THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
These islands are situated some twenty-one hundred miles southwest from San
Francisco. The prevailing opinion—that they are in South
America—is a mistake. They are situated in the Pacific Ocean, and
their entire area is not greater, I suppose, than that of Rhode Island and
Connecticut combined. They are of volcanic origin; of volcanic construction
I should say. They are composed of lava harder than any statement I have
made for three months. There is not a spoonful of legitimate dirt in the
whole group, unless it has been lately imported. These islands were
discovered some eighty or ninety years ago by Captain Cook, though another
man came very near discovering them before, and he was diverted from his
course by a manuscript found in a bottle. He wasn't the first man who has
been diverted by suggestions got out of a bottle. Eight of these islands are
inhabited, four of the eight are entirely girdled with a belt of mountains
comprising the most productive sugar lands in the world. The sugar lands in
Louisiana are considered rich, and yield from 500 to 1,700 pounds per acre,
but those of the Sandwich Islands yield from 2,500 to 13,000 pounds per
acre. A 200-acre crop of wheat in the states is worth $20,000 or $30,000; a
200-acre crop of sugar in these islands is worth $200,000. You could not do
that in this country, unless you planted it with stamps and reaped it in
bonds. When these islands were discovered the population was about 400,000,
but the white man came and brought various complicated diseases, and
education, and civilization, and all sorts of calamities, and consequently
the population began to drop off with commendable activity. Forty years ago
they were reduced to 60,000, and the educational and civilizing facilities
being increased they dwindled down to 55,000, and it is proposed to send a
few more missionaries and finish them. It isn't the education or
civilization that has settled them; it is the imported diseases, and they
have all got the consumption and other reliable distempers, and to speak
figuratively, they are retiring from business pretty fast.
