Our little band of passengers were as well and thoughtfully cared for by the friends they left weeping upon the wharf, as ever were any similar body of pilgrims.The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with a naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment of medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of matches, a fine-toothed comb, and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair of socks.(N.B.I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then.
shook his head and said that, as a general thing, he liked to prospect curious, foreign dishes, and find out what they were made of, but he couldn't go that, and threw it overboard.)It is nearly impossible to imagine humor in this extract, yet it is a fair sample of the entire letter.
He improves in his next, at least, in description, and gives us a picture of the crater.In this letter, also, he writes well and seriously, in a prophetic strain, of the great trade that is to be established between San Francisco and Hawaii, and argues for a line of steamers between the ports, in order that the islands might be populated by Americans, by which course European trade in that direction could be superseded.But the humor in this letter, such as it is, would scarcely provoke a smile to-day.
As the letters continue, he still urges the fostering of the island trade by the United States, finds himself impressed by the work of the missionaries, who have converted cannibals to Christians, and gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery.
Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the American interests were by no means small.
Extract from letter No.4:
Cap.Fitch said "There's the king.That's him in the buggy.I know him as far as I can see him."I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put him down: "Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with lapels and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad gold band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man is not as fleshy as I thought he was.
I had just got these notes when Cap.Fitch discovered that he'd got hold of the wrong king, or rather, that he'd got hold of the king's driver, or a carriage driver of one of the nobility.The king wasn't present at all.It was a great disappointment to me.I heard afterwards that the comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on a barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing.But there was no consolation in that.That did not restore me my lost king.
This has something of the flavor of the man we were to know later;the quaint, gentle resignation to disappointment which is one of the finest touches in his humor.
Further on he says: "I had not shaved since I left San Francisco.
As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly found one.I always had a yearning to be a king.This may never be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it.
I have been shaved by the king's barber."
Honolulu was a place of cats.He saw cats of every shade and variety.He says: "I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, and lazy, and sound asleep." Which illustrates another characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong.
He found the islands during his periods of inaction conducive to indolence."If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think."The Union made good use of his letters.Sometimes it printed them on the front page.Evidently they were popular from the beginning.
The Union was a fine, handsome paper--beautiful in its minute typography, and in its press-work; more beautiful than most papers of to-day, with their machine-set type, their vulgar illustrations, and their chain-lightning presses.A few more extracts:
"The only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless, flavorless things they call Manilas--ten for twenty-five cents--and it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money.After you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning to go out somewhere and take a smoke.""Captains and ministers form about half the population.The third fourth is composed of Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their families.The final fourth is made up of high officers of the Hawaiian government, and there are just about enough cats to go round."In No.6, April the 2d, he says: "An excursion to Diamond Head, and the king's cocoanut grove, was planned to-day, at 4.30 P.M., the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies.They all started at the appointed hour except myself.Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up.
It was a fortunate circumstance that Cap.Phillips was there with his 'turn-out,' as he calls his top buggy that Cap.Cook brought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Cap.Cook came."This bit has something the savor of his subsequent work, but, as a rule, the humor compares poorly with that which was to come later.
In No.7 he speaks of the natives singing American songs--not always to his comfort."Marching Through Georgia" was one of their favorite airs.He says: "If it had been all the same to Gen.