Roughing It
Moving among the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants,
squatting in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, and
surrounded by purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on their
hams, and who knows but they may be the old original “ham sandwiches?”
The thought is pregnant with interest.) The poi looks like common flour
paste, and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, and
capable of holding from one to three or four gallons. Poi is the chief
article of food among the natives, and is prepared from the _taro_
plant.
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The _taro_ root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweet
potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When
boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas
bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix
water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment,
and then it is poi—and an unseductive mixture it is, almost tasteless
before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing is
more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, a
fact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of the
Kanakas. I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi as
there is in eating with chopsticks. The forefinger is thrust into the
mess and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out,
thickly coated, just as if it were poulticed; the head is thrown back,
the finger inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off and
swallowed—the eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort of
ecstasy. Many a different finger goes into the same bowl and many a
different kind of dirt and shade and quality of flavor is added to the
virtues of its contents.
Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the _awa_
root. It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction of
the people in former times by certain imported diseases would have been
far greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely a
fancy. All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and his
vitality almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds of
diseases it will restore health after all medicines have failed; but all
are not willing to allow to the _awa_ the virtues claimed for it. The
natives manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in
its effects when persistently indulged in. It covers the body with dry,
white scales, inflames the eyes, and causes premature decripitude.
Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a
Government license of eight hundred dollars a year for the exclusive
right to sell _awa_ root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every
twelve-month; while saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year
for the privilege of retailing whiskey, etc., only make a bare living.
We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish,
and _eats the article raw and alive_! Let us change the subject.
In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed. All the native
population of the town forsook their labors, and those of the
surrounding country journeyed to the city. Then the white folks had to
stay indoors, for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and
cavalieresses that it was next to impossible to thread one’s way through
the cavalcades without getting crippled.
At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious _hula hula_—a
dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated notion of
limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of
movement and accuracy of “time.” It was performed by a circle of girls
with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through an infinite
variety of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was
their “time,” and in such perfect concert did they move that when they
were placed in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads
waved, swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted
and undulated as if they were part and parcel of a single individual;
and it was difficult to believe they were not moved in a body by some
exquisite piece of mechanism.
Of late years, however, Saturday has lost most of its quondam gala
features. This weekly stampede of the natives interfered too much with
labor and the interests of the white folks, and by sticking in a law
here, and preaching a sermon there, and by various other means, they
gradually broke it up. The demoralizing _hula hula_ was forbidden to be
performed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence of few
spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities
and the payment of ten dollars for the same. There are few girls now-a-
days able to dance this ancient national dance in the highest perfection
of the art.
The missionaries have christianized and educated all the natives. They
all belong to the Church, and there is not one of them, above the age of
eight years, but can read and write with facility in the native tongue.
It is the most universally educated race of people outside of China.
They have any quantity of books, printed in the Kanaka language, and all
the natives are fond of reading. They are inveterate church-
goers—nothing can keep them away. All this ameliorating cultivation has
at last built up in the native women a profound respect for chastity—in
other people. Perhaps that is enough to say on that head. The national
sin will die out when the race does, but perhaps not earlier.—But
doubtless this purifying is not far off, when we reflect that contact
with civilization and the whites has reduced the native population from
four hundred thousand (Captain Cook’s estimate,) to _fifty-five
thousand_ in something over eighty years!
Society is a queer medley in this notable missionary, whaling and
governmental centre. If you get into conversation with a stranger and
experience that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are
treading on by finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike
out boldly and address him as “Captain.” Watch him narrowly, and if you
see by his countenance that you are on the wrong tack, ask him where he
preaches. It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of
a whaler. I am now personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and
ninety-six missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the
population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and
mercantile foreigners and their families, and the final fourth is made
up of high officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about
cats enough for three apiece all around.
A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said:
“Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no
doubt?”
“No, I don’t. I’m not a preacher.”
“Really, I beg your pardon, Captain. I trust you had a good season. How
much oil”—
“Oil? What do you take me for? I’m not a whaler.”
“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency.
“Major General in the household troops, no doubt? Minister of the
Interior, likely? Secretary of war? First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber?
Commissioner of the Royal”—
“Stuff! I’m no official. I’m not connected in any way with the
Government.”
“Bless my life! Then, who the mischief are you? what the mischief are
you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did you
come from?”
“I’m only a private personage—an unassuming stranger—lately arrived from
America.”
“No? Not a missionary! Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty’s
Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is too
blissful to be true; alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest
countenance—those oblique, ingenuous eyes—that massive head, incapable
of—of—anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these
tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this,
and”—
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Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied
this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I
shed a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took what
small change he had and “shoved”.
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CHAPTER LXVII.
I still quote from my journal:
I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men
and some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles
and Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme
left of the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King’s Chamberlain) and
Prince William at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal
Highness M. Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives
his princely rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the
Great. Under other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the
female in tracing genealogies, but here the opposite is the case—the
female line takes precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly
sensible, and I recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it
is easy to know who a man’s mother was, but, etc., etc.] and the Vice
President (the latter a white man,) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term
it. The President is the King’s father. He is an erect, strongly built,
massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of
age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat
and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon
them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of
noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under
that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A
knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: “This man,
naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has
charged at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of
savages more than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter
and carnage; has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen
hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to
wooden idols, at a time when no missionary’s foot had ever pressed this
soil, and he had never heard of the white man’s God; has believed his
enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his
childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with
his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King—and now
look at him; an educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a
high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who
has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in
holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the
politics of his country and in general, practical information. Look at
him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative
body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified, statesmanlike
personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he had
been born in it and had never been out of it in his life time. How the
experiences of this old man’s eventful life shame the cheap inventions
of romance!”
The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their
barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred
to one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get
hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over
it and _pray you to death_. Therefore many a native gives up and dies
merely because he _imagines_ that some enemy is putting him through a
course of damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems