HOLIDAYS IN HAWAII 
Aiken over some new land he was getting ready for 
pineapples. It had been densely covered with lan- 
tana scrub, and clearing it and grubbing it out had 
been an heroic task. The lantana takes complete 
possession of the soil, grows about four or five feet 
high, and makes a network of roots in the soil that 
defies anything but a steam plow. The soil is a red, 
heavy clay, and it made the farmer in me sweat to 
think of the expenditure of labor necessary to turn 
a lantana bush into a pineapple field. The redness 
of this volcanic soil is said to be owing to the fact 
that the growth of vegetation brings the iron into 
new combinations with organic acids. 
Later in the day we visited the large Baldwin 
pineapple-canning plant, and were shown the 
whole process of preparing and canning the fruit, 
and all but surfeited with the most melting and de- 
licious pineapples it was ever my good luck to taste. 
The Hawaiian pineapple probably surpasses all 
others in tenderness and lusciousness, and it loses 
scarcely any of these qualities in the cans. Ripened 
in the field, where it grew on the flanks of great 
Haleakala, and eaten out of hand, it is a dream of 
tropic lusciousness. The canning is done by an 
elaborate system of machinery managed by Japan- 
ese men and women, the naked hand never coming in 
contact with the peeled fruit, but protected from it 
by long, thin rubber gloves. There ought to be a 
great future for this industry, when Eastern con- 
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