390 



HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



ers easily work all day long, a circumstance un- 

 known in any other country within the tropics. 

 This uniformity at an agreeable temperature is 

 the unique feature of the Hawaiian climate. 

 Other tropical islands, as Tahiti and Jamaica, 

 the Philippines and the Sundas, enjoy equal uni- 

 formity, but a uniformity of excessive heat, the 

 mercury for half the year never coming as low 

 as 70. In Hawaii the pandanus and the ba- 

 nana flourish, while yet it is cool enough for 

 one species of the peach, and on the uplands 

 the strawberry and 'the raspberry are indige- 

 nous. The immediate cause of this equability 

 at comfortable temperatures is the singular 

 coolness and dry ness of the ocean temperature, 

 which is never far from TO Fahr., or cooler 

 than in any other region in the same latitude. 

 Mr. Sereno E. Bishop, of Honolulu, employing 

 the "Challenger" temperature soundings, shows 

 that this coolness, and the consequent dryness 

 of the climate, is due to an ocean-current from 

 the north. This first makes its way as a deep- 

 sea current all the way from the south-polar 

 seas to the Arctic region, and is then reflected 

 southward to the Hawaiian Islands, as a cool 

 surface-current, from the closed Arctic ex- 

 tremity of the Pacific Ocean. 



The air-currents are, in consequence of the 

 equable coolness of the water and small evap- 

 oration, comparatively dry. They yield their 

 entire moisture to the windward coasts of the 

 islands, where the annual rainfall varies from 

 150 to 240 inches. The leeward sides are dry, 

 as a rule, and often arid. But when the 

 mountain-barriers are high enough to. cut off 

 the trade-wind completely, the leeward coasts 

 receive alternating land-breezes by night and 

 sea-breezes by day, and are moist. The tem- 

 peratures vary with the elevation above the 

 sea, giving the resident the choice of climates 

 from the tropical to the temperate zone ; though 

 most of the population is found near the level 

 of the sea. These varied conditions of dry- 

 ness, moisture, winds, and mountain elevation, 

 produce so many climatic contrasts that, while 

 the climate of each particular region is equable 

 to an unexampled degree, there are probably 

 more kinds of climate in the little Hawaiian 

 kingdom than anywhere else in the world on 

 an equally limited area. The group is destined 

 for this reason, among others, to become an 

 important sanitarium for Americans. 



Productions. The principal islands are only 

 mountains that lift themselves to great heights 

 from the sea; and but a small part of their 

 area is adapted to agriculture. Their lofty 

 interiors are unavailable for anything except 

 in places for pasturage, the older formations 

 being scored into immense ravines divided by 

 knife-edged ridges. The newer volcanic tracts 

 are seldom arable, though the lavas decompose 

 with great rapidity into fertile soil. There is, 

 however, as usually in tropical countries, a 

 great deficiency of good pasture-grass, except 

 in the interior of Hawaii, where thousands of 

 wild cattle (introduced by Capt. Vancouver) 



and goats range the uplands ; these are hunted 

 for their hides. Wild hogs and wild turkeys 

 are also abundant. Various kinds of grasses 

 have been introduced, as yet with little success, 

 in the effort to remedy this defect of intertropi- 

 cal regions ; among them the Bermuda grass, 

 the "false Guinea grass" ( panicum spectabile), 

 and the alfalfa, a tender forage-plant resem- 

 bling clover, introduced from Chili, which has 

 been planted in the same rows with sorghum. 



The lands that are available for the culti- 

 vation of the staple crops sugar, coffee, rice, 

 fruits, etc. are limited to a marginal ring of 

 coast territory, of varying breadth, but never 

 broad. On the leeward sides of the islands 

 much of this land requires expensive irriga- 

 tion: even where the rainfall exceeds 100 

 inches per annum, irrigation has been found 

 necessary for security against droughts. The 

 uplands, however, are moist as well as fertile, 

 and here the best cane-growing land is found. 

 But the total acreage available for the sugar- 

 cane, though it is variously estimated, can not 

 much exceed 90,000 acres. The percentage of 

 arable land is the greatest on Kauai. the old- 

 est island, and the. least on Hawaii, the new- 

 estHawaii being, indeed, still an unfinished 

 island, geologically speaking, while on the 

 other islands volcanic action has been imme- 

 morially extinct. Puna, the southeastern 'dis- 

 trict of Hawaii, has an area of nearly six hun- 

 dred square miles, nearly all being partly de- 

 composed lava; but there is not in the whole 

 district a single tract of ten acres that has a 

 soil deep enough to plow, though the climate 

 is perfect for the cultivation of any staple crop. 

 On the windward sides of the islands, again, 

 the land is cut up by deep and precipitous 

 gorges or cations, which head far inland, and 

 open seaward between steep precipices that 

 wall the coast. The upland flats between these 

 gorges are generally narrow, and do not afford 

 room enough for a large plantation. " It is a 

 matter of extreme inconvenience to a planter 

 to have his farm cut up into three or four 

 pieces by gorges 300 to 500 feet deep, which 

 are very difficult to cross ; and if the compo- 

 nent parts are too small, his farm will not pay." 



But in the limited tracts that are available 

 for sugar, deep soil of great richness is found, 

 and these produce abundantly. The average 

 yield per acre between Oct. 1, 1882, and Oct. 

 1, 1883, for the whole group, was 2-^fo tons 

 per acre; the total area cultivated, 21,804 

 acres; the total yield, 59,124 tons. At Waia- 

 nae, on the leeward side of Kauai, where there 

 are great advantages of soil and climate, a 

 field of 32! acres yielded, in 1884, 406,102 

 pounds of sugar, or 4 tons per acre. Othel 

 localities have yielded five tons an acre; and 

 one planter took fifty tons of sugar from seven 

 acres of ground, his plantation being 2,500 feet 

 above sea-level ; but this unexampled crop had 

 been three years in maturing. In other sugar- 

 growing countries two tons an acre is con- 

 sidered an ample yield. The Demerara cane- 



