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Updated: June 29, 2025
Once before he had given up "sailorising," not then on account of his nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them.
But except the cocoa-nut which grows on the beach, and seems to draw its sustenance from the waves, and the sweet-potato, which does very well among the lava, nothing seems really to thrive. It will add much to the pleasure of your journey to Kilauea if you carry with you, to read upon the spot and along the road, Brigham's valuable Memoir on the Hawaiian Volcanoes.
Our grounds join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy January can court our yellow Clélie over one fence, with coy and delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each other's eyes out through the other all the year round.
The highest in rank, who proved to be a colonel, was invested with the command, Barney serving as adjutant, and Jones as guide. The rabble, having made a good meal from the spoil of a sweet-potato patch, pushed forward through the fretwork of fern, rank morass, and verdure, toward security. But the march was a snail's pace, as may be imagined.
Since bereft of black labour by the seductions of rum and opium, the plantation of orange-trees has sadly degenerated; the little grove of bananas has been choked with gross over-bearing weeds, the sweet-potato patch has been absorbed, the coffee-trees elbowed out of existence. But how may one man of many avocations withstand acres of riotous and exulting weeds?
In my opinion, there is no better food for man than beef-cattle driven on the hoof, issued liberally, with salt, bacon, and bread. Coffee has also become almost indispensable, though many substitutes were found for it, such as Indian-corn, roasted, ground, and boiled as coffee; the sweet-potato, and the seed of the okra plant prepared in the same way.
Yet when I asked a native to show me his sweet-potato patch, he took me to the most curious and barren-looking collection of lava you can imagine, surrounded, too, by a very formidable wall made of lava, and explained to me that by digging holes in the lava where it was a little decayed, carrying a handful of earth to each of these holes, and planting there in a wet season, he got a very satisfactory crop.
Sweet-potato pie, an' burnt on one side the side thet's left. Yas, an' I'll leave it ag'in!" He chuckled as he took a deep bite. "Of co'se I must 'a' had 'em on when I cut the pie, or I couldn't 've saw it so distinc' 'an I finished that slice a-settin' down talkin' to her at the sewin'-machine. Ricollec' I told her how mother used to put cinnamon in hers.
"I wanted to ask him more, but he started to walk back hastily, and when I caught him up would talk of nothing but the sugar and sweet-potato crops, and the yield of cocoanut oil to be carried to Kudat at the next north-east monsoon. I noticed that the fruit-trees planted along the shore were old, and that scores of them had ceased bearing. 'They will last my day, said he.
I said to him, "Now, what would you like?" After a moment's hesitation he replied, "Well, lady, I've been sort of hankerin' after a sweet-potato pone, but I s'pose ye couldn't noways get that?" "There," thought I, "that's just what I will get and give them all for Christmas dinner."
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