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 lost his presence of mind or betrayed the least
anxiety by voice or manner. When we came to anchor at last, and
Captain Phillips looked at his watch and said, “Sixteen
minutes—I told you it was in her! that’s over three miles an
hour!” I could see he felt entitled to a compliment, and so I
said I had never seen lightning go like that horse. And I never
had.
The landlord of the American said the party had been gone
nearly an hour, but that he could give me my choice of several
horses that could overtake them. I said, never mind—I preferred
a safe horse to a fast one—I would like to have an excessively
gentle horse—a horse with no spirit whatever—a lame one, if he
had such a thing. Inside of five minutes I was mounted, and
perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to label him
“This is a horse,” and so if the public took him for a sheep I
cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I
could see that he had as many fine points as any man’s horse, and
so I hung my hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed
the perspiration from my face and started. I named him after this
island, “Oahu” (pronounced O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to
he started in; I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply
argued the case with him. He resisted argument, but ultimately
yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of that gate and
steered for another one on the other side of the street. I
triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards
he crossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen
gates, and in the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and
threatening to cave the top of my head in, and I was literally
dripping with perspiration. He abandoned the gate business after
that and went along peaceably enough, but absorbed in meditation.
I noticed this latter circumstance, and it soon began to fill me
with apprehension. I said to my self, this creature is planning
some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other—no horse ever
thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing just
for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more
uneasy I became, until the suspense became almost unbearable and
I dismounted to see if there was anything wild in his eye—for I
had heard that the eye of this noblest of our domestic animals is
very expressive.
I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my
mind when I found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and
started him into a faster walk, and then the villainy of his
nature came out again. He tried to climb over a stone wall, five
or six feet high. I saw that I must apply force to this horse,
and that I might as well begin first as last. I plucked a stout
switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he saw it, he
surrendered. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter, which
had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me
alternately of the clattering shake of the great earthquake, and
the sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm.
And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to
pronounce a left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the
American saddle. There is no seat to speak of about it—one might
as well sit in a shovel--and the stirrups are nothing but an
ornamental nuisance. If I were to write down here all the abuse I
expended on those stirrups, it would make a large book, even
without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot so far through, that
the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimes both
feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and
sometimes my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly
dangling about my shins. Even when I was in proper position and
carefully balanced upon the balls of my feet, there was no
comfort in it, on account of my nervous dread that they were
going to slip one way or the other in a moment. But the subject
is too exasperating to write about.
A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall
cocoanut trees, with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up
sixty or seventy feet and topped with a spray of green foliage
sheltering clusters of cocoa-nuts—not more picturesque than a
forest of collossal ragged parasols, with bunches of magnified
grapes under them, would be.
I once heard a gouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree
might be poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a
feather-duster struck by lightning. I think that describes it
better than a picture—and yet, without any question, there is
something fascinating about a cocoa-nut tree—and graceful,
too.
About a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native
grass, nestled sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass
cabins are of a grayish color, are shaped much like our own
cottages, only with higher and steeper roofs usually, and are
made of some kind of weed strongly bound together in bundles. The
roofs are very thick, and so are the walls; the latter have
square holes in them for windows. At a little distance these
cabins have a furry appearance, as if they might be made of bear
skins. They are very cool and pleasant inside. The King’s flag
was flying from the roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty
was probably within. He owns the whole concern thereabouts, and
passes his time there frequently, on sultry days “laying off.”
The spot is called “The King’s Grove.”
Near by is an interesting ruin—the meagre remains of an
ancient heathen temple—a place where human sacrifices were
offered up in those old bygone days when the simple child of
nature, yielding momentarily to sin when sorely tempted,
acknowledged his error when calm reflection had shown it him, and
came forward with noble frankness and offered up his grandmother
as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days when the luckless
sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving
periodical happiness as long as his relations held out; long,
long before the missionaries braved a thousand privations to come
and make them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful
and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it
is to get there; and showed the poor native how dreary a place
perdition is and what unnecessarily liberal facilities there are
for going to it; showed him how, in his ignorance he had gone and
fooled away all his kinfolks to no purpose; showed him what
rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buy food
for next day with, as compared with fishing for pastime and
lolling in the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of the
bounty that nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is
to think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this
beautiful island and never knew there was a hell!
This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was
simply a roofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and
seventy wide—nothing but naked walls, very thick, but not much
higher than a man’s head. They will last for ages no doubt, if
left unmolested. Its three altars and other sacred appurtenances
have crumbled and passed away years ago. It is said that in the
old times thousands of human beings were slaughtered here, in the
presence of naked and howling savages. If these mute stones could
speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they could
describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massed
forms straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces
lit up by the sacrificial fires; of the background of ghostly
trees; of the dark pyramid of Diamond Head standing sentinel over
the uncanny scene, and the peaceful moon looking down upon it
through rifts in the cloud-rack!
When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the Great—who
was a sort of a Napoleon in military genius and uniform
success—invaded this island of Oahu three quarters of a century
ago, and exterminated the army sent to oppose him, and took full
and final possession of the country, he searched out the dead
body of the King of Oahu, and those of the principal chiefs, and
impaled their heads on the walls of this temple.
Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in
its prime. The King and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a
rod of iron; made them gather all the provisions the masters
needed; build all the houses and temples; stand all the expenses,
of whatever kind; take kicks and cuffs for thanks; drag out lives
well flavored with misery, and then suffer death for trifling
offences or yield up their lives on the sacrificial altars to
purchase favors from the gods for their hard rulers. The
missionaries have clothed them, educated them, broken up the
tyrannous authority of their chiefs, and given them freedom and
the right to enjoy whatever their hands and brains produce with
equal laws for all, and punishment for all alike who transgress
them. The contrast is so strong—the benefit conferred upon this
people by the missionaries is so prominent, so palpable and so
unquestionable, that the frankest compliment I can pay them, and
the best, is simply to point to the condition of the Sandwich
Islanders of Captain Cook’s time, and their condition to-day.
Their work speaks for itself.
