TIME AND CHANGE 



Then come Molokai and Maui, the two ends of the 

 latter being of vastly unequal age. Hawaii, the 

 largest of them all, nearly as large as Connecticut, 

 is the youngest of the group, and shows the least 

 effects of erosion. When it is as old as Kauai is now, 

 its two huge mountains, Mauna Loa and Mauna 

 Kea, will probably be cut up into deep valleys and 

 canons and sharp, high ridges, as are the mountains 

 of Kauai and Oahu. The lapse of time required to 

 bring about such a result is beyond all human cal 

 culation. Whether one million or two millions of 

 years would do it, who knows? Those warm tropi 

 cal rains, aided by the rank vegetation which they 

 beget and support, dissolve the volcanic rock slowly 

 but inevitably. 



Through the courtesy of Mr. Lowell, the super 

 intendent, we had that day the pleasure of going 

 through a large sugar-making plant at Paia one 

 that turns out nearly fifty thousand tons of sugar a 

 year. We saw the cane come in from the fields in one 

 end of the plant, and the dry, warm product being 

 put up in bags at the other. All the latest devices 

 and machinery for sugar-making we saw here in full 

 operation, affording a contrast to the crude and 

 wasteful methods I had seen in the island of Jamaica 

 a few years before. 



In the afternoon we availed ourselves of the five 

 or six miles of narrow-gauge railway, the only one on 

 the island, to go from Paia to Wailuku, where we 

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