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 
cafions 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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