66. CHAPTER LXVI.
PASSING through the market place we saw that feature of
Honolulu under its most favorable auspices—that is, in the full
glory of Saturday afternoon, which is a festive day with the
natives. The native girls by twos and threes and parties of a dozen,
and sometimes in whole platoons and companies, went cantering
up and down the neighboring streets astride of fleet but homely
horses, and with their gaudy riding habits streaming like banners
behind them. Such a troop of free and easy riders, in their natural
home, the saddle, makes a gay and graceful spectacle. The riding
habit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern table
cloth brilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins once, then
apparently passed between the limbs and each end thrown
backward over the same, and floating and flapping behind on both
sides beyond the horse's tail like a couple of fancy flags; then,
slipping the stirrup-irons between her toes, the girl throws her
chest for ward, 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".