 This is Section 50 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 50, The Sacramento Daily Union, May 1866, Part 1. The Sacramento Daily Union, May 21st, 1866. Honolulu, S.I., April 1866. Off. Mounted on my noble steed, Hawaii, pronounced Hawaii, stress on second syllable, a beast that costs $13, and is able to go his mile in three with a bit of margin to it, I departed last Saturday week for—for any place that might turn up. Saturday in Honolulu. Passing through the marketplace 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 troupe of free and easy riders in their natural home, which is the saddle, makes a gay and graceful and exhilarating spectacle. The riding habit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern tablecloth brilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins once, then apparently passed up between the limbs, and each end thrown backward over the same, and floating and flapping behind on both sides, beyond the horses' feet. This tale, like a couple of fancy flags, and then, with a girl that throws her chest forward and sits up like a major general and goes sweeping by like the wind. Gay, says Brown, with a fine irony. Oh, you can't mean it! The girls put on all the finery they can scare up on Saturday afternoon, fine black silks, 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 homemade necklaces of the brilliant vermilion-tinted blossom of the Ohia, and they fill the markets and the adjacent streets with their bright presences and the smell like thunder with their villainous coconut oil. Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny aisles away down in the south seas with his face and neck tattooed till he looks like the customary unfortunate from Reeves River 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 hatbrims like stars in the dark of the moon. Poi for sale! 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 flower 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 callow, or tarot plant. K and T are the same in the Kanaka alphabet, and so are L and R. The tarot 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 Kanaka's bake it underground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside, and let it ferment, and then it is Poi, and a villainous mixture it is. Almost tasteless before it ferments, and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing in the world is more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, a fact which sufficiently accounts for the blithe and humorous character of the Kanaka's. 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 around several times, and drawn as quickly out, thickly coated, just as if it were poultice. The head is thrown back, the finger inserted in the mouth, and the poultice 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. One tall gentleman, with nothing in the world on but a soiled and greasy shirt, thrust in his finger and tested the Poi, shook his head, scratched it with the useful finger, made another test, prospected among his hair, caught something, and ate it. Tested the Poi again, wiped the grimy perspiration from his brow with the universal hand, tested again, blew his nose. Let's move on, Brown, said I, and we moved. Awa for sale. Ditto, fish. 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 venereal 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 native 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 decrepitude. Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a government license of eight hundred dollars a year for an exclusive right to sell awa-root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every twelve months. 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. Let us change the subject. OLD TIME SATURDAYS In old times here, Saturday was a grand gala-day indeed. All the native population of the town forsook their labours, 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. In the afternoon the natives were want to repair to the plain outside the town, and indulge in their ancient sports and pastimes, and bet away their week's earnings on horse-races. One might see two or three thousand, some say five thousand, of these wild riders scurrying over the plain in a mass in those days, and it must have been a fine sight. At night they feasted, and the girls danced the lascivious hula-hula, a dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated motion 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 with 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 quantum-dalla features. This weekly stampede of the natives interfered too much with labour 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 nowadays able to dance this ancient national dance in the highest perfection of the art. THE GOVERNMENT PRISON Cantering across the bridge and down the firm, level, gleaming white coral turnpike that leads toward the south, or the east, or the west, or the north, the points of the compass being all the same to me, and as much as, for good reasons, I have not had an opportunity thus far of discovering whereabouts the sun rises in this country, I know where it sets, but I don't know how it gets there nor which direction it comes from. We presently arrived at a massive coral edifice which I took for a fortress at first, but found out directly that it was the government prison. A soldier at the great gate admitted us without further authority than my countenance, and I suppose he thought he was paying me a handsome compliment when he did so, and so did I, until I reflected that the place was a penitentiary. However, as far as appearances went, it might have been the king's palace, so neat and clean and white, and so full of fragrance of flowers was the establishment, and I was satisfied. We passed through a commodious office whose walls were ornamented with linked strands of polished handcuffs and fetters, through a hall and among the cells above and below. The cells for the men were eight or ten feet high and roomy enough to accommodate the two prisoners and their hammocks, usually put in each, and have space left over for several more. The floors were scrubbed clean and were guiltless of spot or stain of any kind, and the painfully white walls were unmarred by a single mark or blemish. Through ample gratings one could see the blue sky and get his hair blown off by the cool breeze. They call this a prison, the pleasantest quarters in Honolulu. There are four wards, and one hundred and thirty-two prisoners can be housed in rare and roomy comfort within them. There were a number of native women in the female department, poor devils, they hung their heads under the prying eyes of our party as if they were really ashamed of being there. In the condemned cell, and squatting on the floor all swathed in blankets, as if it were cold weather, was a brown-faced, gray-bearded old scallywag who, in a frolicsome mood, had massacred three women and a batch of children—his own property, I believe—and reflects upon that exploit with genuine satisfaction to this hour, and will go to the gallows as tranquilly indifferent as a white man would go to dinner. Out at the back door. The prison-yard, that sad enclosure which, in the prisons of my native America, is a cheerless barren, and yieldeth no vegetation save the gallows tree, with its sorrowful human fruit, is a very garden. The beds, bordered by rows of inverted bottles, the usual style here, were filled with all manner of dainty flowers and shrubs. Chinese mulberry and orange trees stood here and there, well stocked with fruit. A beautiful little pine tree, rare and imported from the far south seas, occupied the centre, with sprays of gracefully arching green spears springing outward like parasol tops, at marked and regular intervals, up at slender stem, and diminishing in diameter with mathematical strictness of graduation, till the sprouting plume at the top stood over a perfect pyramid. Vines clamoured everywhere, and hid from view and clothed with beauty everything that might otherwise have been suggestive of chains and captivity. There was nothing here to remind one of the prisons save a brace of dove-coats containing several pretty birds brought hither from strange, strange lands beyond the sea. These, sometimes, may pine for liberty, and their old free life among the clouds or in the shade of the orange groves, or abroad on the breezy ocean, but if they do, it is likely they take it out in pining as a general thing. Captain Tate, scriptural student. Against one wall of the prison house stands an airy little building which does duty as a hospital. A harmless old lunatic named Captain Tate has his quarters here. He has a wife and children in the town, but he prefers the prison hospital, and has demanded and enjoyed its hospitality—a slip of the pen—no joke intended—for years. He visits his family at long intervals, being free to go and come as he pleases, but he always drifts back to the prison again after a few days. His is a religious mania, and he professes to read sixty chapters of the Bible every day and write them down in a book. He was about down to Chapter 35 when I was introduced to him, I should judge, as it was nearly two in the afternoon. I said, What book are you reading, Captain? The Precious of the Precious, the Book of Books, the Sacred Scriptures, sir. Do you read a good deal in it? Sixty chapters every day—with a perceptible show of vanity, but a weary look in the eye with all—sixty chapters every day and write them all down in a plain, legible hand. It is a good deal! At that rate, you must ultimately get through and run short of material. But the Lord looks out for his own. I am in his hands. He does with me as he wills. I often read some of the same chapters over again, for the Lord tells me what to read, and it is not for me to choose. Providence always shows me the place. No hanging fire? I mean, can you always depend on this information coming to time every day, so to speak? Always, always, sir. I take the sacred volume in my hand, in this manner, every morning, in a devout and prayerful spirit, and immediately and without any evolution on my part, my fingers insert themselves between the leaves, so directed from above, with a sanctified glance aloft. And I know that the Lord desires me to open at that place and begin. I never have to select the chapter myself. The Lord always does it for me. I heard Brown mutter. The old man appears to have a good thing, anyway, and his poi don't cost him anything either. Providence looks out for his regular sixty. The prisoner looks out for his hash, and his family looks out for itself. I have never seen any sounder maniac than him, and I have been around considerable. General George Washington. We were next introduced to General George Washington, or at least to an aged, limping Negro man who calls him by that honored name. He was supposed to be seventy years old, and he looked it. He was as crazy as a loon, and sometimes they say he grows very violent. He was a Samson in a small way, his arms were corded with muscle, and his legs felt as hard as if they were made of wood. He was in a peaceable mood at present, and strongly manacled. They have a hard time with him occasionally, and some time or other he will get in a lively way and eat up the garrison of that prison, no doubt. The native soldiers who guard the palace are afraid of him, and he knows it. His history is a sealed book, or at least all that part of it which transpired previously to the entry of his name as a pensioner upon the Hawaiian government fifteen years ago. He was found carrying on at a high rate at one of the other islands, and it is supposed he was put ashore there from a vessel called the Olive Branch. He has evidently been an old sailor, and it is thought he was one of a party of Negroes who fitted out a ship and sailed from a New England port some twenty years ago. He is fond of talking in his dreamy, incoherent way about the Blue Ridge in Virginia, and seems familiar with Richmond and Lynchburg. I do not think he is the old, original General W. Aloft. Upstairs in the prison are the handsome apartments used by the officers of the establishment, also a museum of quaint and curious weapons of offence and defence of all nations and all ages of the world. The prison is to a great extent a self-supporting institution, through the labour of the convicts farmed out to load and unload ships and work on the highways, and I am not sure but that it supports itself and pays a surplus into the public treasury besides, but I have no note of this, and I seldom place implicit confidence in my memory in matters where figures and finance are concerned and have not been thought of for a fortnight. This government prison is in the hands of W. C. Park, Marshal of the Kingdom, and he has small need to be ashamed of his management of it. Without wishing to betray too much knowledge of such matters I should say that this is the model prison of the western half of the world at any rate. Mark Twain. END OF SECTION 50 Sad Accident. I have just met an estimable lady, Mrs. Captain Jollipson, whose husband, with her assistance, commands the wailing-bark Lucretia Wilkerson, and she said, Oh, I've never had such a time of it. I'm clean out of luck, I do believe. The wind's been dead ahead with me all this day. It appears to me that I can't do no way but that it comes out wrong. First I turned out this morning, and says I, here's it go, eight bells and no duff yet. I just know it's going to blow great guns for me today, and so it's come out. Start fair, sail fair, otherwise just the reverse. Well, I hove on my dress, and cleared for the market, and took the big basket, which I don't do when I'm alone, because I'm on the short lay when it comes to eating. But when the old man's in port it's different, you know, and I go fixed when I recruit for him. Never come back in ballast then, because he's on the long lay, and it's expensive, too. You can depend on it, his leakage and shrinkage shows up on his home-bills when he goes out of port, and it's all on account of recruiting, too, though he says it's on account of togery for me, which is a likely yarn, when I can't even buy a set of new halyards for my bonnet, but he growls. And what few slops I do have I've got to smuggle them, and yet, bless you, if we were to ship them the freight on mine wouldn't pay primage on his, but where was I? Oh, yes. I hove on my dress, and hove down toward the market, and while I was laying off and on before the post office, here comes a shipkeeper round the corner, three sheets in the wind, and his dead light stove in, and I see by the way he was bullying that if he didn't shear off and short in sail, he'd foul my labored stuntsle, boom, which I had my basket on, because, you see, he'd been among his friends, having a bit of a gam, and had got about one fid too much aboard, and his judgment had fetched away in the meantime, and so he steered bad, and was making latitude all the time when he ought to have been making longitude, and here he was to winward of me, but making so much leeway that—well, you see how it was—I backed off as fast as I could, and sung out to him to port his helm! But it warn't no use. He'd everything drawing, and I had considerable steering-way, and he just struck me a little about the beam, and down I went, head-on, and scunned my elbow. I said, Bless my life! And she said, Well, you may say it! My! such a jolt! It started everything. It's worse than being pulled. I shouldn't wonder if I'd have to be hoved down! And then she spread her hand alongside of her mouth, and sung out, Susie, ahoy! to another woman, who rounded to, to wait for her, and the two fell off before the wind, and sailed away together. TRANSLATION Eight bells stands for the closing of a watch, two to an hour, four hours to a watch, six watches in a day, on board ship. Duff is Jack Tarr's dessert, a sort of dough with dried apples or something of the kind. And it, on extra occasions, cleared for the market. A ship clears for her voyage when she takes out her papers at the Custom House. Short lay, and long lay. These phrases are confined to the whaling interest. Neither the officers nor men get any wages on a whale ship, but receive, instead, a proportion of all the bone and oil taken. Jack usually gets about the one hundred and twentieth part of all the catch, or profits of the voyage, for his share, and this is called a long lay. The captain generally gets a tenth, twelfth, or fourteenth, which is a short lay, and the other officers in proportion. Some captains also have perquisites besides their lay, a dollar or more on every barrel of the catch, over a certain number. The luckiest captain of the lot made fifty thousand dollars last season. Very good for a few months' work. When a ship is ready to sail, and must suddenly supply the place of some sea-man who has fallen sick, candidates will take advantage of these circumstances, and demand a short lay as a second mate to ship as the last man, and complete the crew. I am informed, but I do not believe it, that this is termed the lay of the last minstrel. Recruit. The whaling voyage to the North Seas occupies about seven months. Then the vessel returns to Honolulu, tranships her oil to the States, refits, and goes over to the coast of California about November or December, to put in her idle time catching humpback whales, or devilfish, returning here, along in March and April, to recruit. That is, procure vegetables, and especially potatoes, which are a protective against scurvy, and give the man a few days run on shore, and then off for the North again, as early in the spring as possible. Those vessels, which do not consider the coast fishing profitable, because of the stoving of boats by the savage humpbacks, and the consequent loss of men and material, go to Westerd, as they term going down to the line after sperm whales, and when they have finished this between season, they go over and recruit at Japan, and from thence proceed directly north. Leakage and shrinkage. When a whaler returns here with her cargo, the United States Consul estimates its probable value in the East, and buys the interests of the officers and men on behalf of the owners of the ship, and pays for the same in gold. To secure the ship owner against loss, a bill of contingencies is brought against poor jack by the Consul, leakage and shrinkage being among the items, which reduces the profits of his long voyage, about one-half, or two-thirds. For instance, take the case of the whaling bark last year. The Consul considered oil to be worth between one dollar and seventy-five cents, and two dollars a gallon, in greenbacks, in the States. He put it down at one dollar and seventy-five cents to be on the safe side, and then reduced as follows. First, premium to be paid for money and difference between gold and paper, so much. Jack must be paid in gold. Second, an allowance of eight percent for probable leakage and shrinkage of the oil on its homeward voyage. Third, freight on the homeward voyage, paid by Jack. Fourth, interest and insurance on the cargo, hence to the States, paid by Jack. Fifth, commission of the owner at home, two-and-a-half percent, for selling the cargo, paid by Jack. And after all these reductions, what do you suppose the Consul paid Jack for his one-hundred-and-twentieth lay in a cargo of oil worth over one dollar seventy-five cents a gallon at home? He paid him seventy-four cents a gallon. As a general thing, the shipowner at home makes a princely profit out of this gouging of the sailor man, but instances have occurred, rarely, however, where the price set by the Consul here was so much above the real value of the oil at home that all the gouging was not sufficient to save the shipowner from loss. Home bills. It makes no difference how much money a sailor brings into port. He is soon head over heels in debt. In order to secure his services on a voyage, the ship is obliged to assume this indebtedness. The item is entered against Jack on the ship's books at the home port in the east as his home bill. If the voyage proves lucky, the ship gets even on Jack's home bill by subtracting it from his lay. But if she takes no oil, she must pay the bill anyhow, and is out and injured, of course. These home bills are first assumed by one of the professional sharks in New Bedford and New London, who furnish crews to ships. Say Jack owes fifty dollars, the shark enters his name for a voyage, assumes his debt, advances him a dollar or so for a farewell spree, and takes his note for a hundred and fifty dollars, and the shipowner agrees to cash it at the end of six months. Ships have left port responsible for five thousand dollars home bills, lost four or five men by desertion, been to great trouble and expense to supply other men, and then had no luck and failed to catch a single whale. Slops. Improvident Jack is apt to leave port short of jackets, trousers, shirts, tobacco, pipes, letter paper, and so forth and so on. The ship takes a large quantity of these things long, and supplies them to him at extremely healthy prices, so that sometimes, after a long, unlucky voyage, no wages and heavy home bills and bills for slops, Jack will return to port very considerably in debt to the ship, and the ship must stand the loss, for an unprofitable voyage squares all such accounts. In squaring up a voyage before the consul, the ship captain piles up the slop bills as high as he can get them, though it does not put a single cent in his own pocket. He forgets in his enthusiasm for his owner's interest that while he is gouging Jack for the benefit of the firm, the firm are gouging himself and Jack too by the system of the consular assessment that I have mentioned above. The captain says to the consul, put down three pair of boots on this man's slop bill. Jack, but I didn't have but one pair, sir. Captain, belay, don't talk back, you might have had them if you wanted them, and put them down for eleven pair of socks, Jack, but I only had two pairs, sir. Captain, well, blanket, is that any of my fault? They there for anybody that wanted them? And set them down for two ream of letter paper. Jack, why, I never read a letter whilst I was gone, sir! Captain, hold your yop. Do you calculate for me to be responsible for all your damn foolishness? You might have had four ream, if you wanted it, and set on ten per cent for other truck, which I don't recollect what it was. And so Jack is gouged by the captain for the owner's exclusive benefit, and both are fleeced by that same owner with strict impartiality. Perhaps the captain's lay will go east to be sold, and the firm will sell at a dollar and a half, and then report to him that the market had fallen, and they only got a dollar for it. Thus ungrateful are they to the captain who gouged the seaman on his slops for their sole benefit. Primage. This term obtains in most seaports. No man can tell now what gave it birth, for it is very ancient, and its origin is long ago forgotten. It is a tax of five per cent on a ship's freight-bills, and in old times went to her captain. In our day, however, it goes to the ship-owner with the other freight-money, although it forms a separate item in the freight-bill, or is turned over to the agent who procured a cargo for a vessel as his commission. When you engage for the shipment of a lot of freight, you make no mention of this five per cent primage, but you perfectly understand that it will be added, and you must pay it. Therefore, when you are ostensibly shipping at twenty cents, you are really shipping at twenty one. Laying off and on. A sailor phrase sufficiently well understood by landsmen to need no explanation. Shipkeeper. A man who stands guard on a whaler and takes care of the ship when the boats and the crew are off after whales. Bulling. A term usually applied to the chafing of the vessels together when riding at anchor in harbours subject to chopping swells. Some whalers say that one reason why they avoid San Francisco is that this bullying process in our bay is more damaging to their vessels frequently than the long voyage. Gam. The whaleman's phrase for a gossip. Very common here. Fid. The whaleman's term for our smile. Drink. A fid is an instrument which the sailor uses when he splices the main brace on board ship. Fetched away. A nautical phrase signifying to break loose from fastenings in a storm, such as the fetching away of furniture, rigging, etc. Scunned. After examining various authors I have discovered that this is a provincial distortion of our words skinned. Pulled. A term signifying the arraigning of a ship's officers before the courts by the crew to answer for alleged cruelties practiced upon them on the high seas, such as the pulling of captains and mates by the crews of the Mercury, the White Swallow, the Great Republic, etc., in the San Francisco courts. Here is another reason why, out of the eighty-seven American whale ships that will fish in the North Seas this summer, only about sixteen will venture to touch at San Francisco either going or coming. They find it safer and cheaper to rendezvous and procure supplies here and save 4,200 miles extra sailing than to start from and return to San Francisco and run the chance of getting pulled. Honolulu would not amount to anything at all without her whaling trade, and so Jack cannot pull his captain here. No matter what his grievance was he could not easily get it before these courts. The lawyer who ventured to take his case would stand a fair chance of being run out of town by the enraged community. But the whaler-man says, You drop into Frisco and great Neptune, your men will pull you before you get your anchor down, and there you are for three months on expenses waiting on them courts, and they'll go in and swear to the infernalist pack of lies, and the jury'll believe every word of it, and the judge'll read you a sermon that'll take the hair off your head, and then he'll take and jam you into jail. Oh no, they don't pay a whale ship to stop at San Francisco. Hove down. In ports where there are no docks, damaged vessels are hauled out and hoved down on their sides when repairs to their bottoms are required. By this time if you will go back and read the first paragraphs of this letter you may be able to understand them. Every section of our western hemisphere seems supplied with a system of technicalities, etiquette, and slang peculiar to itself. The above chapter is intended to give you a somewhat exaggerated idea of the technicalities of conversation in Honolulu, bred from the great whaling interest which centers here, and naturally infused into the vocabulary of the place. Your favorite California similes were bred from the technicalities of surface mining. Those of Washu come from the profound depths of the main lead, and those of the Honolulian were born of whalebone, blubber, and the traffic of the seas. Perhaps no single individual would use more than two or three of the nautical and whaling phrases I have quoted in any one conversation, but you might hear all of them in the course of a week if you talked with a good many people. And etiquette varies according to one's surroundings. In the mining camps of California, when a friend tenders you a smile or invites you to take a blister, it is etiquette to say, Here is hoping your dirtle pan out gay. In Washu, when you are requested to put in a blast, or invited to take your regular pison, etiquette admonishes you to touch glasses and say, Here is hoping you'll strike it rich in the lower level. And in Honolulu, when your friend the whaler asks you to take a fid with him, it is simple etiquette to say, Here is eighteen hundred barrels old salt, but drink hardy is universal. That is the orthodox reply the world over. In San Francisco sometimes, if you offend a man, he proposes to take his coat off and inquires, Are you on it? If you are, you can take your coat off, too. In Virginia City, in former times, the insulted party, if he were a true man, would lay his hand gently on his six-shooter and say, Are you healed? But in Honolulu, if Smith offends Jones, Jones asks, with a rising inflection on the last word, which is excessively aggravating, How much do you weigh? Smith replies, Sixteen hundred and forty pound, and you? Two ton to a dot, at a quarter past eleven this four noon. Peel yourself, you're my blubber! Apologetic and explanatory. When I began this letter I meant to furnish some facts and figures concerning the great Pacific whaling traffic to the end that San Francisco might take into consideration the expediency of making an effort to divert the patronage of the fleet to herself, if it seemed well to do so. And chiefly I meant to try and explain why that patronage does not gravitate to that centre naturally and of its own accord. True, many know the reason already, and need no explanation, but many more do not understand it so well or know so much about it. But, not being in a sufficiently serious mood today, I have wisely left for my next letter the discussion of a subject of such overwhelming gravity. Mark Twain End of Section 51 This is Section 52 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 52, The Sacramento Daily Union, May 1866, Part 3. The Sacramento Daily Union, May 23rd, 1866. Honolulu, April 1866. The Whaling Trade The whaling trade of the North Seas, which is by no means insignificant, centres in Honolulu. Shorn of it, this town would die. Its businessmen would leave, and its real estate would become valueless, at least as city property, though Honolulu might flourish afterwards as a fine sugar plantation, the soil being rich and scarcely needing irrigation. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce might do worse than make an effort to divert the whaling trade to her city. Honolulu fits out and provisions a majority out of ninety-six whalers this year, and receives a very respectable amount of money for it. Last year she performed this service for only fifty-one vessels, so you can see how the trade is increasing. Sailors always spend all their money before they leave port. Last year they spent a hundred and fifty thousand dollars here, and will doubtless spend double as much when this year's fleet returns. It is said that in the palmy days of whaling, fifteen or twenty years ago, they have squandered as high as a million and a half in this port, at the end of a successful voyage. There have been vast fleets of whale ships fitted out here and provisioned and recruited in a single year in those days, and everything promises that the whaling interest will now move steadily forward under the impetus of the long, continued high rates of oil and bone, until it eclipses in importance any degree it has ever attained in former times. In chartering vessels to carry home the catch of whalers, in equipping them, and supplying and recruiting them, and in relieving their crews of their money at the end of the season, San Francisco might manage to get several hundred thousands a year out of the whaling trade, if she could get it into her hands, or a million or so, should whaling again reach its former high prosperity. It costs from one thousand dollars all the way up to twenty thousand dollars to provision and fit a whaler here for her voyage to the North Seas, including paying off crew and taking them by and large, the average is about six thousand dollars to each vessel. Of the ninety-six ships which go North from here this season, only forty-nine will fit here, the other forty-seven being the increase in tonnage and on their first voyage were equipped at home. The home equipment is generally for two full seasons, so Honolulu will not get the job of supplying these new ships for a couple of years yet, but after that she will have their whole custom, unless, perhaps, San Francisco can make a satisfactory bid for the whaling trade in the meantime. There have been over four hundred whalers in the North Seas at one time in the palmy days of the trade, two-thirds of which were supplied in this market, and paid Honolulu over a million for doing it, even at the moderate prices of those days. Concerning oil and bone. Oil is valuable, but whale bone is more so. Sperm whales are chiefly caught at the line, or west-art, as they term it. They do not yield any bone, but the oil is worth from seventy-five to one hundred percent more than any other at the present time. Humpbacks and devilfish are caught on the coast of California between seasons. The yield is called Coast Oil. They yield no bone. Okotsk whales yield about twenty percent less bone than the Arctic Whale, and it is worth four to five cents a pound less than Arctic. The catch is a term which signifies the fruits of a voyage. The average catch for three years past of ships sailing out of this port was about 650 barrels of oil a year to each vessel and 8,000 pounds of bone. Consular prices. The consular prices at which crews of whalers were paid off here in the fall of 1865 were as follows. Whale oil sixty-four cents a gallon. Coast oil sixty. Sperm oil ninety-two. Okotsk bone seventy-four cents a pound. Arctic seventy-eight in gold. These prices were not one half what the articles were worth in the eastern markets in currency. Past and present. The palmy days of whaling, the phrase which one hears here as often as he hears in California of matters which transpired in an early day there, or in Washu of the flush times of sixty-three, refers to a period some fifteen years gone by. But the palmy days, in a modified form, lasted clear up to 1853. Let me give a few figures. The fleet brought to this port in 1853 oil four million gallons. Bone two million twenty thousand two hundred and sixty-four pounds. Then for several years the yield gradually fell away till in 1858 the figures were oil considerable under three million gallons. Bone one million six hundred and fourteen thousand seven hundred and ten pounds. Five years after in 1863 in the midst of the war the catch had fallen away down to oil seven hundred and thirty-two thousand thirty-one gallons. Bone three hundred and thirty-seven thousand forty-three pounds. Still lower in 1864 oil six hundred and forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty-two gallons. Bone three hundred and thirty-nine thousand three hundred and thirty-one pounds. But in 1865 in spite of the pirate Shenandoah the trade almost held its own. It had struck bottom as we say in Washu and was ready to start up again. The yield was oil six hundred and twenty-one thousand four hundred and thirty-four gallons. Bone three hundred and thirty-seven thousand three hundred and ninety-four pounds. These last figures were for sixty-seven ships all told fifty-one of which went from here. We may look for better results this season with ninety-six vessels in the fleet and next year the palmy days may come again for everything that can be turned into a whale ship by any process known to art is being bought up or chartered in the east now for this trade and in due time the icy solitudes of the North Seas will once more become populace with the winged servants of commerce. What commands the whaler patronage? I have talked whaler talk and read whaling statistics and asked questions about the whaling interest every now and then for two or three weeks and have discovered that it was easy to get plausible information concerning every point connected with this commerce save one. And that was why is it that this remote port in a foreign country is made the rendezvous of the whaling fleet instead of the seemingly more eligible one of San Francisco on our own soil? This was a stunner. Most people would venture a chance shot at one portion of the mystery but nobody was willing to attempt its entire solution. The truth seems to be that there is no main central prominent reason for it but it is made up of a considerable bundle of reasons neither of which is especially important when taken by itself. San Francisco versus Honolulu. 1. See how the case stands. In Honolulu it is not a holiday job to ship a crew, natives comprise it chiefly, and the government frowns upon their employment as sailors because it causes the agricultural interest to suffer for want of labour. And you see the plantations build up the whole kingdom while the whaling trade only builds up Honolulu and one or two smaller seaports. So the government first made the whalers enter into bonds of $100 for each man, that is to ensure the return of that man to the kingdom. The bond was increased until now it is $300, and shipping taxes of various kinds have been instituted which amount altogether to about $600 for each man, which must be paid in gold to the government when the man ships. Ships usually go out under bonds of $3,000 to $10,000 for the return of their crews. The bond system which was intended to keep the Kanakas all at home don't work. The whalers still are obliged to take natives or go without crews. So urged by the agricultural interest an attempt will be made in the legislature, which convenes two weeks hence, to pass a bill entirely forbidding the shipping of natives. If this is accomplished it will give San Francisco one good chance to get the whaling patronage, and it is a better and more permanent and safer thing to have than rich but ephemeral mines. In favor of San Francisco it is acknowledged that as soon as it became the established whaling rendezvous, whaling crews would repair to it, and men could be shipped at small expense and without bonds. 2. It is 2100 miles from San Francisco to Honolulu so that these whalers, by coming here, do 4200 miles more sailing than they need to and waste about a month and a half of time in doing it. 3. They cannot insure directly here. The policies must go all the way to the east and then maybe the insurance office may approve them and maybe it may reject them and perchance the ship may be lost in the meantime. In San Francisco insurance could be directly affected. 4. Here the whole whaling fleet nearly is paid off at once and in gold, and of course exchange goes up to a high figure, started at five or six last fall and went up to ten percent premium. It stands at two-and-a-half even now when there is no a special call for money. In San Francisco it need never go to two-and-a-half at any time. Whalemen's bills are the best paper in the country being always sure and prompt. Scarcely a single failure to pay them is recorded. 5. Facilities for transshipment of oil eastward would be much greater in San Francisco than here. 6. Facilities for chartering, equipping, provisioning, and recruiting whalers would be much greater and cheaper in San Francisco than here. 7. Here it takes a mild eternity for a whaler or his agent to communicate with a ship owner at home. In San Francisco your steamers overland stages and telegraphs bring them face to face. I think I have stated the case fairly, in facilities for shipping crews, in economy of time and distance of travel of a voyage, in facilities for insuring, in cheapness of money, in facilities for transshipping cargoes, ditto ditto for chartering and equipping vessels, and ditto ditto for communicating with owners, Honolulu cannot begin to compete with San Francisco. And why does the whaling fleet rendezvous in a remote port in a foreign land instead of a convenient one at home? An attempt at a solution. I have got the question answered by piecemeal by many different persons, and I will jot down the several items here. They say it is hard to get crews in San Francisco, but they confess that this would not be the case if that city became the established rendezvous. They say men can run away so easily there, and put the ship in for their home bills, etc., but that here they can't get off the islands. They say the ship is preyed upon by everybody, and fleeced for everything from spun yarn up to salt-beef. They say their ships are worn out by bullying in the harbor there, but the harbor is smooth and roomy here. And they say, finally, and then the old sea-dogs gnash their teeth and swear till the air turns blue around them, that there's more land-sharks, lawyers, in Frisco than there's fiddlers in Hell, I tell ya, and you'll get pulled before your anchors down. If there is a main, central count in the indictment against San Francisco, that is it. A whaler can be snatched up, pulled, by his men and the land-sharks, and hauled into court in San Francisco with the utmost facility, but they cannot touch him here. The lawyer who took charge of a sailor's complaint against his captain might as well emigrate. He could practice no more in Honolulu. True, when a case is so flagrant that it cannot possibly be overlooked, a sort of trial is sometimes had, but it never amounts to much. The above are the whaling captain's arguments, or were, in the first place, but from their mouths they have gone into everybody's else, and belong to nobody in particular now. Then there are other arguments, which you hear oftener from other people than from the whalers themselves. For instance, several persons have explained about in this wise. In San Francisco, the agent transacts the captain's business exactly as it is done here, and then brings in a bill, item by item, for commissions. A bill that any man can understand in a minute, and it looks expensive. But here the agent, with fine sacacity, charges no commissions. At least they do not appear on the surface. They are faithfully rung into the general bill in a sort of debtor to sundries fashion, though, and nobody notices it, and consequently nobody grumbles. Another powerful argument may be stated thus. A whaleman don't amount to much in San Francisco, but here he is the biggest frog in the pond. Up there the agent lets him dance attendance until a more important business is attended to, and then goes out with him, and assists him in just such of his concerns as absolutely require assistance, and then leaves him to paddle his own canoe with the remainder. But here the agent welcomes the old salt like a long-lost brother, and makes him feel that he is a man of consequence, and so he is, and should be so treated in San Francisco. And the agent attends closely to all the whalers' shore business of every kind whatever, if it is desired, and thus the captain's stay in port is a complete holiday. A suggestion. If I were going to advise San Franciscans as to the best strategy to employ in order to secure the whaling trade, I would say, cripple your facilities for pulling sea captains on every pretense that sailors can trump up, and show the whaler a little more consideration when he is in port. All other objections will die of themselves. A step made. A nucleus is already formed up there. Swift and Allen have opened a branch of their new Bedford house in San Francisco, and their ships—they have eight at sea now—will rendezvous there hereafter. They are going to add several vessels to their fleet this season. Sixteen whalers, and possibly many more, will rendezvous at San Francisco this year. Those captains who have tried that port during the past two years are satisfied with it, all but one or two, who have been polled. Mark Twain. Return to San Francisco Daily Union Index. The San Francisco Daily Union May 24, 1866. Honolulu, April 1866. Paradise and the Pari. Joke. I have written up the handsome Nuannu Valley—noted the mausoleum of the departed kings of Hawaii by the wayside—admire the neat residences, surrounded by beautiful gardens that border the turnpike. Stood, at last, after six miles of travel, on the famous Pari—the divide, we would call it—and looked down the precipice of six or eight hundred feet over which old Kamehameha I drove the army of the king of Oahu three quarters of a century ago, and gazed upward at a sharp peak close at my left, springing several hundred feet above my head like a colossal church spire. Stood there and saw the sun go down, and the little plain below, and the sea that bordered it, become shrouded in thick darkness, and then saw the full moon rise up and touch the tops of the billows, skip over the gloomy valley, and paint the upper third of the high peak as white as silver, and heard the ladies say, oh, beautiful, and such a strong contrast, and heard the gentleman remark, by George, talk about scenery, how's that? It was all very well, but the same place in daylight does not make so fine a picture as the Kalihi Valley, pronounced Kalihi, stress on the second syllable. All citizens talk about the Pari, all strangers visit the first thing, all scribblers write about it, but nobody talks or writes about or visits the Pari's charming neighbor, the Kalihi Valley. I think it was a fortunate accident that led me to stumble into this enchanted ground. Another paradise. For a mile or two we followed a trail that branched off from the terminus of the Turnpike that leads past the government prison, and bending close around the rocky point of a foothill we found ourselves fairly in the valley, and the panorama began to move. After a while the trail took the course of a brook that came down the center of the narrowing canyon, and followed it faithfully throughout its eccentric windings. On either side the ground rose gradually for a short distance, and then came the mountain barriers, densely wooded precipices on the right and left that towered hundreds of feet above us, and up which one might climb about as easily as he could climb up the side of a house. It was a novel sort of scenery, those mountain walls, face around and look straight across at one of them, and sometimes it presented a bold square front, with small inclination out of the perpendicular, move on a little and look back, and it was full of sharp ridges, bright with sunlight, and with deep shady clefts between, and what had before seemed a smooth boulder, sat in the bungly thick shrubbery on the face of the wall, was now a bare rampart of stone that projected far out from the mass of green foliage, and was as sharply defined against the sky as if it had been built of solid masonry by the hand of man. Ahead the mountain looked portly, swollen, if you please, and were marked all over, up and down, diagonally and crosswise, by sharp ribs that reminded one of the fantastic ridges which the wind builds of the drifting snow on a plane. Sometimes these ridges were drawn all about the upper quarter of a mountain, checking it off in velvety green squares and diamonds and triangles, some beaming with sunlight and others softly shaded. The whole upper part of the mountain looking something like a vast green veil thrown over some object that had a good many edges and corners to it, then a sort of regular eaves all around, and from this the main body of the mountain swept down with a slight outward curve to the valley below. All over these highlands the forest trees grew so thickly that even close at hand they seemed like solid banks of foliage. These trees were principally of two kinds, the koa and the kukui, the one with a very light green leaf and the other with a dark green. Occasionally there were broad alternate belts of each extending diagonally from the mountain's bases to their summits, and here and there, in the midst of the dark green, were great patches of the bright light-colored leaves, so that to look far down the valley, along the undulating front of the barrier of peaks, the effect was as if the sun were streaming down upon it through breaks and rifts in the clouds, lighting up belts at intervals all along and leaving those intervening darkened by the shadows of the clouds, and yet there was not a shred of a cloud in the whole firmament, it was very soft and dreamy and beautiful. And following down the two tall ridges that walled the valley in, we saw them terminate at last in two bold black headlands that came together like a v, and across this gate ran a narrow zone of the most brilliant light-green tint, the shoal water of the distant sea, between reef and shore, and beyond this the somber blue of the deeper water stretched away to the horizon. The varied picture of the lights and shadows on the wooded mountains, the strong dark outlines of the gate, and the bright green water and the belt of the blue beyond, was one replete with charming contrasts and beautiful effects, a revelation of fairyland itself. The mountain stream beside us, brawling over its rocky bed, leapt over a miniature precipice occasionally, and then reposed for a season in a limpid pool at her base, reflecting the dank and dripping vines and fans that clung to the wall and protruded in bunches and festoons through breaks in the sparkling cascade. On the gentle rising ground about us were shady groves of forest trees, the ko, the koa, the breadfruit, the lau hala, the orange, lime, bukuyi, and many others, and handsomest of all the ohia with its feathery tufts of splendid vermilion-tinted blossoms, a colouring so vivid as to be almost painful to the eye. Large tracks were covered with large how—how—bushes, whose sheltering foliage is so thick as to be almost impervious to rain. It is spotted all over with a rich yellow flower, shaped something like a tea-cup, and sometimes it is further embellished by innumerable white-bell-shaped blossoms that grow upon a running vine with a name unknown to me. Here and there were wide crops of bushes completely overgrown and hidden beneath the glossy green leaves of another species of vine, and so dense was this covering that it would hardly be possible for a bird to fly through it. Then there were open spaces well carpeted with grass and silven avenues that wound hither and thither till they lost themselves among the trees. In one open spot a vine of the species I last mentioned had taken a possession of two tall dead stumps and wound around and about them and swung out from their tops and twined their meeting tendrils together into a faultless arch. Man with all his art could not have improved its symmetry. Verily, with its rank luxuriance of vines and blossoms, its groves of forest trees, its shady nooks and grassy lawns, its crystal brook and its wild and beautiful mountain scenery, with that charming far-off glimpse of the sea, Kalihi is the valley of enchantment come again. Sam Brannon's Palace While I am on the subject of scenery I might as well speak of Sam Brannon's Palace or the bungalow, as it is popularly called. Years ago it was built and handsomely furnished by Shilbert, now of San Francisco, at a cost of between thirty and forty thousand dollars, and in the day of its glory must have considerably outshone its regal neighbor the Palace of the King. It was a large mansion with compact walls of coral dimensions say 60 or 70 feet front and 80 feet depth perhaps, including the ample veranda or portico in front. This portico was supported by six or eight tall fluted Corinthian columns, some three feet in diameter, a dozen coral steps led up to the portico from the ground, and these extended the whole length of the front. There were four rooms on the main floor, some twenty-four feet square each and about twenty feet high, besides a room or so of smaller dimensions. When its white paint was new this must have been a very stately edifice, but finally it passed into Brannon's hands for the sum of thirty thousand dollars, never mind the particulars of the transaction, and it has been going to decay for the past ten years. It has arrived there now and it is the completest ruin I ever saw. One or two of the pillars have fallen and lie like grand Theban ruins diagonally across the wide portico. Part of the roof of the portico has caved down and a huge gridiron of the plasterless laughing droops from above and threatens the head of the apostrophizing stranger. The windows are dirty and some of them broken. The shutters are unhinged. The elegant doors are marred and splintered. Within the floors are strewn with debris from the shattered ceilings, weeds grow in damp mold in obscure corners, lizards peep curiously out from unsuspected hiding-places and then scurry along the walls and disappear in gaping crevices. The summer breeze sighs fitfully through the desolate chambers, and the unforbidden sun looks down through many a liberal vent in roof and ceiling. The spacious grounds without are rank with weeds and the fences are crazy with age and chronic debility. No more complete and picturesque ruin than the bungalow exists today in the old world or the new. It is the most discouraged-looking pile the sun visits on its daily round, perhaps. In the sorrowful expression of its deserted halls, its fallen columns and its decayed magnificence, it seems to proclaim, in the homely phrase of California, that it has got enough pie. Thomas Jefferson John Quincy Adams of San Francisco, agent for the State Agricultural Society of California, and agent of pretty much all the other institutions of the kind in the world, including the Paris Exhibition, who has traveled all over these islands during the past eight months and gathered more information and collected more silkworms and flowers and seeds, and done more work and stayed longer in people's houses an uninvited guest, and got more terrific hints and had a rougher time generally on an imperceptible income than any other man the century has produced, is Sam Brannon's trusted agent to put the bungalow in elegant repair and draw on him for five thousand dollars for the purpose. It is not possible for me to say when the work will be commenced or who will take the daring contract, but I can say that so small a sum as five thousand dollars expended on the bungalow would only spoil it as an attractive ruin without making it amount too much as a human habitation. Let it alone, Brannon, and give your widely known and much discussed agent another job. The King's Palace stands not far from the melancholy bungalow in the center of grounds extensive enough to accommodate a village. The place is surrounded by neat and substantial coral walks, but the gates pertaining to them are out of repair and so was the soldier who admitted us or at any rate his uniform was. He was an exception, however, for the native soldiers usually keep their uniforms in good order. The palace is a large roomy frame building and was very well furnished once, though now some of the appurtenances have lost some of their elegance, but the King don't care, I suppose, as he spends nearly all his time at his modest country residence at Waikiki. A large apartment in the center of the building serves as the royal council chamber. The walls are hung with life-sized portraits of various European monarchs sent hither as tokens of that cousinly regard which exists between all Kings at least on paper. To the right is the reception room or hall of audience, and to the left are the library and a sort of anti-room or private audience chamber. In one of these are life-sized portraits of old Kamehameha the Great, and one or two queens and princes. The old war-hors had a dark brown, broad and beardless face, with native intelligence apparent in it, and something of a crafty expression about the eye, hair white with age and cropped short, in the picture he is clad in a white shirt, long red vest, and with a famous feather war-cloak overall. We were permitted to examine the original cloak, it is very ample in its dimensions, and is made entirely of the small silky bright yellow feathers of the Man of War, or a tropic bird, closely woven into a strong coarse netting of grass by a process which promises shortly to become a lost art in as much as only one native, and he an old man, is left who understands it in its highest elegance. These feathers are rare and costly, because each bird has but two of them, one under each wing, and the birds are not plenty. It requires several generations to collect the materials and manufacture this cloak, and had the work been performed in the United States under our fine army contract system, it would have cost the government more millions of dollars than I can estimate without a large arithmetic and blackboard. In old times when a king put on his gorgeous feather war-cloak it meant trouble. Some other king and his subjects were going to catch it. We were shown other war cloaks made of yellow feathers, striped and barred with broad bands of red ones, fine specimens of barbaric splendor. The broken spear of a terrible chief who flourished seven hundred years ago, according to the tradition, was also brought out from among the sacred relics of a former age and displayed. It is said that this chieftain stood seven feet high without his boots. He was permanently without them, and was able to snake an enemy out of the ranks with this spear at a distance of forty to sixty and even a hundred feet, and the spear of hard, heavy native wood was once thirty feet long. The name of this pagan hero is sounded no more from the trumpet of fame, his bones lie, none knows where, and the record of his gallant deeds is lost. But he was a brick, we may all depend on that. How the wood of the weapon has managed to survive seven centuries of decay, though, is a question calculated to worry the antiquaries. But it is sunrise now, and time for honest people to begin to turn in. Mark Twain End of Section 52 This is Section 53 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 53, The Sacramento Daily Union, June 1866, Part 1. The Sacramento Daily Union, June 20, 1866, Honolulu, May 23, 1866, Hawaiian Legislature. I have been reporting the Hawaiian Legislature all day. This is my first visit to the Capitol. I expect it to be present on the 25th of April, and see the King open his Parliament in State, and hear his speech. But I was in Maui then, and Legislatures had no charms for me. The Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom is composed of three Estates—these, the King, the Nobles, and the Commons, or Representatives. The Nobles are members of the Legislature by right of their nobility—by blood, if you please—and hold the position for life. They hold the right to sit, at any rate, though that right is not complete until they are formally commissioned as legislators by the King. Prince William, who is thirty-one years of age, was only so commissioned two years ago, and is now occupying a seat in the Parliament for the first time. The King's ministers belong to the Legislature by virtue of their office. Formerly the Legislative Assembly consisted of a House of Nobles and a House of Representatives, and worked separately, but now both Estates sit and vote together. The object of the change was to strengthen the hands of the Nobles by giving them a chance to overall the Commons—the latter being able to outvote the former by about three to one—and it works well. The handful of Nobles and ministers, being backed by the King and acting as his mouthpieces, outweigh the common multitude on the other side of the House, and carry things pretty much their own way. It is well enough, for even if the Representatives were to assert their strength and override the Nobles and pass a law which did not suit the King, His Majesty would veto the measure, and that would be the end of it, for there is no passing a bill over his veto. Once, when the Legislative Bodies were separate and their Representatives did not act to suit the late King, Kamehameha IV, he took Cromwell's course, prorogued the Parliament Instanter, and sent the members about their business. When the present King called a convention a year or two ago to frame a new constitution, he wanted a property qualification to vote incorporated—universal suffrage was the rule before—and desired other amendments, which the convention refused to sanction. He dismissed them at once, and fixed the constitution up to suit himself, ratified it, and it is now the fundamental law of the land, although it has never been formally ratified and accepted by the people or the legislature. He took back a good deal of power which his predecessors had surrendered to the people, abolished the universal suffrage clause, and denied the privilege of voting to all saves such as were possessed of a hundred dollars' worth of real estate, or had an income of seventy-five dollars a year. And, if my opinion were asked, I would say he did a wise thing in this last-named matter. The King is invested with very great power, but he is a man of good sense and excellent education, and has an extended knowledge of business which he acquired through long and arduous training as Minister of the Interior under the late King, and therefore he uses his vast authority wisely and well. The Capitol, an American sovereign snubbed. The legislature meets in the Supreme Courtroom, an apartment which is larger, lighter, and better fitted and furnished than any courtroom in San Francisco. Arrailing across the center separates the legislators from the visitors. When I got to the main entrance of the building, and was about to march boldly in, I found myself confronted by a large placard upon which was printed, no admittance by this entrance except to members of the legislature and foreign officials. It shocked my Republican notions somewhat, but I pocketed the insinuation that I was not high-toned enough to go in at the front door, and went around and entered meekly at the back one. If ever I come to these islands again I will come as the Duke of San Jose, and put on as many frills as the best of them. The King's Father I found a 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 Calacaua, the King's Chamberlain, and Prince William at the head. The President of the Assembly, his Royal Highness M. Kekua Noa, and the Vice President, Rhodes, 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, swarthy 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 old fighter Kamea Mea I, more than half a century ago, and I could not help saying to myself, 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 far back in the past, and reveled in slaughter and carnage. As worshipped wooden images on his bended knees, as seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to hideous 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 traveller in some degree, and one who has been the honoured guest of royalty in Europe, a man practised 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 statesman-like 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 lifetime. Lord, how the experiences of this old man's strange, eventful life must shame the cheap inventions of romance. Kekua Noa 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. A comprehensive slur. The mental calibre of the legislative assembly is up to the average of such bodies the world over, and I wish it were a compliment to say it, but it is hardly so. I have seen a number of legislatures, and there was a comfortable majority in each of them that knew just about enough to come in when it rained, and that was all. Few men of first class ability can afford to let their affairs go to ruin while they fool away their time in legislatures for months on a stretch. Few such men care a straw for the small beer distinction one is able to achieve in such a place. But your chattering one-horse village lawyer likes it, and your solemn ass from the cow counties, who don't know the Constitution from the Lord's Prayer, enjoys it, and these you will always find in the assembly, the one gabble-gabble-gabbling thread-bear platitudes, and give me liberty, or give me death, bunk him from morning till night, and the other asleep, with his slab-sold brokens set up like a couple of gravestones on the top of his desk. Among the commons in this legislature are a number of Kanakas, with shrewd, intelligent faces, and a gift of gab that is appalling. The nobles are able, educated, fine-looking men who do not talk often, but when they do, they generally say something, a remark which will not apply to all their white associates in the same house. If I were not ashamed to digress so often, I would like to expatiate a little upon the noticeable fact that the nobility of this land, as a general thing, are distinguishable from the common herd by their large stature and commanding presence, and also set forth the theories in vogue for accounting for it, but for the present I will pass the subject by. In session, Bill Ragsdahl. At eleven a.m. his royal highness the President called the house to order. The roll-call was dispensed with, for some reason or other, and the chaplain, a venerable-looking white man, offered up a prayer in the native tongue. And I must say that this curious language, with its numerous vowels and its entire absence of hissing sounds, fell very softly and musically from his lips. A white chief clerk read the journal of the preceding day's proceedings in English, and then handed the document to Bill Ragsdahl, a half-white, half-white, and half-Kanaka, who translated it and clattered it off in Kanaka, with a volubility that was calculated to make a slow, spoken man like me distressingly nervous. Bill Ragsdahl stands up in front of the speaker's pulpit, with his back against it, and fastens his quick black eye upon any member who rises, lets him say half a dozen sentences, and then interrupts him, and repeats his speech in a loud, rapid voice, turning every Kanaka speech into English, and every English speech into Kanaka, with a readiness and felicity of language that are remarkable, waits for another installment of talk from the member's lips, and goes on with his translation as before. His tongue is in constant motion, from eleven in the four noon till four in the afternoon, and why it does not wear out is the affair of Providence not mine. There is a spice of deviltry in the fellow's nature, and it crops out every now and then, when he is translating the speeches of slow, old Kanakas, who do not understand English. Without departing from the spirit of a member's remarks, he will, with apparent unconsciousness, drop in a little voluntary contribution occasionally in the way of a word or two that will make the grave of speech utterly ridiculous. He is careful not to venture upon such experiments, though, with the remarks of persons able to detect him. I noticed when he translated for his Excellency David Kalakaua, who is an accomplished English scholar, he asked, Did I translate you correctly, Your Excellency? or something to that effect? The rascal. Familiar characteristics. This legislature is like all the other legislatures. A wooden head gets up and proposes an utterly absurd something or other, and he and half a dozen other wooden heads discuss it with windy vehemence for an hour, the remainder of the house sitting in silent patience, the while, and then a sensible man, a man of weight, a big gun, gets up and shows the foolishness of the matter in five sentences. A vote is taken, and the thing is tabled. Now, on one occasion, a Kanaka member who paddled over here from some barren rock or other out yonder in the ocean, some scallowag who wears nothing but a pair of socks and a plug hat when he is at home, or possibly is even more scantily arrayed in the popular Malo, got up and gravely gave notice of a bill to authorize the construction of a suspension bridge from Oahu to Hawaii a matter of one hundred and fifty miles. He said that natives would prefer it to the inter-island schooners, and they wouldn't suffer from sea sickness on it. Up came Honourable's Ku and Kulaoi and Kaukau and Kewahu, and a lot of other clacking geese, and harried and worried this notable internal improvement until some sensible person rose and choked them off by moving the previous question. Do not do an unjust thing now, and imagine Kanaka legislatures do stupider things than other similar bodies. Rather blush to remember that once, when a Wisconsin legislature had the affixing of a penalty for the crime of arson under consideration, a member got up and seriously suggested that when a man committed the damning crime of arson they ought either to hang him or make him marry the girl. To my mind the suspension bridge man was a Solomon compared to this idiot. I shall have to stop at this point and finish this subject tomorrow. There is a villain over the way, yonder, who has been playing Get Out of the Wilderness on a Flute ever since I sat down here to-night. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and always skipping the first note in the second bar, skipping it so uniformly that I have got to waiting and painfully looking out for it laterally. Human nature cannot stand this sort of torture. I wish his funeral was to come off at half-past eleven o'clock tomorrow, and I had nothing to do. I would attend it. Explainatory. It has been six weeks since I touched a pen. In explanation and excuse I offer the fact that I spent that time, with the exception of one week, on the island of Maui. I only got back yesterday. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bad any place goodbye so regretfully. I doubt if there is a mean person there, from the homeliest man on the island, lures, down to the oldest, talent. I went to Maui to stay a week, and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever. It will be five or six weeks before I write again. I sail for the island of Hawaii to-morrow, and my Maui notes will not be written up until I come back. Mark Twain. End of Section 53. This is Section 54 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 54, The Sacramento Daily Union, June 1866, Part 2. The Sacramento Daily Union, June 21st, 1866. Honolulu, May 23rd, 1866. Legislature continued. The Solons at Work. The first business that was transacted today was the introduction of a bill to prohibit the intermarrying of old persons with young ones, because of the non-fruitfulness of such unions. The measure was discussed, laughed over, and finally tabled. I will remark here that I noticed that there seemed to be no regular order of business observed. Motions, resolutions, notices, introductions, and third reading of bills, etc., were jumbled together. This may be convenient enough for the members, but it must necessarily be troublesome to the clerks and reporters. Then a special committee reported back favorably a bill to prohibit Chinaman from removing their male children from the islands, and the report was adopted, which I thought was rather hard on the Chinaman. War. Next the gentleman from Kohala offered a resolution requesting the minister of the interior to bring his books into the house, and separate the Bishop of England's printing account from his omnibus of sundries, and show just how my lord's account with the government printing office stood. Sensation. A member jumped up and moved to amend by requesting a general inquisition into printing affairs and to strike out the offensive clause particularizing the bishop's bill. The minister of the interior, an Englishman, Dr. Hutchinson, opposed the motion angrily, said it, Shove the animus of the thing the way it stood! He said he was ready to produce the books and went at once and brought them in. Another member moved to table the original motion. Harris, minister of finance, wanted the motion to stand unamended. He said it showed the animus of the thing too. Said it was the old insinuation emanating from outside the walls of this house, that the minister of the interior was diverting the public funds to the support of the Anglican Church, the ancient insinuation that he was recreant to his duty, etc. Said the animus was prominent enough in the language of the resolution, which denied to the Lord Bishop of Honolulu the title which all the world recognized as his, and called him the Bishop of England. Said the bishop always paid his bills. He, Harris, always paid his bills, and gave money frequently to the Anglican Church, was a member of it. Would like to know of a single solitary instance where the Congregationalist member from Cojala had ever contributed one dollar, one shilling, one infinitesimal fraction of a farthing to the support of the reformed Catholic Church of the Lord Bishop. But a king's minister couldn't be honest, oh, no, and a minister couldn't be a gentleman, certainly not. Impossible! Oh, utterly! And so forth and so on, wandering further and further from the question before the house, and quacking about stuff that had no more to do with the subject under discussion than the decalogue has got to do with the Declaration of Independence. This man was on his feet every five minutes for an hour. One timid commoner feebly moved the previous question once, with a vague hope of shutting up the minister, but he never got a second, and was snubbed in a moment, and went in his hole, as they say in California. The original motion was finally tabled, but it made a fearful stir among the ministers during its brief existence. It created a bitter discussion, and showed how malignant are the jealousies that rankle in the breasts of the rival religious denominations here. The Vice President said he was sorry the motion had been offered, that it was an insult to the government, to the Bishop of Honolulu, to the House, and to all parties concerned, and it grieved him to have to put it to a vote. In the debate his Excellency Minister Harris was the champion of the Reformed Catholic Church, though to save my soul I could not see what any church had to do, that is openly and above board, with the question before the House. He was the champion, and without any ill feeling toward him, I will yet express the conviction that about two more such champions would bring ruin and destruction upon any cause under the sun. Minister Harris is six feet high, bony, and rather slender, middle-aged, has long ungainly arms, stands so straight that he leans back a little, has small side-whiskers, from my distance his eyes seemed blue, and his teeth looked too regular and too white for an honest man. He has a long head the wrong way, that is, up and down, and a bogus Roman nose, and a great long cadaverous undertaker's countenance, displayed upon which his ghastly attempts at humorous expressions were as shocking as a facetious lear on the face of a corpse. He is a native of New Hampshire, but is unworthy of the name of American. I think, from his manner and language today, that he belongs, body and soul, and boots, to the king of the Sandwich Islands, and the Lord Bishop of Honolulu. He has no command of language or ideas. His oratory is all show and pretense. He makes considerable noise and a great to-do, and impresses his profoundest incoherencies with an oppressive solemnity and ponderous windmill gesticulation with his flails. He raises his hand aloft, and looks piercingly at the interpreter, and launches out into a sort of prodigious declamation, thunders upward, higher and higher towards his climax, words, words, awful four-syllable words, given with a convincing emphasis that almost inspires them with meaning, and just as you take a sustaining breath and stand by for the crash, his poor little rocket fizzes faintly in the zenith, and goes out ignominiously. The sensation one experiences is the same a minor feels, when he puts in a blast, which he thinks will send the whole top of a mountain to the moon, and after running a quarter of a mile in ten seconds to get out of the way, is disgusted to hear it make a trifling doll report, discharge a pipe full of smoke, and barely jolt half a bushel of dirt. After one of these incomprehensible ravings, Mr. Harris bends down and smiles a horrid smile of self complacency in the face of the minister of the interior, bends to the other side, and continues it in the face of the minister of foreign affairs, beams it serenely upon the admiring lobby, and finally confers the remnants of it upon the unhappy interpreter, all of which pantomime says as plainly as words could say, A, but wasn't it an awful shot? Harris says the weakest and most insipid things, and then drives by the expression of his countenance to swindle you into the conviction that they are the most blighting sarcasms. And in seven years I have never lost my cheerfulness and wanted to lay me down in some secluded spot and die and be at rest until I heard him try to be funny today. If I had had a double-barreled shotgun, I would have blown him into a million fragments. Harris deals in long paragraphs of personalities that would not be permitted in any other legislature. This man has the reputation of being an able man, yet he was talking pretty much all the time today, and all the good sound, sense, or point there was in his vape rings could have been boiled down into half a page of fool-scap. Harris is not a man of first-class abilities. But that is only my opinion, you know, not Harris's. He knows some things, though. He knows that his salary of four thousand dollars is little enough in all conscience, especially as he gets nothing as acting Attorney General, and is not allowed to engage in outside business. And he knew enough on one occasion to vote against reducing his pay to three thousand dollars when his single vote was necessary to kill the proposed economy. He is an inveterate official barnacle, and is generally well supplied with offices. Some people say the Hawaiian government is a wheel-barrow, and that Harris is the wheel. The legislature voted an appropriation yesterday to have the photographs of its members taken and hung in the capital. If they had known I was going to paint Harris, they might have saved about three dollars. Harris, you won't do. If I had time now, I would write you a little something about Harris, under the circumstances, though. I feel it my duty to pass on to something else. Minister Hutchinson. Next to his Excellency Mr. Harris, his Majesty's Minister of Finance, sits his Excellency Mr. Hutchinson, his Majesty's Minister of the Interior, an Englishman. He has sandy hair, sandy mustache, sandy complexion. Is altogether one of the sandiest men I ever saw, so to speak. Is a tall, stooped-shouldered, middle-aged, lowering-browed, intense-eyed, irascible man, and looks like he might have his little prejudices and partialities. He has got one good point, however. He don't talk. The Other Ministers. Near Dr. Hutchinson, sit his Excellency the Governor of Oahu, born in this country of Italian and American parentage, and considered an American, and his Excellency M. D. Varigny, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Frenchman. These are merely sensible, unpretentious men, nothing particularly remarkable about their manner or appearance. If Varigny were as hopelessly bad as his English pronunciation, nothing but a special intervention of Providence could save him from perdition hereafter. The Millennium at Hand. I have found at least one startling peculiarity about this Hawaiian legislature. They do not accuse its members of being stained with bribery and corruption. It is a new and pleasant sensation to me. Some people ascribe this singular purity to innate virtue, while others, less charitable, say the members are not offered bribes because they are such leaky vessels that they would be sure to let it out. Doubtless in some cases, one theory is correct, and the other correct in other cases. I hope it is somehow that way, at any rate I haven't time to discuss it. Legislative etiquette. Legislative etiquette is of a low grade everywhere, I believe. I find no exception to the rule here. All hands smoke during the session, from the highest down to the pockmarked messenger. Cow county members, or perhaps I should say tarot patch members, lay the sides of their faces on the desks, encircle them with their arms, and go to sleep for a few moments at a time. I know they must put their feet on the desk sometimes, but I could not catch them at it. I saw them eating crackers and cheese, though, and freely excused them for it, because they hold long, fatiguing sessions, from eleven till four o'clock, without intermission. I am grieved to say that their etiquette is a shade superior to that of the early Washu legislature. Horse Williams was a member of one of them, and he used to always prop his vast feet upon his desk and get behind them and eat a raw turnip during prayer by the chaplain. More characteristics. So much for the legislature. I came away and left them at the favorite occupation of such bodies, crowding the finance officer's estimates to the utmost limit. The last thing they did was to provide a clerk for the sheriff of Maui, with a salary of $1,000, which was well enough, considering that for $2,000 a year and some trifling perquisites, that officer acts as sheriff of the island of Maui, postmaster of Lahaina, custom house officer, tax collector of the island of Lanai, and probably does a little in a general way in the missionary line, though he is better at entertaining a temporary guest, as I am aware. But you know the inevitable result. Every sheriff of every little dab of rock in this group will have to have a $1,000 clerk now. Mr. Brown disappointed. Brown has been keeping sharp lookout for the king for nearly three months now. When we came out of the capital, we heard his majesty had been at the door a few minutes before. Said the impetuous child of nature. Blame that king! Ain't I ever peace, son? said I. Respect the sacred name of royalty. A correction. Speaking of the king reminds me of something which ought to be said and might as well be said in this paragraph. Some people in California have an idea that the king of the Sandwich Islands is a man who spends his time idling about the town of Honolulu with individuals of questionable respectability, and drinking habitually, and to excess. This impression is wrong. Before he ascended the throne he was faster than was well for him, or for his good name. But, like the hero of Agincourt, he renounced his bad habits, and discarded his false staffs when he became king, and since that time has conducted himself as becomes his high position. He attends closely to his business, makes no display, does not go about much, and in manners and habits is a thorough gentleman. He only appears in the streets when his affairs require it, and then he goes well-mounted or in his carriage, and decently and properly attended. And while upon this subject I will remark that his majesty's income is amply sufficient for the modest state he indulges in, the legislature appropriates sixteen thousand dollars a year to his use, and his estates, called the Royal Domain, yield him twenty thousand dollars a year besides. The present palace is to be pulled down and a new one erected. The legislature has just made an appropriation of forty thousand dollars to begin the work and carry it on for the next two years. There was nothing said about what it is ultimately to cost, wherefore I surmise that it is the design of the government to build a palace well worthy of the name.