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.
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.
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.
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 it 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”—
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”.
