r in some of the Islands. The
cacao-tree has been tried, but a blight kills it. In the garden of Dr.
Hillebrandt, near Honolulu, I saw specimens of the cinnamon and allspice
trees; but again I was told that the blight attacked them, and did not
allow them to prosper. Wheat and other cereals grow and mature, but they
are subject to the attacks of weevil, so that they can not be stored or
shipped; and if you feed your horse oats or barley in Honolulu, these have
been imported from California. Silk-worms have been tried but failed. Rice
does well, and its culture is increasing.

Moreover, there is but an inconsiderable local market. A farmer on
Maui told me he had sent twenty bags of potatoes to Honolulu, and so
overstocked the market that he got back only the price of his bags. Eggs
and all other perishable products, for the same reason, vary much in
price, and are at times high-priced and hardly attainable. It will not do
for the farmer to raise much for sale. The population is not only divided
among different and distant islands, but it consists for much the largest
part of people who live sufficiently well on taro, sweet-potatoes, fish,
pork, and beef--all articles which they raise for themselves, and which
they get by labor and against disadvantages which few white farmers would
encounter.

For instance, the Puna coast of Hawaii is a district where for thirty
miles there is so little fresh water to be found that travelers must bring
their own supplies in bottles; and Dr. Coan told me that in former days
the people, knowing that he could not drink the brackish stuff which
satisfied them, used to collect fresh water for his use when he made the
missionary tour, from the drippings of dew in caves. Wells are here out
of the question, for there is no soil except a little decomposed lava, and
the lava lets through all the water which comes from rains. There are
few or no streams to be led down from the mountains. There are no fields,
according to our meaning of the word.

Formerly the people in this district were numbered by thousands: even
yet there is a considerable population, not unprosperous by any means.
Churches and schools are as frequent as in the best part of New England.
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 hole