Business is not here a synonym for hurry, and official duties are light; so light, that in these morning hours I see the governor, the sheriff, and the judge, with three other gentlemen, playing an interminable croquet game on the Court-house 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 gra.s.s houses with deep verandahs, peep out everywhere from among the mangoes and bananas. The governess of Hawaii, the Princess Keelikalani, 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. Thus 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 puddled earth. The cutting from which it grows is simply the top of the plant, with a little of the tuber. The men stand up to their 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 water to aid them in removing the sticky ma.s.s, 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 ti 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 an 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 surf-bathing, the women with making leis--both s.e.xes 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 seems 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 n.o.body 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 sibilant consonants. In their soft phraseology our hard rough surnames undergo a metamorphosis, as Fisk into Filikina, Wilson into Wilikina. Each vowel is distinctly p.r.o.nounced, and usually with the Italian sound. The volcano is p.r.o.nounced as if spelt Keel-ah-wee-ah, and Kauai as if Kah-wye-ee.

The name Owhyhee for Hawaii had its origin in a mistake, for the island was never anything but Hawaii, p.r.o.nounced 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, specially of those compounded with wai, water, are very musical; Wailuku, "water of destruction;" Waialeale, "rippling water;" Waioli, "singing water;" Waipio, "vanquished water;"

Kaiwaihae, "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 (candle- nut), lauhala (panda.n.u.s), pulu (tree fern), mamane, 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 "grat.i.tude" or "chast.i.ty," 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 s.e.x of its possessor. Thus, in signing a paper the signature would be Hoapili kanaka, or Hoapili wahine, 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 an Hawaiian word is absolutely necessary, we might translate native and have maole, p.r.o.nounced 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 Papa-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 sh.o.r.e.

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 but 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 sh.o.r.ewards 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 just as one expected to see them dashed to pieces, they either waded quietly ash.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.ewards, 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e was thronged with spectators, and the presence of the elite of Hilo stimulated the swimmers to wonderful exploits.

These people are truly amphibious. Both s.e.xes 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 sh.o.r.ewards 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 holidaymaking (if that can be where there is no work), and enjoying themselves, the surf-bathers in the sea, and hundreds of gaily-dressed men and women galloping on the beach. It was so serene and tropical. I sympathize with those who eat the lotus, and remain for ever on such enchanted sh.o.r.es.

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.

LETTER VIII.

ONOMEA, HAWAII. JUDGE AUSTIN'S.

Mrs. A. has been ill for some time, and Mrs. S. her sister and another friend "plotted" in a very "clandestine" manner that I should come here for a few days in order to give her "a little change of society," but I am quite sure that under this they only veil a kind wish that I should see something of plantation life.

There is a plan, too, that I should take a five days' trip to a remarkable valley called Waipio, but this is only a "castle in the air."

Mr. A. sent in for me a capital little lean rat of a horse which by dint of spirit and activity managed to keep within sight of two large horses, ridden by Mr. Thompson, and a very handsome young lady riding "cavalier fashion," who convoyed me out. Borrowed saddle- bags, and a couple of shingles for carrying ferns formed my outfit, and were carried behind my saddle. It is a magnificent ride here.

The track crosses the deep, still, Wailuku River on a wooden bridge, and then after winding up a steep hill, among native houses fantastically situated, hangs on the verge of the lofty precipices which descend perpendicularly to the sea, dips into tremendous gulches, loses itself in the bright fern-fringed torrents which have cleft their way down from the mountains, and at last emerges on the delicious height on which this house is built.

This coast looked beautiful from the deck of the Kilauea, but I am now convinced that I have never seen anything so perfectly lovely as it is when one is actually among its details. Onomea is 600 feet high, and every yard of the ascent from Hilo brings one into a fresher and purer air. One looks up the wooded, broken slopes to a wild volcanic wilderness and the snowy peaks of Mauna Kea on one side, and on the other down upon the calm blue Pacific, wrinkled by the sweet trade-wind, till it blends in far-off loveliness with the still, blue, sky; and heavy surges break on the reefs, and fritter themselves away on the rocks, tossing their pure foam over ti and lauhala trees, and the exquisite ferns and trailers which mantle the cliffs down to the water's edge. Here a native house stands, with pa.s.sion-flowers cl.u.s.tering round its verandah, and the great solitary red blossoms of the hibiscus flaming out from dark surrounding leaf.a.ge, and women in rose and green holukus, weaving garlands, greet us with "Aloha" as we pa.s.s. Then we come upon a whole cl.u.s.ter of gra.s.s houses under lauhalas and bananas. Then there is the sugar plantation of Kaiwiki, with its patches of bright green cane, its flumes crossing the track above our heads, bringing the cane down from the upland cane-fields to the crushing-mill, and the shifting, busy scenes of the sugar-boiling season.

Then the track goes down with a great dip, along which we slip and slide in the mud to a deep broad stream. This is a most picturesque spot, the junction of two clear bright rivers, and a few native houses and a Chinaman's store are grouped close by under some palms, with the customary loungers on horseback, asking and receiving nuhou, or news, at the doors. Our accustomed horses leaped into a ferry-scow provided by Government, worked by a bearded female of hideous aspect, and leaped out on the other side to climb a track cut on the side of a precipice, which would be steep to mount on one's own feet. There we met parties of natives, all flower- wreathed, talking and singing, coming gaily down on their sure- footed horses, saluting us with the invariable "Aloha." Every now and then we pa.s.sed native churches, with spires painted white, or a native schoolhouse, or a group of scholars all ferns and flowers.

The greenness of the vegetation merits the term "dazzling." We think England green, but its colour is poor and pale as compared with that of tropical Hawaii. Palms, candlenuts, ohias, hibiscus, were it not for their exceeding beauty, would almost pall upon one from their abundance, and each gulch has its glorious entanglement of breadfruit, the large-leaved ohia, or native apple, a species of Eugenia (Eugenia Malaccensis), and the panda.n.u.s, with its aerial roots, all looped together by large sky-blue convolvuli and the running fern, and is marvellous with parasitic growths.

The distracting beauty of this coast is what are called gulches-- narrow deep ravines or gorges, from 100 to 2,000 feet in depth, each with a series of cascades from 10 to 1,800 feet in height. I dislike reducing their glories to the baldness of figures, but the depth of these clefts (originally, probably, the seams caused by fire torrents), cut and worn by the fierce streams fed by the snows of Mauna Kea, and the rains of the forest belt, cannot otherwise be expressed. The cascades are most truly beautiful, gleaming white among the dark depths of foliage far away, and falling into deep limpid basins, festooned and overhung with the richest and greenest vegetation of this prolific climate, from the huge-leaved banana and shining breadfruit to the most feathery of ferns and lycopodiums.

Each gulch opens on a velvet lawn close to the sea, and most of them have s.p.a.ce for a few gra.s.s houses, with cocoanut trees, bananas, and kalo patches. There are sixty-nine of these extraordinary chasms within a distance of thirty miles!

I think we came through eleven, fording the streams in all but two.

The descent into some of them is quite alarming. You go down almost standing in your stirrups, at a right angle with the horse's head, and up, grasping his mane to prevent the saddle slipping. He goes down like a goat, with his bare feet, looking cautiously at each step, sometimes putting out a foot and withdrawing it again in favour of better footing, and sometimes gathering his four feet under him and sliding or jumping. The Mexican saddle has great advantages on these tracks, which are nothing better than ledges cut on the sides of precipices, for one goes up and down not only in perfect security but without fatigue. I am beginning to hope that I am not too old, as I feared I was, to learn a new mode of riding, for my companions rode at full speed over places where I should have picked my way carefully at a foot's pace; and my horse followed them, galloping and stopping short at their pleasure, and I successfully kept my seat, though not without occasional fears of an ignominious downfall. I even wish that you could see me in my Rob Roy riding dress, with leather belt and pouch, a lei of the orange seeds of the panda.n.u.s round my throat, jingling Mexican spurs, blue saddle blanket, and Rob Roy blanket strapped on behind the saddle!

This place is grandly situated 600 feet above a deep cove, into which two beautiful gulches of great size run, with heavy cascades, finer than Foyers at its best, and a native village is picturesquely situated between the two. The great white rollers, whiter by contrast with the dark deep water, come into the gulch just where we forded the river, and from the ford a pa.s.sable road made for hauling sugar ascends to the house. The air is something absolutely delicious; and the murmur of the rollers and the deep boom of the cascades are very soothing. There is little rise or fall in the cadence of the surf anywhere on the windward coast, but one even sound, loud or soft, like that made by a train in a tunnel.

We were kindly welcomed, and were at once "made at home." Delicious phrase! the full meaning of which I am learning on Hawaii, where, though everything has the fascination of novelty, I have ceased to feel myself a stranger. This is a roomy, rambling frame-house, with a verandah, and the door, as is usual here, opens directly into the sitting-room. The stair by which I go to my room suggests possibilities, for it has been removed three inches from the wall by an earthquake, which also brought down the tall chimney of the boiling-house. Close by there are small pretty frame-houses for the overseer, bookkeeper, sugar boiler, and machinist; a store, the factory, a pretty native church near the edge of the cliff, and quite a large native village below. It looks green and bright, and the atmosphere is perfect, with the cool air coming down from the mountains, and a soft breeze coming up from the blue dreamy ocean.

Behind the house the uplands slope away to the colossal Mauna Kea.

The actual, dense, impenetrable forest does not begin for a mile and a half from the coast, and its broad dark belt, extending to a height of 4,000 feet, and beautifully broken, throws out into greater brightness the upward glades of gra.s.s and the fields of sugar-cane.

This is a very busy season, and as this is a large plantation there is an appearance of great animation. There are five or six saddled horses usually tethered below the house; and with overseers, white and coloured, and natives riding at full gallop, and people coming on all sorts of errands, the hum of the crushing-mill, the rush of water in the flumes, and the grind of the waggons carrying cane, there is no end of stir.

The plantations in the Hilo district enjoy special advantages, for by turning some of the innumerable mountain streams into flumes the owners can bring a great part of their cane and all their wood for fuel down to the mills without other expense than the original cost of the woodwork. Mr. A. has 100 mules, but the greater part of their work is ploughing and hauling the kegs of sugar down to the cove, where in favourable weather they are put on board of a schooner for Honolulu. This plantation employs 185 hands, native and Chinese, and turns out 600 tons of sugar a year. The natives are much liked as labourers, being docile and on the whole willing; but native labour is hard to get, as the natives do not like to work for a term unless obliged, and a pernicious system of "advances" is practised. The labourers hire themselves to the planters, in the case of natives usually for a year, by a contract which has to be signed before a notary public. The wages are about eight dollars a month with food, or eleven dollars without food, and the planters supply houses and medical attendance. The Chinese are imported as coolies, and usually contract to work for five years. As a matter of policy no less than of humanity the "hands" are well treated; for if a single instance of injustice were perpetrated on a plantation the factory might stand still the next year, for hardly a native would contract to serve again.

The Chinese are quiet and industrious, but smoke opium, and are much addicted to gaming. Many of them save money, and, when their turn of service is over, set up stores, or grow vegetables for money.

Each man employed has his horse, and on Sat.u.r.day the hands form quite a cavalcade. Great tact, firmness, and knowledge of human nature are required in the manager of a plantation. The natives are at times disposed to shirk work without sufficient cause; the native lunas, or overseers, are not always reasonable, the Chinamen and natives do not always agree, and quarrels and entanglements arise, and everything is referred to the decision of the manager, who, besides all things else, must know the exact amount of work which ought to be performed, both in the fields and factory, and see that it is done. Mr. A. is a keen, shrewd man of business, kind without being weak, and with an eye on every detail of his plantations. The requirements are endless. It reminds me very much of plantation life in Georgia in the old days of slavery. I never elsewhere heard of so many headaches, sore hands, and other trifling ailments. It is very amusing to see the attempts which the would-be invalids make to lengthen their brief smiling faces into lugubriousness, and the sudden relaxation into naturalness when they are allowed a holiday.

Mr. A. comes into the house constantly to consult his wife regarding the treatment of different ailments.

I have made a second tour through the factory, and am rather disgusted with sugar making. "All's well that ends well," however, and the delicate crystalline result makes one forget the initial stages of the manufacture. The cane, stripped of its leaves, pa.s.ses from the flumes under the rollers of the crushing-mill, where it is subjected to a pressure of five or six tons. One hundred pounds of cane under this process yield up from sixty-five to seventy-five pounds of juice. This juice pa.s.ses, as a pale green cataract, into a trough, which conducts it into a vat, where it is dosed with quicklime to neutralize its acid, and is then run off into large heated metal vessels. At this stage the smell is abominable, and the turbid fluid, with a thick sc.u.m upon it, is simply disgusting.

After a preliminary heating and skimming it is pa.s.sed off into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from one to the other till it reaches the last, which is nearest to the fire, and there it boils with the greatest violence, seething and foaming, bringing all the remaining sc.u.m to the surface. After the concentration has proceeded far enough, the action of the heat is suspended, and the reddish-brown, oily-looking liquid is drawn into the vacuum-pan till it is about a third full; the concentration is completed by boiling the juice in vacuo at a temperature of 150 degrees, and even lower. As the boiling proceeds, the sugar boiler tests the contents of the pan by withdrawing a few drops, and holding them up to the light on his finger; and, by certain minute changes in their condition, he judges when it is time to add an additional quant.i.ty. When the pan is full, the contents have thickened into the consistency of thick gruel by the formation of minute crystals, and are then allowed to descend into an heater, where they are kept warm till they can be run into "forms" or tanks, where they are allowed to granulate. The liquid, or mola.s.ses, which remains after the first crystallization is returned to the vacuum pan and reboiled, and this reboiling of the drainings is repeated two or three times, with a gradually decreasing result in the quality and quant.i.ty of the sugar. The last process, which is used for getting rid of the treacle, is a most beautiful one. The ma.s.s of sugar and treacle is put into what are called "centrifugal pans,"

which are drums about three feet in diameter and two feet high, which make about 1,000 revolutions a minute. These have false interiors of wire gauze, and the ma.s.s is forced violently against their sides by centrifugal action, and they let the treacle whirl through, and retain the sugar crystals, which lie in a dry heap in the centre.

The cane is being flumed in with great rapidity, and the factory is working till late at night. The cane from which the juice has been expressed, called "trash," is dried and used as fuel for the furnace which supplies the steam power. The sugar is packed in kegs, and a cooper and carpenter, as well as other mechanics, are employed.

Sugar is now the great interest of the islands. Christian missions and whaling have had their day, and now people talk sugar. Hawaii thrills to the news of a cent up or a cent down in the American market. All the interests of the kingdom are threatened by this one, which, because it is grievously depressed and staggers under a heavy import duty in the American market, is now clamorous in some quarters for "annexation," and in others for a "reciprocity treaty,"

which last means the cession of the Pearl River lagoon on Oahu, with its adjacent sh.o.r.es, to America, for a Pacific naval station. There are 200,000 acres of productive soil on the islands, of which only a fifteenth is under cultivation, and of this large area 150,000 is said to be specially adapted for sugar culture. Herein is a prospective Utopia, and people are always dreaming of the sugar- growing capacities of the belt of rich disintegrated lava which slopes upwards from the sea to the bases of the mountains.

Hitherto, sugar growing has been a very disastrous speculation, and few of the planters at present do more than keep their heads above water.

Were labour plentiful and the duties removed, fortunes might be made; for the soil yields on an average about three times as much as that of the State of Louisiana. Two and a half tons to the acre is a common yield, five tons, a frequent one, and instances are known of the slowly matured cane of a high alt.i.tude yielding as much as seven tons! The magnificent climate makes it a very easy crop to grow. There is no brief harvest time with its rush, hurry, and frantic demand for labour, nor frost to render necessary the hasty cutting of an immature crop. The same number of hands is kept on all the year round. The planters can plant pretty much when they please, or not plant at all, for two or three years, the only difference in the latter case being that the rattoons which spring up after the cutting of the former crop are smaller in bulk. They can cut when they please, whether the cane be ta.s.selled or not, and they can plant, cut, and grind at one time!

It is a beautiful crop in any stage of growth, especially in the ta.s.selled stage. Every part of it is useful--the cane pre- eminently--the leaves as food for horses and mules, and the ta.s.sels for making hats. Here and elsewhere there is a plate of cut cane always within reach, and the children chew it incessantly. I fear you will be tired of sugar, but I find it more interesting than the wool and mutton of Victoria and New Zealand, and it is a most important item of the wealth of this toy kingdom, which last year exported 16,995,402 lbs. of sugar and 192,105 gallons of mola.s.ses.

{121} With regard to mola.s.ses, the Government prohibits the manufacture of rum, so the planters are deprived of a fruitful source of profit. It is really difficult to tear myself from the subject of sugar, for I see the cane waving in the sun while I write, and hear the busy hum of the crushing-mill.

I.L.B.

LETTER IX.