212 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



slopes, and the African from the upper forests of Kilima Njaro 

 and Ruwenzori would find in the higher levels much to remind 

 him of his native land. 



The upper woods extend usually to 8,000 or 9,000 feet above 

 the sea, and vegetation of a scrubby character occurs as high 

 generally as 10,000 or 1 1,000 feet. The highest regions present 

 only a barren rocky waste. 



The Rainfall. 



The Hawaiian Islands. — Although on account of the extensive 

 deforesting of the Hawaiian Islands since their discovery the con- 

 trast between this group and that of Fiji is now, as regards rainfall, 

 somewhat emphasised, it is almost certain that in early times the 

 contrast was much less marked. In the lower levels the natives 

 and sandalwood traders in the past, and the agriculturists in 

 the present, have accomplished much in this direction. Between 

 1,000 and 3,000 feet, whole forests were in my time disappearing 

 under fire and axe for the coffee plantations. Above those levels 

 up to the higher limits of the woods, cattle were destroying the 

 forests in a wholesale fashion ; whilst foreign insects were proving 

 themselves almost as great enemies to the vegetation. I remember 

 an enterprising agriculturist explaining to me how he cleared the 

 land of forest around his station. A large tract having been 

 fenced in, the cattle were introduced. After destroying the under- 

 growth and the young trees, the animals attacked the bark of the 

 trees, and in a year or two, without fire or axe, the land was 

 cleared. The consequence of this unchecked destruction of the 

 forests was in my time becoming only too evident. When I passed 

 through Ookala, on the Hamakua coast, at the end of May, 1897, 

 there was a water famine. Water was sold at a quarter of a dollar 

 a bucket, and the allowance for a family was three oil-cans a week. 

 Stealing water was a crime and punished by the plantation 

 authorities by dismissal or a five-dollar fine. 



If we could look back for fifty or sixty years — I am now 

 quoting from the reports of Prof Koebele and Dr. Stubbs — we 

 should see large forests where we now see barren slopes and 

 plains. Originally forests covered the upland plateaux and moun- 

 tain slopes of all the islands. Now much of the original forests 

 has been removed, and large areas of naked soils and bare rocks 

 remain. The present forest area, writes Mr. Giffard, the editor of 

 the Hawaiian Forester (August, 1904), is about 20 per cent, of 



