Roughing It
and that the woman they burned in Boston was the wife of John H. Morgan,
and the still loved but divorced wife of Winthrop L. Willis. Now,
Admiral, it is only fair that you should acknowledge that the first
provocation came from the Southern preachers and that the Northern ones
were justified in retaliating. In your arguments you never yet have
shown the least disposition to withhold a just verdict or be in anywise
unfair, when authoritative history condemned your position, and
therefore I have no hesitation in asking you to take the original blame
from the Massachusetts ministers, in this matter, and transfer it to the
South Carolina clergymen where it justly belongs.”
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The Admiral was conquered. This sweet spoken creature who swallowed his
fraudulent history as if it were the bread of life; basked in his
furious blasphemy as if it were generous sunshine; found only calm,
even-handed justice in his rampart partisanship; and flooded him with
invented history so sugarcoated with flattery and deference that there
was no rejecting it, was “too many” for him. He stammered some awkward,
profane sentences about the— — — —Willis and Morgan business having
escaped his memory, but that he “remembered it now,” and then, under
pretence of giving Fan some medicine for an imaginary cough, drew out of
the battle and went away, a vanquished man. Then cheers and laughter
went up, and Williams, the ship’s benefactor was a hero. The news went
about the vessel, champagne was ordered, and enthusiastic reception
instituted in the smoking room, and everybody flocked thither to shake
hands with the conqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral
stood up behind the pilot house and “ripped and cursed all to himself”
till he loosened the smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail.
The Admiral’s power was broken. After that, if he began argument,
somebody would bring Williams, and the old man would grow weak and begin
to quiet down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams in his
dulcet, insinuating way, would invent some history (referring for proof,
to the old man’s own excellent memory and to copies of “The Old Guard”
known not to be in his possession) that would turn the tables completely
and leave the Admiral all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to so
dread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would stop talking when he
saw him approach, and finally ceased to mention politics altogether, and
from that time forward there was entire peace and serenity in the ship.
CHAPTER LXIII.
On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the
lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two
thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As we
approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the
ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the
details of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line of
beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of
the natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between
twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with
streets from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor,
most of them straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew.
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The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every
step revealed a new contrast—disclosed something I was unaccustomed to.
In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of San Francisco, I saw
dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored pebble-and-shell-
conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in cement; also a
great number of neat white cottages, with green window-shutters; in
place of front yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them,
I saw these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly clad with green
grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage the sun
could scarcely penetrate; in place of the customary geranium, calla
lily, etc., languishing in dust and general debility, I saw luxurious
banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a rain, and
glowing with the richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors of San
Francisco’s pleasure grove, the “Willows,” I saw huge-bodied, wide-
spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance—trees
that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone
without being tied to green poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling
around in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of
distortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their
transparent prison houses, I saw cats—Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-
tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats,
cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped
cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats,
groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats,
armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them
sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude of people,
some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white cloth shoes,
made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majority of
the people were almost as dark as negroes—women with comely features,
fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in a
single bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from
shoulder to heel, long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled
with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of
dark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered
stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-
clout;—certain smoke-dried children were clothed in nothing but
sunshine—a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel indeed.
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In place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners,
I saw long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens sitting on the
ground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever or
whoever happened along; instead of wretched cobble-stone pavements, I
walked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the bottom of the
sea by the absurd but persevering insect of that name, with a light
layer of lava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of
fathomless perdition long ago through the seared and blackened crater
that stands dead and harmless in the distance now; instead of cramped
and crowded street-cars, I met dusky native women sweeping by, free as
the wind, on fleet horses and astride, with gaudy riding-sashes,
streaming like banners behind them; instead of the combined stenches of
Chinadom and Brannan street slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy
fragrance of jessamine, oleander, and the Pride of India; in place of
the hurry and bustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in
the midst of a Summer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in
place of the Golden City’s skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw
on the one side a frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at
hand, clad in refreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like
valleys—and in front the grand sweep of the ocean: a brilliant,
transparent green near the shore, bound and bordered by a long white
line of foamy spray dashing against the reef, and further out the dead
blue water of the deep sea, flecked with “white caps,” and in the far
horizon a single, lonely sail—a mere accent-mark to emphasize a
slumberous calm and a solitude that were without sound or limit. When
the sun sunk down—the one intruder from other realms and persistent in
suggestions of them—it was tranced luxury to sit in the perfumed air and
forget that there was any world but these enchanted islands.
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It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream—till you got a bite. A scorpion
bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the
scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy;
and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future. Then came an
adjournment to the bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up the day’s
journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other—a
whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy
approaching,—a hairy tarantula on stilts—why not set the spittoon on
him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous
idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade
for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough
to burn a hole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a
resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait,
and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in
under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully
on the floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse the
tropics in occasional wakeful intervals.
We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges, pine-
apples, bananas, strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes, guavas, melons,
and a rare and curious luxury called the chirimoya, which is
deliciousness itself. Then there is the tamarind. I thought tamarinds
were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and
it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my
lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my
sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours.
They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave
them a “wire edge” that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said “no,
it will come off when the enamel does”—which was comforting, at any
rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds—but they
only eat them once.
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CHAPTER LXIV.
In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this:
I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii to-night—especially about
sitting down in the presence of my betters. I have ridden fifteen or
twenty miles on horse-back since 5 P.M. and to tell the honest truth, I
have a delicacy about sitting down at all.
An excursion to Diamond Head and the King’s Coacoanut Grove was planned
to-day—time, 4:30 P.M.—the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen
and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself.
I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and another
whaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips,) and got so interested in its
examination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing.
Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o’clock, and that
woke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was
along with his “turn out,” as he calls a top-buggy that Captain Cook
brought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain Cook came.
Captain Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and in the speed of
his horse, and to his passion for displaying them I owe it that we were
only sixteen minutes coming from the prison to the American Hotel—a
distance which has been estimated to be over half a mile. But it took
some fearful driving. The Captain’s whip came down fast, and the blows
started so much dust out of the horse’s hide that during the last half
of the journey we rode through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a pocket
compass in the hands of Captain Fish, a whaler of twenty-six years
experience, who sat there through the perilous voyage as self-possessed
as if he had been on the euchre-deck of his own ship, and calmly said,
“Port your helm—port,” from time to time, and “Hold her a little
free—steady—so—so,” and “Luff—hard down to starboard!” and never once