Roughing It
the oath, and the march was resumed. Kamehameha drove them back step by
step; the priests fought in the front rank and exhorted them both by
voice and inspiriting example to remember their oath—to die, if need be,
but never cross the fatal line. The struggle was manfully maintained,
but at last the chief priest fell, pierced to the heart with a spear,
and the unlucky omen fell like a blight upon the brave souls at his
back; with a triumphant shout the invaders pressed forward—the line was
crossed—the offended gods deserted the despairing army, and, accepting
the doom their perjury had brought upon them, they broke and fled over
the plain where Honolulu stands now—up the beautiful Nuuanu
Valley—paused a moment, hemmed in by precipitous mountains on either
hand and the frightful precipice of the Pari in front, and then were
driven over—a sheer plunge of six hundred feet!
The story is pretty enough, but Mr. Jarves’ excellent history says the
Oahuans were intrenched in Nuuanu Valley; that Kamehameha ousted them,
routed them, pursued them up the valley and drove them over the
precipice. He makes no mention of our bone-yard at all in his book.
Impressed by the profound silence and repose that rested over the
beautiful landscape, and being, as usual, in the rear, I gave voice to
my thoughts. I said:
“What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon! How
strong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against the
clear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over the
long, curved reef! How calmly the dim city sleeps yonder in the plain!
How soft the shadows lie upon the stately mountains that border the
dream-haunted Mauoa Valley! What a grand pyramid of billowy clouds
towers above the storied Pari! How the grim warriors of the past seem
flocking in ghostly squadrons to their ancient battlefield again—how the
wails of the dying well up from the—”
At this point the horse called Oahu sat down in the sand. Sat down to
listen, I suppose. Never mind what he heard, I stopped apostrophising
and convinced him that I was not a man to allow contempt of Court on the
part of a horse. I broke the back-bone of a Chief over his rump and set
out to join the cavalcade again.
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Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o’clock at night,
myself in the lead—for when my horse finally came to understand that he
was homeward bound and hadn’t far to go, he turned his attention
strictly to business.
This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is no
regular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the
Kingdom of Hawaii; therefore unless you are acquainted with wealthy
residents (who all have good horses), you must hire animals of the
wretchedest description from the Kanakas. (i.e. natives.) Any horse you
hire, even though it be from a white man, is not often of much account,
because it will be brought in for you from some ranch, and has
necessarily been leading a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been
caring for him (inveterate riders they are) have not ridden him half to
death every day themselves, you can depend upon it they have been doing
the same thing by proxy, by clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I
am informed. The result is, that no horse has a chance to eat, drink,
rest, recuperate, or look well or feel well, and so strangers go about
the Islands mounted as I was to-day.
In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you,
because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with a shrewd
unprincipled rascal. You may leave your door open and your trunk
unlocked as long as you please, and he will not meddle with your
property; he has no important vices and no inclination to commit robbery
on a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business,
he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This trait is
characteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will
overcharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night
(anybody’s—may be the King’s, if the royal steed be in convenient view),
and bring you the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it is
the same animal. If you make trouble, he will get out by saying it was
not himself who made the bargain with you, but his brother, “who went
out in the country this morning.” They have always got a “brother” to
shift the responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows one
day:
“But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on
your cheek.”
The reply was not bad: “Oh, yes—yes—my brother all same—we twins!”
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A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka
warranting him to be in excellent condition.
Smith had a saddle and blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka to
put these on the horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectly
willing to trust the gentleman with the saddle that was already on the
animal, but Smith refused to use it. The change was made; then Smith
noticed that the Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left the
original blanket on the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets,
and so, to cut the bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horse
went lame a mile from town, and afterward got to cutting up some
extraordinary capers. Smith got down and took off the saddle, but the
blanket stuck fast to the horse—glued to a procession of raw places. The
Kanaka’s mysterious conduct stood explained.
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Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day
or two ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. He
discovered to-day that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. He
meant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion
that he had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the
attempt his attention was called to something else by his victimizer.
One more instance, and then I will pass to something else. I am informed
that when a certain Mr. L., a visiting stranger, was here, he bought a
pair of very respectable-looking match horses from a native. They were
in a little stable with a partition through the middle of it—one horse
in each apartment. Mr. L. examined one of them critically through a
window (the Kanaka’s “brother” having gone to the country with the key),
and then went around the house and examined the other through a window
on the other side. He said it was the neatest match he had ever seen,
and paid for the horses on the spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed to
join his brother in the country. The fellow had shamefully swindled L.
There was only one “match” horse, and he had examined his starboard side
through one window and his port side through another! I decline to
believe this story, but I give it because it is worth something as a
fanciful illustration of a fixed fact—namely, that the Kanaka horse-
jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience.
You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good
enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. I
estimate “Oahu” to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five
cents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day before
yesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again to-day for
two dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome and lively
little pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse
on the island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with Mexican
saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars—a horse which is well and widely
known, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition and
everlasting bottom.
You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from San
Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as
much hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives,
and is not very good; it is baled into long, round bundles, about the
size of a large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a
six foot pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the
streets between the upright bales in search of customers. These hay
bales, thus carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital
‘H.’
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The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horse
about a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week’s hay for another
song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass in
your neighbor’s broad front yard without a song at all—you do it at
midnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have been at no
expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle they will
cost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars. You can hire a horse,
saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the owner
will take care of them at his own expense.
It is time to close this day’s record—bed time. As I prepare for sleep,
a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this ocean rock
is toward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home air. But
the words seem somewhat out of joint:
“Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo.”
Translated, that means “When we were marching through Georgia.”
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CHAPTER LXVI.
Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu under
its most favorable auspices—that is, in the full glory of Saturday
afternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The native girls by
twos and threes and parties of a dozen, and sometimes in whole platoons
and companies, went cantering up and down the neighboring streets
astride of fleet but homely horses, and with their gaudy riding habits
streaming like banners behind them. Such a troop of free and easy
riders, in their natural home, the saddle, makes a gay and graceful
spectacle. The riding habit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf,
like a tavern table cloth brilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins
once, then apparently passed between the limbs and each end thrown
backward over the same, and floating and flapping behind on both sides
beyond the horse’s tail like a couple of fancy flags; then, slipping the
stirrup-irons between her toes, the girl throws her chest forward, sits
up like a Major General and goes sweeping by like the wind.
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The girls put on all the finery they can on Saturday afternoon—fine
black silk robes; flowing red ones that nearly put your eyes out; others
as white as snow; still others that discount the rainbow; and they wear
their hair in nets, and trim their jaunty hats with fresh flowers, and
encircle their dusky throats with home-made necklaces of the brilliant
vermillion-tinted blossom of the _ohia_; and they fill the markets and
the adjacent street with their bright presences, and smell like a rag
factory on fire with their offensive cocoanut oil.
Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in the
South Seas, with his face and neck tatooed till he looks like the
customary mendicant from Washoe who has been blown up in a mine. Some
are tattooed a dead blue color down to the upper lip—masked, as it
were—leaving the natural light yellow skin of Micronesia unstained from
thence down; some with broad marks drawn down from hair to neck, on both
sides of the face, and a strip of the original yellow skin, two inches
wide, down the center—a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some with
the entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relieved
only by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running across
the face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, from
under shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark of the moon.