Roughing It, Part 7. - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o'clock at night,
myself in the lead--for when my horse finally came to understand that he
was homeward bound and hadn't far to go, he turned his attention strictly
to business.
This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is no
regular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the Kingdom
of Hawaii; therefore unless you are acquainted with wealthy residents
(who all have good horses), you must hire animals of the wretchedest
description from the Kanakas. (i.e. natives.) Any horse you hire, even
though it be from a white man, is not often of much account, because it
will be brought in for you from some ranch, and has necessarily been
leading a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been caring for him
(inveterate riders they are) have not ridden him half to death every day
themselves, you can depend upon it they have been doing the same thing by
proxy, by clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I am informed. The
result is, that no horse has a chance to eat, drink, rest, recuperate, or
look well or feel well, and so strangers go about the Islands mounted as
I was to-day.
In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you,
because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with a shrewd
unprincipled rascal. You may leave your door open and your trunk
unlocked as long as you please, and he will not meddle with your
property; he has no important vices and no inclination to commit robbery
on a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business,
he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This traits is
characteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will
overcharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night
(anybody's--may be the King's, if the royal steed be in convenient view),
and bring you the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it is
the same animal. If you make trouble, he will get out by saying it was
not himself who made the bargain with you, but his brother, "who went out
in the country this morning." They have always got a "brother" to shift
the responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows one day:
"But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on your
cheek."
The reply was not bad: "Oh, yes--yes--my brother all same--we twins!"
A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka
warranting him to be in excellent condition.
Smith had a saddle and blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka to
put these on the horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectly
willing to trust the gentleman with the saddle that was already on the
animal, but Smith refused to use it. The change was made; then Smith
noticed that the Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left the
original blanket on the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets,
and so, to cut the bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horse
went lame a mile from town, and afterward got to cutting up some
extraordinary capers. Smith got down and took off the saddle, but the
blanket stuck fast to the horse--glued to a procession of raw places.
The Kanaka's mysterious conduct stood explained.
Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day or
two ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. He
discovered today that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. He
meant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion that
he had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the attempt
his attention was called to something else by his victimizer.
One more instance, and then I will pass to something else. I am informed
that when a certain Mr. L., a visiting stranger, was here, he bought a
pair of very respectable-looking match horses from a native. They were
in a little stable with a partition through the middle of it--one horse
in each apartment. Mr. L. examined one of them critically through a
window (the Kanaka's "brother" having gone to the country with the key),
and then went around the house and examined the other through a window on
the other side. He said it was the neatest match he had ever seen, and
paid for the horses on the spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed to join
his brother in the country. The fellow had shamefully swindled L. There
was only one "match" horse, and he had examined his starboard side
through one window and his port side through another! I decline to
believe this story, but I give it because it is worth something as a
fanciful illustration of a fixed fact--namely, that the Kanaka
horse-jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience.
You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good
enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. I
estimate "Oahu" to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five
cents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day before
yesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again to-day for
two dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome and lively
little pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse on
the island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with Mexican
saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars--a horse which is well and widely
known, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition and
everlasting bottom.
You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from San
Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as much
hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives, and is
not very good it is baled into long, round bundles, about the size of a
large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a six foot
pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the streets
between the upright bales in search of customers. These hay bales, thus
carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital 'H.'
The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horse
about a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week's hay for another
song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass in
your neighbor's broad front yard without a song at all--you do it at
midnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have been at no
expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle they will
cost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars. You can hire a horse,
saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the owner will
take care of them at his own expense.
It is time to close this day's record--bed time. As I prepare for sleep,
a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this ocean rock is
toward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home air. But the
words seem somewhat out of joint:
"Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo."
Translated, that means "When we were marching through Georgia."
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".
CHAPTER LXVII.
I still quote from my journal:
I found the national 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 Kalakaua (the King's Chamberlain) and Prince William
at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M.
Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa 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.] and the Vice President (the
latter a white man,) 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, tawny 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 fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A
knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "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 more
than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage;
has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of
his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden 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 traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored
guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced 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, statesmanlike 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 life time. How the experiences of this old
man's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!"
The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their
barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred
to one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get
hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it
and pray you to death. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely
because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of
damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough
at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit
efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.
In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was
customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women of
noble rank had as many as six husbands. A woman thus supplied did not
reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each
in turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. When
the sign was taken down, it meant "NEXT."
In those days woman was rigidly taught to "know her place." Her place
was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and
content herself with what was left after her lord had finished his
dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of
death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, under
the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other
choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herself
pretty strictly to "poi" and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seem
to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit in
the garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances.
But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things.
They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.
The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children
alive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries
interfered in this matter too, and stopped it.
To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want
to, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka
takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to
hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him.
A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral.
If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only
necessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be
on hand to the minute--at least his remains will.
All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the
Great Shark God for temporary succor in time of trouble. An irruption of
the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of
latent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is common
report that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian
gentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers
for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of
his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of
ancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion
forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture
him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused
food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned
against the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He was
proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day or two
took to his bed and died, although he showed no symptom of disease.
His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate within the
week. Superstition is ingrained in the native blood and bone and it is
only natural that it should crop out in time of distress. Wherever one
goes in the Islands, he will find small piles of stones by the wayside,
covered with leafy offerings, placed there by the natives to appease evil
spirits or honor local deities belonging to the mythology of former days.
In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes
upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea
without any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the
matter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up
their residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families
frequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush.
It was found a hard matter to convince them that this was rather
indelicate. Finally the missionaries provided them with long, loose
calico robes, and that ended the difficulty--for the women would troop
through the town, stark naked, with their robes folded under their arms,
march to the missionary houses and then proceed to dress!--The natives
soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortly
apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries
imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing
apparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to
come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the
national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who
were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could
hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of
the reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with
a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a "stovepipe" hat and a
pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man's
shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, with
simply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and the
rest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock's tail off duty; a
stately "buck" Kanaka would stalk in with a woman's bonnet on, wrong side
before--only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow,
with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of
his person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simply
gotten up in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vest.