On the morning of the second day from Honolulu, the passenger for Hilo, looking landward from the swaying deck of the "Kinau," sees close upon the right the surf breaking against a long succession of old lava cliffs, separated from one another by many narrow inlets which the streams have cut. Through these openings he may perhaps catch a passing glimpse of pretty waterfalls, half hidden by bread fruit and pandanis trees, sweeping down between ferny and grass-covered banks, with clustered cocoanut trees in the foreground. On the top of the cliffs and stretching backward from the sea, lie the plantations, making with their alternation of light green cane-fields and grassy pasture, clustered buildings and tall mill chim. neys, a wide brocaded ribbon bordering the

sea.

Back of them is the belt of woods, an impenetrable tropical jungle at first, but gradually changing in character, till, at an elevation of five or six thousand feet, it gives place to open, grass-covered slopes. And topping all, if the day be clear, stands the summit of Mauna Kea, dashed with snow. From that far suminit, or through rifts in the mountain sides, came down, in ages too old for any man to tell, flow after flow of fiery lava, building the base of the mountain out into the sea. But now, for long, the sea has been taking its slow revenge, cutting the land backward, and undermining the shore cliffs, while its winds and rains have reduced the surface to arable soil, and sculptured it with long lines of ravines.

The chances of seeing the summit of Mauna Kea clear are not, however, very great; for Hilo district is the most rainy in the Islands. The constant trade wind, blowing directly inland, brings against the cool upper slopes of the mountains great masses of cloud, just ready for condensation, and the result is frequent and copious showers. To this district is credited that story of Mark Twain's, of the man who found that the rain

fell in at the bung-hole of a barrel faster than it could run out at both ends, and finally filled the barrel. By actual measurement, however, the rain falls not infrequently at the rate of an inch an hour, and it scarcely provokes a smile when a boy is sent out in the rain to measure and empty the gauge so that it shall not run over.

The rain keeps the whole country as green as a spring wheat field, and the smallest streams run the year round. A Californian, used to

"Half a year of clouds and flowers,

Half a year of dust and sky,” finds the flowing water and the seeming constancy of early summer an especial delight. He will miss one thing, however: there are no field flowers in Hawaii, nothing in the whole circuit of the year like the acres of yellow mustard and flaming poppies that mark the opening of the summer in his native State.

On

It has been said of the Islands as a whole, that there is no pleasanter place to visit, and no worse place to live, the world over. This applies a fortiori to the plantations. one side, the characteristic kindness is here more kind, and the hospitality even more hospitable, if such a thing can be; but, on the other side, the isolation is more complete. Honolulu is seven days removed from contact with the rushing current of the world's affairs; the plantations from ten to forty hours from such ripples as stir the capital. The society of the city lacks elements that numbers alone can give; that of the plantation is restricted to those living on it, and to such neighbors as can be reached over miles of muddy roads. This, perhaps, makes the guest all the more welcome; at all events, he is welcomed royally, and everything done to insure his pleasure.

Let us imagine ourselves, then, so fortunate as to be going by invitation to one of the plantations we have just passed. When

we go ashore at Hilo, the manager will be in town, and presently the horses will be brought up, and we shall ride back across the tops of the cliffs, and up and down the gulches, the lower ends of which we have seen. In the first five miles we shall cross seven of them, all but two of which at some seasons of the year require bridges. We shall all go on horseback, for outside of Hilo town wheeled vehicles are practically useless. The ladies of the party will ride astride, as is the commendable custom of the country. Constant rain means almost constant mud, and much use reduces some of the roads to such a state that they show where travel is least safe, and the actual road becomes a series of divergent trails through the grass on either side. Part of the road near town is paved with stone blocks, but the paving is not over a good yard wide, and so broken and slippery that one is not sorry to see it end.

At last we come within sight of the mill and the manager's house. The latter is often not unlike a California farm-house of the better sort, though with more concessions to fresh air, and more verandas. But true adaptation to the climate forbids a compact style of architecture, and the most comfortable houses are really sets of cottages connected by covered porches. In small cottages, shadily situated at some distance from the main house, live the book-keeper, engineer, sugar boiler, and some of the lunas, or gang bosses. If such a plantation were in California, they would all be quartered in a redwood boarding house, where the windows jam, and the smell of the dinner comes up through the partitions. Near by are the plantation office and the store, which latter might for all the world have been transported bodily from some cross-road village in Napa County, except for the bar: the use of liquor on the plantations is, as far as possible, prohibited. A little further off, in groups or singly, stand the houses of the field hands, and within easy reach, the schoolhouse. The mill buildings in this district are usually placed near tide water, and near them stand the sugar store-house and

the sheds for drying the "trash," or crushed cane stalks, which is presently to be used for fuel. From the mill radiate lines of flume to the various fields of the plantation; the abundance of water is thus used for transporting the cane. The children utilize them, too, for a sort of liquid coasting. They gather a bundle of brush wood, and seated upon it in the water, go down the flumes at a good, round speed.

Both for population and buildings, a plantation is not unlike a fair-sized village. No such number of people can work effectively at anything, or even live at peace, without something like organized government. At the head of affairs, of course, is the manager. He stands as the representative of the plantation to the owners and to the public; he directs the general working of it, manages the finances, and like other successful leaders, watches the details of everybody else's work. His first assistant in the field work is the overseer, who apportions the work and sees to its execution; under him again are the lunas, each in charge of from thirty to fifty men or more. In the mill work the sugar boiler takes the rank, for upon the success of his work depends in large measure the percentage of sugar obtained.

As regards the condition of the field hands, much has been written and much misinformation put afloat. The fact is, that, unusual cases aside, the plantation laborer is no worse off than other laborers of equal skill and intelligence in other parts of the world. Briefly the case stands in this way: a laborer contracts to work under certain conditions for a certain sum of money, part of which is usually advanced at the signing of the contract. This agreement he makes voluntarily. If, by and by, he fails to keep his part of the bargain, the law obliges him to do so, as it obliges any man to make good his contract. This method of hiring labor is on the whole no more oppressive than the shipping of sailors, from which practice it actually has grown up. Indeed, the laborer has the advantage of the sailor, for his manager has no such power of punishment as a shipmaster exercises, and he can at any time have ready

trunks; others with fronds like ivy leaves. Birdsnest ferns spread out fronds as large as banana leaves, and hang all covered below with lines of spore dust, like great rosettes of green and brown, in the crotches of the trees. He will find great trees bursting into flowerlike garden shrubs, and mallow-like trees in thickets, spreading far and wide a tangle of snaky branches, covered with yellow and brown flowers. There are parasites that wind themselves about the more erect stems of the ohia trees, and hang out flame-colored brushes of flowers. There are bananas growing wild, and native palms, and vegetable absurdities, and beauties enough to make the botanist crazy. Besides all these, there are the imported plants, already acclimated, many of them, and ready to displace the ancient proprietors of the soil.

For the geologist, there are lava formations scarcely cold, and in all stages of disintegration and soil-making; there are the first beginnings of stratified rock and coral limestone in formation; the cliffs before mentioned, which the wind-driven ocean is gradually eating away, and the streams with their falls gradually retreating inland, which, if accurate observations could be obtained, might give the approximate age of the district, and the time when the fires went out on Mauna Kea. In the matted and dripping forest, and along the shore, he may find near kin of long extinct floras, and realize in part how the carboniferous jungles appeared.

The zoologist also will find on land a limited though interesting fauna, but in the sea no end of beauty and instruction: sponges and polyps, cuttle-fishes and artistically tint ed crabs, fishes more vivid in metallic blues and greens than could be painted, others rosy pink, as though a shattered rainbow had fallen and become animated in the sea; sharks, too, and broad-finned flying fish.

For the sociologist there are all those interesting questions of the amalgamation of widely different races, the adjusting of European and Asiatic civilizations with the relics of barbarism, the peculiar relations of labor

and capital, the government's experience in finance, the circumstances of the present reaction against the civilized ideals and ways of living introduced by the missionaries, and the fast disappearing remains of ancient Hawaiian customs and building.

Or the practically disposed guest may inspect irrigation and bone-meal fertilization without stint; and especially will he be interested in the sugar-mills. On horse back again, he will pass through the fields of growing cane to where the cutters are at work cutting and trimming the ripe cane-stalks with heavy knives, and throwing them by armfulls into the flume, or in another part planting the sections of stalk from which new plants are started, or hoeing the weeds from the older

rows.

He must visit the mill, also. The cane which he has just seen tossed into the flumę is most likely there before him, but more is constantly coming down. Water and cane together come out upon a wide belt of wooden slats, which lets the water fall through, but moves on with the cane to the crusher. This consists of three solid iron rollers as large around as a barrel, one above and two below, and all enormously heavy. They are marked lengthwise with little grooves, so as to catch and hold the cane, and connected with heavy cogwheels, so that they move together. The whole thing is turned most frequently by a special engine, though in this rainy district water-power is sometimes used. At the machine stand two men with great knives, to cut such pieces as do not start between the rollers properly, and to see that the cane is fed in regularly. The juice, as it is pressed out, flows into a little trough, where a strainer takes out the bits of stalk and coarser impurities, then on into the boiling house. There it is immediately treated with lime or some other preventative of fermentation; for the juice is not simply sugar and water, but contains vegetable substances of a complex nature, which sour with great rapidity. Indeed, this fact is taken advantage of on the sly by the hands, who, with stolen sugar, or even with sweet potatoes, make a liquor of