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Lahaina looked intensely tropical in the roseflush of the early morning, a dream of some bright southern isle, too surely to pass away. The sun blazed down on shore, ship, and sea, glorifying all things through the winter day.
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 were met by another automobile, which hurried us to Lahaina, where we were to meet the steamer that was to convey us to Hilo, on Hawaii.
In the first place, you must understand that the rain-fall varies extraordinarily. The trade-wind brings rain; the islands are bits of mountain ranges; the side of the mountain which lies toward the rain-wind gets rain; the lee side gets scarcely any. At Hilo it rains almost constantly; at Lahaina they get hardly a shower a year.
These, with adobe houses and walls, the flush of the soil, the gaudy dresses of the natives, the masses of brilliant exotics, the intense blue of the sea, and the dry blaze of the tropical heat, give a decided individuality to the capital of Maui. The heat of Lahaina is a dry, robust, bracing, joyous heat.
I noticed, too, that there were very few trunks and portmanteaus, but that the after end of the saloon was heaped with Mexican saddles and saddlebags, which I learned too late were the essential gear of every traveller on Hawaii. At five this morning we were at anchor in the roads of Lahaina, the chief village on the mountainous island of Maui.
The names of the children were Kupa, Mohoole and Kaiwikokoole. These men are now all dead. The last of the number died two years since at the station of Lahaina. Some of the bones of Captain Cook were sent on board his ship, in compliance with the urgent demands of the officers; and some were kept by the priests as objects of worship."
A large edition of the Gospels in the Hawaii language, printed in the United States, was in circulation and there were no less than nine hundred schools and forty-five thousand scholars. In 1853, after a great awakening, there were above twenty-two thousand church members, and there were chapels at all the stations. One at Lahaina could hold three thousand persons.
Honolulu was chosen for the capital because it forms the best and almost the only harbor worthy of the name to be found among these islands. In the olden times Lahaina, on the island of Maui, was the city of the king, and the recognized capital in the palmy days of the whale fishery.
In Lahaina it matures in from fourteen to sixteen months; in some districts it requires eighteen months; and at greater altitudes even two years. But under all the varying circumstances, whether it is irrigated or not, whether it grows on bottoms or on hill slopes, in dry or in damp regions, everywhere the cane seems to thrive, and undoubtedly it is the one product of the islands which succeeds.
The firm of Ladd & Co. had taken the lead in developing the agricultural resources of the islands by their sugar plantation at Koloa and in other ways, and had gained the entire confidence of the king and chiefs. On the 24th of November, 1841, a contract was secretly drawn up at Lahaina by Mr. Brinsmade, a member of the firm, and Mr.
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