280 



which they esteemed for shade trees or held in reverence or the 

 trees which yielded them their food, and quite possible, too, be- 

 cause they had room for them in their large seaw^orthy canoes in 

 which they made their venturesome voyages from Kahiki with- 

 out the aid of the mariner's compass, the sextant, or the chron- 

 ometer. 



Original Extent of the Forests. 



Whatever their Origin, our Hawaiian forests must have been 

 much more extensive in prehistoric times than they are now, and 

 covering the upland plateaus, mountain slopes, and lowdands, they 

 were probably limited only by such natural conditions as lack 

 ot rainfall, elevation, and lava flows. They also must have in- 

 fluenced favorably the runofif in a more extensive manner, for 

 today we find in the dry districts abandoned taro patch terraces 

 and empty irrigation ditches of ancient construction leading down 

 from deforested watersheds from which living streams have long 

 since ceased to flow. 



Causes of Decrease — Sandalzcood Trade. 



Probably the first contributing agency in the destructive pro- 

 cesses which have been responsible for the decrease of the 

 native forests w^as the sandalwood trade, which began about 1778 

 and waned in 1829. This trade, to be sure, gave the infant 

 kingdom its start in life and in one year alone $400,000 was 

 realized from sandalwood shipments made to China. But not 

 only were the mature treees harvested most intensively, but the 

 natives w^ere so hard pressed by the cupidinous chiefs, that they 

 destroyed the young seedlings as well, so that there would be 

 no sandalwood trees left for their children to be compelled to 

 gather. 



Cattle. 



The next cause of forest destruction in these islands was the 

 bullock, which began his depredations soon after the first cattle, 

 which were landed in 1792 by Vancouver, had multiplied and, 

 because of the tabu which the white men placed upon them, had 

 increased in such numbers that they had finally to be killed ofi 

 in order to abate the nuisance which they created ; only their 

 hides and tallow being salvaged. These herds of cattle evidently 

 roamed unrestricted in the native forests. In those early days 

 there were no fences worth mentioning and the cattle working 

 back little by little into the woods opened up a larger area each 

 year until thousands of acres of land, formerly covered with a 

 dense w^et forest, were reduced to open, treeless country. Today 

 this same destructive agency is unfortunately still at work in 

 parts of the Territory. 



