HAWAII 



2717 



HAWAII 



Havre was declared the temporary capital of 

 Belgium on October 13, 1914, the government 

 officials having been driven from their own 

 country by the German occupation of Brus- 

 sels, Antwerp and Ostend during the early 

 months of the War of the Nations. The city 



was founded in 1517 and has on five occasions 

 been bombarded by British fleets. Napoleon 

 took great interest in Havre and greatly im- 

 proved its harbor and defenses, which owed 

 their origin to Richelieu, Louis XIV and Louis 

 XVI. Population in 1911, 136,159. 



AW All, hahwi'e, or HAWAIIAN, 

 hahwi'an, ISLANDS, a chain of beautiful, 

 mountainous islands near the middle of the 

 Pacific Ocean. They are widely known for 

 their mild, pleasant climate, for the production 

 of sugar cane per acre exceeding that of any 

 other spot in the world, and as the home of 

 much of the pineapple cfop. The islands be- 

 long to the United States, and are politically 

 known as the TERRITORY OF HAWAII. They were 

 formerly known as the Sandwich Islands, a 

 name given them by Captain James Cook, in 

 honor of the English Lord Sandwich. 



These islands stretch out in almost single 

 file from southeast to northwest for over 400 

 miles, and lie a little over a thousand miles 

 north of the equator. Eight of the islands are 

 inhabited. The other twelve are uninhabited 

 rocks and reefs, valued by sportsmen as shark- 

 fishing grounds and visited occasionally by 

 natives for eggs of sea birds. The capital city, 

 Honolulu, which is about 100 miles northwest 

 of the center of the group of eight islands, is 

 from 2,100 to 5,000 miles distant from the 

 important Pacific Ocean seaports those of 

 Alaska at the north and New Zealand at the 

 south, of the Americas at the east, and Asia, 

 the Philippine Islands and Australia at the 

 west. One of the accompanying maps shows 

 these distances. The total area of the inhab- 

 ited islands is estimated at between 6,000 and 

 7,000 square miles, and is thus about equal to 

 that of Connecticut and Rhode Island together. 

 The population in 1914 was 208,000, or only 

 one-eighth that of the states named. 



Hawaii, the largest of the group, is remark- 

 able for its lofty volcanoes; Maui, next in 

 size, is a spot of tropical beauty; Kahoolawe, 

 lying south of Maui, is the smallest of the 

 group and had but two inhabitants in 1914; 



Lanai is about twice the size of the last named ; 

 Molokai is famous as the location of a leper 

 settlement; Oahu, the third largest, but the 

 most thickly populated, is the wealthiest and 

 most frequently visited of the islands, for it 

 contains Honolulu, the beautiful seaport capi- 

 tal; Kauai is irregularly circular in form, well- 

 watered everywhere and is called the garden 

 isle; Niihau is the westernmost of the inhab- 

 ited islands. 



The People. The population of Hawaii is 

 exceedingly mixed. The native islanders are 

 people of moderate size, with skin resembling 

 tarnished copper. Their heads are short and 

 broad, and they have dark brown or black 

 hair, either straight, wavy or curly. Their 

 eyes are expressive and large, and they have 

 flattened noses, thick lips and finely-shaped, 

 pearly-white teeth. Most of these people are 

 quite fleshy, due principally to a vegetable 

 diet. Their language is soft and full of har- 

 mony, consisting chiefly of vowels, and they 

 are a race of sweet singers. They are intelli- 

 gent but leisure-loving, are fond of riding, and 

 delight in the water. Surf-riding is one of 

 their most interesting and exciting sports. 



Although the men and some of the women 

 wear clothing of American fashion, a costume 

 very generally worn by women of all nation- 

 alities in the islands is a loose Mother Hub- 

 bardlike robe known as a holoku, which is at 

 least cool and comfortable, if not especially 

 attractive. A pleasing custom of the hos- 

 pitable Hawaiians is the decorating of arriving 

 or departing friends with gay garlands of flow- 

 ers called leise. 



The pure Hawaiian population of the islands 

 is rapidly dying out, owing to diseases and 

 changes in mode of life introduced by foreign- 

 ers. In 1914 only one-eighth of the people 



