214 HAWAII. 



then scraping and straining it through fine leaves. After standing 

 awhile, the fecula settles, when the water is poured off. The fecula 

 is then made into small cakes with the hand, by which operation it is 

 freed from the remaining water ; and it is then placed in the sun to 

 dry. The manufacture of this article is generally limited to the 

 quantity necessary for furnishing each of the females with a calico 

 frock. This of course does not amount to any very great quantity, 

 in a commercial point of view ; but will yet be considered large, when 

 the manner in which it is gathered is considered. I was informed, 

 that the quantity shipped to Oahu yearly, was two hundred thousand 

 pounds ; and that the price paid for it was two or three cents a pound, 

 in goods. At Honolulu, it is sold at a profit of one hundred per cent, 

 to the shipper. 



Indigo might be made a profitable culture; for it grows wild in 

 many parts of the island, and in great luxuriance. It is naturalized at 

 Hilo, where I learned that some experiments had been made, which 

 leave little doubt that if it were cultivated, it would be found to be 

 equally valuable with that of the West Indies. 



Sandalwood, it is well known, was the first article that brought this 

 people into notice, gave importance to the islands, and tempted 

 foreigners to visit them. The chiefs, finding they had a store of 

 treasure, believed it to be inexhaustible ; and were tempted, by their 

 own cupidity and that of their visiters, to cut it without stint. The 

 course of this trade led to all sorts of tyranny and oppression by the 

 chiefs towards their dependants. The trees have been for some years 

 tabooed ; but this plan was adopted too late to preserve any of large 

 size. Those which were not cut down for sale, it is said were de- 

 stroyed by the natives, to prevent impositions being practised upon 

 them. Not unfrequently, the chiefs would despatch their dependants 

 to the mountains, with nothing to eat but what they could gather from 

 the forest of ferns, the core of whose trunk supplied them with a 

 scanty and precarious subsistence. These hardships were enough to 

 cause whole tracts to become waste. It will be a long time before the 

 remainder of these trees are large enough to become an article of 

 commerce. 



Mr. Brackenridge on his return from the mountain passed from the 

 volcano to the sea-board at Papapala. He found the whole country 

 to the southwest of the crater a flat barren waste of smooth lava, 

 mixed with fields of drifted scoria, and wdth bundles of capillary glass, 

 or Pele's hair, hanging to the few stunted tufts of Silene and Compo- 

 sitce. This character continues to within six miles of the sea, when 

 the lava becomes more rough, and bushes of Metrosideros and Sophora 



