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Updated: June 1, 2025
"We were married at Sierra Leone by the English chaplain. My father, who is dead, kept a hotel at Sierra Leone, and he knew the ways of the half-castes. He said that the Protestant Church at Sierra Leone was good enough for him, and we were married there. And then Victor brought me away from my people to this place and to Msala. Then he got tired of me he cared no more. He said I was ugly."
Thus commenced a population likely to be of great service to shipping, particularly as they make excellent sailors, and excel as headsmen in whalers, where the keenness of their half-savage eyes, and their dexterity in throwing the spear, render them most formidable harpooners. The young half-castes I saw were very interesting, having a ruddy dark complexion, with fine eyes and teeth.
The Maoris seem slowly decreasing, the half-castes increasing rather rapidly. 315,000 sheep, 30,000 cattle, many horses, and much land, a little of which they cultivate, some of which they let, support them comfortably enough. The yellows, some 3,500 Chinese, are a true alien element. They do not marry 78 European and 14 Chinese wives are all they have, at any rate in the Colony.
Native life in the Islands is full of such contrasts, and I found, on examining the labor contracts on several sugar-plantations, that almost without exception the working people signed their own names. According to a census taken in December, 1872, the Hawaiian Islands contained 56,897 souls, of whom 51,531 were natives and half-castes, and 5366 were foreigners.
They are employed as clerks and writers, their feminine delicacy of constitution enabling them to write a fine lady's hand, a kind of writing much esteemed among the Portuguese. They are not physically equal to the European Portuguese, but possess considerable ability; and it is said that half-castes, in the course of a few generations, return to the black color of the maternal ancestor.
Indians and half-castes vegetated in ignorance and docility, and the handful of whites quaked in terror, while the inexorable Francia tightened the reins of commercial and industrial restriction and erected forts along the frontiers to keep out the pernicious foreigner.
A large number of half-castes, too, who before traded in manufactured goods purchased in Manila, were enabled after this to send their goods direct to the provinces, to the foreign firms settled there; and as, ultimately, neither these latter nor the Chinese retail dealers could successfully compete with them, the result has been that, as much to their own profit as to that of the country, they have betaken themselves to the cultivation of sugar.
These animals were, however, well trained in pig-hunting and never barked until the prey was either being run down or was brought to bay. Amongst the children were two half-castes brother and sister. The boy was about twelve, the girl a couple of years older. I learnt that their father, who was dead, was an Englishman, a deserter from a man-of-war.
I was never troubled with that impertinent curiosity on the part of the people in these interior places which some travellers complain of in other countries. The Indians and lower half-castes at least such of them who gave any thought to the subject seemed to think it natural that strangers should collect and send abroad the beautiful birds and insects of their country.
Where a wish to please is evinced, though wholly unattended by efficiency in the duties undertaken by a servant, I can very easily excuse awkwardness, forgetfulness, or any other fault; but the wretched half-castes, who take service on board the Government steamers, have not even common civility to recommend them; there was not a passenger in the vessel who did not complain of the insults to which all were more or less subjected.
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