1 12 
the  lower  edge  of  the  forest  is  considerably  more  than  that) — • 
but  taking  the  rainfall  of  that  Kona  forest  as  being  ioo  inches 
a year,  we  will  say  that  there  are  200  or  perhaps  250  square 
miles  of  forest,  and  100  inches  of  rain  per  acre  amounts  to 
something  over  2,000,000  gallons  of  water.  The  rainfall,  the 
actual  amount  of  water  that  falls  on  a square  mile  of  land  at 
the  rate  of  100  inches  a year  amounts  to  16,000,000  gallons  of 
water  for  every  inch,  1 believe.  The  actual  amount  of  water 
that  falls  in  that  Kona  forest — and  that  forest  is  on  the  dry 
side  of  the  island — amounts  in  the  course  of  a year  to 
400,003  billion  gallons  of  water,  an  amount  that  is  absolutely 
beyond  comprehension.  And  yet  no  effort  has  been  made  to 
conserve  that  water.  We  have  just  had  a drought  affecting  the 
whole  dry  side  of  the  Island  of  Hawaii.  We  had  to  buy  water, 
but  during  years  past  and  for  all  time  there  has  been  this 
enormous  quantity  of  water  that  could  have  been,  much  of  it, 
conserved  for  the  benefit  of  agriculture,  not  only  in  the  Kona 
district  but  elsewhere  on  the  island.  Not  1 per  cent.,  I think 
not  one-tenth  of  1 per  cent.,  of  the  water  supplied  by  the  rain- 
fall is  now  preserved  for  use  by  the  plantations  or  by  the 
farmers.  It  is  a money  proposition ; it  is  a business  propo- 
sition. 
In  New  England  they  have  found  that  it  pays  to  buy  land 
and  plant  it  in  forest,  plant  it  in  varieties  of  trees  which  will 
not  yield  merchantable  timber  for  fifty  years  to  come,  and 
yet  such  plantings,  some  of  them,  have  already  yielded  an  in- 
come of  2,y2  per  cent,  per  annum  for  the  entire  term.  The 
government  can  do  that  kind  of  work  and  should  do  it.  Much 
of  this  property  belongs  to  the  government,  belongs  to  the, 
people.  It  is  proper,  it  is  right,  it  is  good  business ; in  fact,  it 
would  not  be  good  business  not  to  do  it,  to  begin  to  take  care 
of  some  of  the  property  belonging  to  the  people.  There  is 
water  and  abundance  of  it  to  spare.  There  is  timber  to  last  for 
many  years,  that  which  is  not  standing,  merchantable  timber. 
Just  one  day  last  week  I was  up  in  the  forest.  I saw  great 
koa  trees  six  feet  in  diameter,  thirty  and  forty  feet  high,  noth- 
ing being  done  to  protect  them,  because  there  was  no  money 
to  pay  for  the  protection  of  this  valuable  property. 
Without  the  forest  to  retard  the  run-off,  there  follows  flood 
and  destruction.  We  have  all  of  us  seen  the  ocean  reddened 
for  miles  from  the  land  with  the  surface  soils  from  our  culti- 
vated fields.  We  have  seen  fields,  the  entire  surface,  swept 
into  the  ocean.  This  loss  is  not  simply  a loss  to  the  individual 
plantation  or  the  individual  farmer  affected,  but  it  is  a loss 
to  the  Territory — it  is  taking  away  from  the  natural  resources 
of  the  Territory  some  of  its  capital.  Besides  the  actual  con- 
servation of  water,  in  order  that  we  may  use  it,  besides  the 
actual  preservation  of  forest  in  order  that  we  may  use  it,  and 
