
board into large calabashes, it is reduced to paste by the addition of
water, and set aside for two or three days to ferment. When ready for
use it is either lilac or pink, and tastes like sour bookbinders' paste.
Before water is added, when it is in its dry state, it is called paiai,
or hard food, and is then packed in ii leaves in 20 lb. bundles for
inland carriage, and is exported to the Guano Islands. It is a prolific
and nutritious plant. It is estimated that forty square feet will
support a Hawaiian for a year.
The melon and kalo patches represent a
certain amount of spasmodic industry, but in most other things the
natives take no thought for the morrow. Why should they indeed? For
while they lie basking in the sun, without care of theirs, the cocoanut,
the breadfruit, the yam, the guava, the banana, and the delicious
papaya, which is a compound of a ripe apricot with a Cantaloupe melon,
grow and ripen perpetually. Men and women are always amusing themselves,
the men with surfbathing, the women with making lets—both sexes with
riding, gossiping, and singing. Every man and woman, almost every child,
has a horse. There is a perfect plague of badly bred, badly developed,
weedy looking animals. The beach and the pleasant lawn above it are
always covered with men and women riding at a gallop, with bare feet,
and stirrups tucked between the toes. To walk even 200 yards seeifts
considered a degradation. The people meet outside each others' houses
all day long, and sit in picturesque groups on their mats, singing,
laughing, talking, and quizzing the haoles, as if the primal curse had
never fallen. Pleasant sights of out-door cooking gregariously carried
on greet one everywhere. This style of cooking prevails all over
Polynesia. A hole in the ground is lined with stones, wood is burned
within it, and when the rude oven has been sufficiently heated, the pig,
chicken, breadfruit, or kalo wrapped in ti leaves, is put in, a little
water is thrown on, and the whole is covered up. It is a slow but sure
process.
Bright dresses, bright eyes, bright
sunshine, music, dancing, a life without care, and a climate without
asperities, make up the sunny side of native life as pictured at Hilo.
But there are dark moral shadows; the population is shrinking away, and
rumours of leprosy are afloat, so that some of these fair homes may be
desolate ere long. However many causes for regret exist; one must not
forget that only forty years ago the people inhabiting this strip of
land between the volcanic wilderness and the sea were a vicious,
sensual, shameless herd, that no man among them, except their chiefs,
had any rights, that they were harried and oppressed almost to death,
and had no consciousness of any moral obligations. Now, order and
external decorum at least prevail. There is not a locked door in Hilo,
and nobody makes anybody else afraid. The people of Hawaii-nei are
clothed and civilized in their habits; they have equal rights; 6,500 of
them have kuleanas or freeholds, equable and enlightened laws are
impartially administered; wrong and oppression are unknown; they enjoy
one of the best administered governments in the world; education is
universal, and the throne is occupied by a liberal sovereign of their
own race and election.
Few of them speak English. Their
language is so easy that most of the foreigners acquire it readily. You
know how stupid I am about languages, yet I have already picked up the
names of most common things. There are only twelve letters, but some of
these are made to do double duty, as K is also T, and L is also R. The
most northern island of the group, Kauai, is as often pronounced as if
it began with a T, and Kalo is usually Taro. It is a very musical
language. Each syllable and word ends with a vowel, and there are none
of our rasping and sibillant consonants. In their soft phraseology our
rough surnames undergo a metamorphosis, as Fisk into Filikina, Wilson
into Wilikina. Each vowel is distinctly pronounced, and usually with the
Italian sound. The volcano is pronounced as if spelt Keel-ah-wee-ah, and
Kauai as if Kahwye-ee. The name Owhyhee for Hawaii had its origin in a
mistake, for the island was never anything but Hawaii, pronounced Hah-wye-ee,
but Captain Cook mistook the prefix O, which is the sign of the
nominative case, for a part of the word. Many of the names of places,
especially of those compounded with wai “water”, are very musical;
Wailuku,"water of destruction; "Waialeale," rippling water; "Waioli,"
singing water;" Waipio," vanquished water;" Kahvaihae," torn water."
Mauna, "mountain" is a mere prefix, and though always used in naming the
two giants of the Pacific, Mauna Kea, and Mauna Loa, is hardly ever
applied to Hualalai, "the offspring of the shining sun;" or to Haleakala
on Maui, "the house of the sun."
I notice that the foreigners never use
the English or botanical names of trees or plants, but speak of ohias,
ohelos, kukui (candlenut), lanhala (pandanus), pulu (tree fern), mamant,
koa, etc. There is one native word in such universal use that I already
find I cannot get on without it, pilikia. It means anything, from a
downright trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement. "I'm in a
pilikia? or "very pilikia" or "pilikia!" A revolution would be "a,
pilikia" The fact of the late king dying without naming a successor was
pre-eminently a pilikia, and it would be a serious pilikia if a horse
were to lose a shoe on the way to Kilauea. Hou-hou, meaning " in a
huff," I hear on all sides; and two words, makai, signifying " on the
sea-side," and mauka, "on the mountain side." These terms are perfectly
intelligible out of doors, but it is puzzling when one is asked to sit
on " the mauka side of the table." The word aloha, in foreign use, has
taken the place of every English equivalent. It is a greeting, a
farewell, thanks, love, goodwill. Aloha looks at you from tidies and
illuminations, it meets you on the roads and at house-doors, it is
conveyed to you in letters, the air is full of it. "My aloha to you,"
"he sends you his aloha," "they desire their aloha." It already
represents to me all of kindness and goodwill that language can express,
and the convenience of it as compared with other phrases is, that it
means exactly what the receiver understands it to mean, and
consequently, in all cases can be conveyed by a third person. There is
no word for "thank you." Maikai, "good," is often useful in its place,
and smiles supply the rest. There are no words which express "gratitude"
or "chastity," or some others of the virtues; and they have no word for
"weather," that which we understand by "weather" being absolutely
unknown.
Natives have no surnames. Our volcano
guide is Upa, or Scissors, but his wife and children are anything else.
The late king was Kamehameha, or the "lonely one." The father of the
present king is called Kanaina, but the king's name is Lunalilo, or
"above all." Nor does it appear that a man is always known by the same
name, nor that a name necessarily indicates the sex of its possessor.
Thus, in signing a paper the signature would be Hoapili kanaka, or
Hoapili wahint, according as the signer was man or woman. I remember
that in my first letter I fell into the vulgarism, initiated by the
whaling crews, of calling the natives Kanakas. This is universally but
very absurdly done, as Kanaka simply means man. If a Hawaiian word is
absolutely necessary, we might translate native and have maole,
pronounced maori, like that of the New Zealand aborigines. Kanaka is to
me decidedly objectionable, as conveying the idea of canaille.
I had written thus far when Mr.
Severance came in to say that a grand display of the national sport of
surf-bathing was going on, and a large party of us went down to the
beach for two hours to enjoy it. It is really a most exciting pastime,
and in a rough sea requires immense nerve. The surf-board is a tough
plank shaped like a coffin lid, about two feet broad, and from six to
nine feet long, well oiled and cared for. It is usually made of the
erythrina, or the breadfruit tree. The surf was very heavy and
favourable, and legions of natives were swimming and splashing in the
sea, though not more than forty had their Pafia-he-nalu, or "wave
sliding boards," with them. The men, dressed only in malos, carrying
their boards under their arms, waded out from some rocks on which the
sea was breaking, and, pushing their boards before them, swam out to the
first line of breakers, and then diving down were seen no more till they
re-appeared as a number of black heads bobbing about like corks in
smooth water half a mile from shore.
What they seek is a very high roller, on
the top of which they leap from behind, lying face downwards on their
boards. As the wave speeds on, and the bottom strikes the ground, the
top breaks into a huge comber. The swimmers appeared posing themselves
on its highest edge by dexterous movements of their hands and feet,
keeping just at the top of the curl, but always apparently coming down
hill with a slanting motion. So they rode in majestically, always just
ahead of the breaker, carried shorewards by its mighty impulse at the
rate of forty miles an hour, yet seeming to have a volition of their
own, as the more daring riders knelt and even stood on their
surf-boards, waving their arms and uttering exultant cries. They were
always apparently on the verge of engulfment by the fierce breaker whose
towering white crest was ever above and just behind them, but when one
expected to see them dashed to pieces, they either waded quietly ashore,
or sliding off their boards, dived under the surf, taking advantage of
the undertow, and were next seen far out at sea preparing for fresh
exploits.
The great art seems to be to mount the
roller precisely at the right time, and to keep exactly on its curl just
before it breaks. Two or three athletes, who stood erect on their boards
as they swept exultingly shorewards, were received with ringing cheers
by the crowd. Many of the less expert failed to throw themselves on the
crest, and slid back into smooth water, or were caught in the combers,
which were fully ten feet high, and after being rolled over and over,
ignominiously disappeared amidst roars of laughter, and shouts from the
shore. At first I held my breath in terror, thinking the creatures were
smothered or dashed to pieces, and then in a few seconds I saw the dark
heads of the objects of my anxiety bobbing about behind the rollers
waiting for another chance. The shore was thronged with spectators, and
the presence of the elite of Hilo stimulated the swimmers to wonderful
exploits.
These people are truly amphibious. Both
sexes seem to swim by nature, and the children riot in the waves from
their infancy. They dive apparently by a mere effort of the will. In the
deep basin of the Wailuku River, a little below the Falls, the maidens
swim, float, and dive with garlands of flowers round their heads and
throats. The more furious and agitated the water is, the greater the
excitement, and the love of these watery exploits is not confined to the
young. I saw great fat men with their hair streaked with grey, balancing
themselves on their narrow surf-boards, and riding the surges shorewards
with as much enjoyment as if they were in their first youth. I enjoyed
the afternoon thoroughly.
Is it "always afternoon" here, I wonder?
The sea was so blue, the sunlight so soft, the air so sweet. There was
no toil, clang, or hurry. People were all holiday-making (if that can be
where there is no work), and enjoying themselves, the surfbathers in the
sea, and hundreds of gaily-dressed men and women galloping on the beach.
It was serene and tropical. I sympathize with those who eat the lotus,
and remain for ever on such enchanted shores.
I am gaining health daily, and almost
live in the open air. I have hired the native policeman's horse and
saddle, and with a Macgregor flannel riding costume, which my kind
friends have made for me, and a pair of jingling Mexican spurs, am quite
Hawaiianised. I ride alone once or twice a day exploring the
neighbourhood, finding some new fern or flower daily, and abandon myself
wholly to the fascination of this new existence.
I.
L. B. |
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