by Jules Verne
“The tropic of Concert!” replied Pinchinat, taking safety in flight.
And when they came out of the casino, whom should they see among the poor beggars who could not afford three hundred and sixty dollars for a stall? The King and Queen of Malecarlie standing humbly at the door.
CHAPTER IX.
There exists in this portion of the Pacific a submarine mountain range extending from the west-north-west to the east-south-east for nine hundred leagues, if the abysses of two thousand fathoms which separate it from the other ocean lands were emptied away. Of this chain but seven summits appear above the waters: Nirhau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Kahulaui, and Hawaii. These seven islands, of unequal size, constitute the Hawaiian Archipelago, otherwise known as the Sandwich Islands.
Leaving Sebastien Zorn to grumble in his corner, and shut himself up in his complete indifference to all natural curiosities as if he were a violoncello in its box, Pinchinat, Yvernès and Frascolin reasoned in this way, and they were not wrong in doing so.
“I shall not be sorry to visit these Sandwich Islands! If we have to cruise about the Pacific, we may as well have a few souvenirs to take away with us.”
“The natives will be a change to us after the Pawnees, Sioux and other too civilized Indians of the Far West, and I shall not be sorry to meet a few real savages— cannibals.”
“Are they cannibals still?”
“Let us hope so,” replied Pinchinat. “Their grandfathers ate Captain Cook, and if the grandfathers enjoyed the illustrious navigator, it is not likely that the grandchildren have lost the taste for human flesh!”
It must be confessed that his highness spoke rather irreverently of the celebrated English sailor who discovered this archipelago in 1778.
The result of this conversation was that our artistes hoped that the chances of the voyage would bring them into the presence of natives more authentic than the specimens exhibited in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and in any case in their native country, instead of that of their production. They experienced a certain impatience to get there, expecting every day that the look-outs at the observatory would signal the first heights of the Hawaiian Group.
This they did in the morning of the 6th of July. The news immediately spread, and the placard at the casino bore this notice telautographically inscribed, “Sandwich Islands now in sight.”
It is true that the islands were still fifty leagues away; but the highest summits of the group, those of the island of Hawaii, are over 4200 metres high, and in fine weather are visible at this distance.
Coming from the north-east, Commodore Ethel Simcoe steered for Oahu, having for its capital Honolulu, which is also the capital of the archipelago. This island is the third of the group in latitude. Nuhau, which is a vast cattle park, and Kauai being both to the north-west of it. Oahu is not the largest of the Sandwich Islands; it measures only 1680 square kilometres, while Hawaii has an area of nearly 17, 000. As to the other islands, their area is more than 3812 all together.
As a matter of course, our Parisian artistes had formed agreeable acquaintanceships with the chief functionaries of Floating Island. All of them, as well as the Governor, the Commodore, Colonel Stewart and Engineers Somwah and Watson, had done their best to make them welcome. They frequently visited the observatory, and remained for hours on the platform of the tower. One need not be astonished therefore that on this occasion Yvernès and Pinchinat, the most enterprising of the quartette, had come here, and that about ten o’clock in the morning, the lift hoisted them to the masthead, as his highness called it.
Commodore Ethel Simcoe was there already, and lending the two friends his telescope, told them to observe a point on the horizon to the south-west among the lower mists of the sky.
“That is Mauna Loa of Hawaii,” said he; “or it is Mauna Kea, two superb volcanoes which in 1852 and 1855 precipitated on to the island a flood of lava covering seven hundred square metres, and whose craters in 1880 hurled forth seven hundred million cubic metres of eruptive substances.”
“Famous!” replied Yvernès. “Do you think, Commodore, that we shall have the good luck to see such a spectacle?”
“I do not know, Monsieur Yvernès,” replied Ethel Simcoe. “Volcanoes do not erupt to order.”
“Oh! on this occasion only, and under distinguished patronage!” added Pinchinat. “If I were rich like Messrs. Tankerdon and Coverley, I would pay for eruptions when I liked.”
“Well, we will talk to them about it,” said the Commodore, smiling, “and I have no doubt they will do even the impossible to make themselves agreeable to you.”
Thereupon Pinchinat asked what was the population of the Sandwich Islands. The Commodore told him that it had been two hundred thousand at the beginning of the century, and was then reduced to about half.
“Good! Mr. Simcoe, a hundred thousand savages, that is quite enough, and if only they have remained cannibals, and lost nothing of their appetite, they will make only a mouthful of all the Milliardites of Floating Island.”
It was not the first time that the island had visited this archipelago. The preceding year it had been in these waters attracted by the salubrity of the climate. And in fact invalids went there from America, sent by the doctors, as the doctors send Europeans to breathe the humid air of the Pacific? Why not? Honololu is not more than twenty-five days from Paris, and when you can there impregnate your lungs with an oxygen you can get nowhere else—
Floating Island arrived within sight of the group in the morning of the 9th of July. The island of Oahu lay about five miles off to the south-west. Above, pointing to the east, was Diamond Head, an ancient volcano dominating the roadstead behind, and another cone called the Punch Bowl by the English. As the Commodore observed, if this enormous cup were filled with brandy or gin, John Bull could have no difficulty in emptying it.
They passed between Oahu and Molokai. Floating Island, like a ship under the action of its rudder, was steered by its starboard and larboard screws. The floating island stopped after rounding the south-east cape of Oahu, at ten cables’ lengths from the shore, its draught of water being considerable. As it was necessary for the purpose of keeping a clear berth to remain at some distance from the land, it did not moor in the strict sense of the word, that is to say, it did not use anchors, which would have been impossible, owing to the depth of a hundred metres and more. By means of the engines, which were kept working during the stay, it lay as motionless as the eight principal islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago. The quartette contemplated the heights which developed before their eyes. In the distance they could see nothing but masses of trees—clumps of orange trees, and other magnificent specimens of the temperate flora. To the west, through a narrow break in the reef, appeared a little lake, the Lake of Pearls, a sort of lacustrine plain pierced with ancient craters.
The aspect of Oahu was smiling enough, and the anthropophagi so desired by Pinchinat had nothing to complain of the theatre of their exploits. If they still abandoned themselves to their cannibalistic instincts, his Highness could wish for nothing more.
But this is what he suddenly exclaimed, —
“Great Heaven! what is it I see?”
“What do you see?” asked Frascolin.
“There. Steeples—”
“Yes—and towers—and palace façades!” said Yvernès. “It cannot be possible that they ate Captain Cook, there!”
“We are not at the Sandwiches!” said Sebastien Zorn, shrugging his shoulders. “The Commodore has made a mistake as to the route.”
“Assuredly,” replied Pinchinat. No! Commodore Simcoe had not gone astray. It was really Oahu, and the town extending over many square kilometres was Honolulu.
Evidently the quartette were mistaken. What changes there had been since the great English navigator discovered this group! Missionaries had excelled each other in devotion and zeal. Not only had the original language disappeared before the Anglo-Saxon tongue, but the archipelago contained Americans, Chinese—for the mo
st part employed by the owners of the soil, from whom had arisen a race of semi-Chinese, the Hapa-Paké—and even Portuguese, owing to the line of vessels between the Sandwich Islands and the Azores. Aborigines were still to be found, however, and enough of them to satisfy our four artistes, although these natives had been decimated by leprosy, a malady of Chinese importation. But they were hardly of the type of eaters of human flesh.
“O local colour!” exclaimed the first violin, “what hand has wiped thee from the modern palette!”
Yes! Time, civilization, progress, which is a law of nature, had almost effaced this colour; and this had to be recognized, not without regret, when one of the electric launches of Floating Island passed the long line of reefs and put Sebastien Zorn and his comrades ashore.
Between two lines of piles meeting at an acute angle opened the harbour sheltered from the dangerous winds by an amphitheatre of mountains. Since 1794 the reefs which protect it from the ocean waves had risen more than a yard in height.
Nevertheless, there was sufficient water for vessels drawing from eighteen to twenty feet of water to come alongside the quays.
“What a deception!” murmured Pinchinat. “It is really deplorable that we should have to get rid of so many illusions when we travel.”
“And we would do much better to stay at home,” retorted the ‘cellist.
“No!” exclaimed Yvernès, always enthusiastic. “What spectacle can be compared to that of this artificial island coming to visit the oceanic archipelagoes?”
Nevertheless, if the moral condition of the Sandwich Islanders had regrettably changed to the lively displeasure of our artistes, it was not the same with the climate. It is one of the most salubrious in these parts of the Pacific, notwithstanding that the group is in a region known as the Hot Sea. If the thermometer does not stand at a high level when the north-east trade winds are not in force, if the northern trades cause violent storms known as kouas, the mean temperature of Honolulu does not exceed twenty-one degrees centigrade. It would be bad taste to complain of this on the borders of the torrid zone; and the inhabitants did not complain of it, and, as we have indicated, American invalids crowded into the archipelago.
But the more the quartette penetrated into the secrets of this archipelago, the more their illusions fell, fell like the leaves at the end of autumn. They pretended to have been mystified when they should have accused themselves of inviting this mystification.
“It is this Calistus Munbar who has again taken a rise out of us,” said Pinchinat, remembering what the superintendent had told them as to the Sandwich Islands being the last rampart of native savagery in the Pacific. And when they bitterly reproached him, —
“What would you have, my dear friends?” he replied, with a wink of his right eye. “The place has changed so since my last voyage that I no longer recognize it.”
“Joker!” retorted Pinchinat, amusing himself with a dig in the superintendent’s stomach.
There could be no doubt that if changes had taken place, they must have occurred with extraordinary rapidity. The Sandwich Islands had rejoiced in a constitutional monarchy, founded in 1837, with two chambers, that of the nobles and that of the deputies. The first was nominated by the proprietors of the land, the second elected by all the people who knew how to read and write, the nobles for six years, the deputies for two years.
Each chamber was composed of twenty-four members, who held their deliberations together in the presence of the royal ministry, formed of four of the King’s councillors.
“And then,” said Yvernès, “they had a King, a constitutional King, instead of a monkey in feathers, and to whom foreigners could offer their humble respects.”
“I am sure,” affirmed Pinchinat, “that his Majesty did not even wear rings in his nose, and that he was provided with false teeth by the best dentists in the New World.”
“Ah! civilization, civilization!” repeated the first violin, “These Kanakas had no need of false teeth when they ate their prisoners of war.”
Floating Island was prepared for a stay of ten days, and a number of its inhabitants took advantage of this to explore Honolulu and its environs. The Coverley and Tankerdon families, the chief notables of Milliard City, went ashore daily. On the other hand, although it was the second appearance of the island in these parts of Hawaii, the admiration of the Hawaiians was boundless, and they came in crowds to visit this marvel. It is true that the policy of Cyrus Bikerstaff made the admission of strangers difficult, and required that when evening came the visitors returned at the stated hour. Owing to these measures of security it would have been anything but pleasant for an intruder to remain on the Pearl of the Pacific without a permit, which was not easily obtained. There were thus nothing but good relations on both sides, but there were no official receptions between the two islands.
The quartette enjoyed several very interesting walks. The natives pleased our Parisians. Their character is well marked, their hue brown, their physiognomy gentle and proud. And although the Hawaiians were a republic, it is not unlikely that they regretted their former savage independence.
“The air of our country is free,” says one of their proverbs, and they are none the less so.
And in fact, after the conquest of the archipelago by Kamehameha, after the representative monarchy established in 1840, each island had been administered by its own governor. At this period, under the republican régime, they were divided into districts and sub-districts.
“Come,” said Pinchinat, “there is no want of prefects, sub-prefects, and counsellors of prefecture, with the constitution of the Year VIII.”
“All I want is to get away!” replied Sebastien Zorn.
He would have been mistaken to have done so without admiring the chief places of Oahu. They are superb, if the flora is not rich. Along the shore there is an abundance of cocoanut trees and other palms, breadfruit trees, trilobas which yield the oil, castor-oil plants, daturas, indigo plants. The valleys, watered by the mountain streams, are carpeted with such encroaching vegetation as menervia, shrubs becoming arborescent, chenopodium, and halapepe, a sort of gigantic asparigines. The forest zone, prolonged to an altitude of two thousand metres, is covered with ligneous species, myrtles of lofty growth, colossal docks, and band-creepers, which intermingle like a many-branched thicket of serpents. As to the products of the soil which furnish items of commerce and exportation, there are rice, cocoanuts, and sugar-cane. Hence an important coasting trade between one island and another, so as to concentrate at Honolulu the products which are despatched to America. In the fauna there is little variety. If there is a tendency for the Kanakas to become absorbed in the more intelligent races, the species of animals show no sign of change. There are only pigs, fowls, and goats as domestic animals; there are no wild animals beyond a few pigs. There are mosquitoes, which are not easy to get rid of, a number of scorpions, and a few species of inoffensive lizards; birds that never sing, among others the “Oo,” the Drepanis pacifica, of black plumage, with ornamental yellow feathers, of which was formed the famous mantle of Kamehameha, on which nine generations of natives had worked.
Man’s task—a considerable one in this archipelago— has been to become civilized in imitation of the United States with his learned societies, his schools of compulsory education, which gained a prize at the Exposition of 1878, his rich libraries, his newspapers published in English and Kanaka. Our Parisians could not well be surprised at this, for the notables of the archipelago are most of them Americans, and their language is as current as their money. Only these notables freely attract to their service the Chinese of the Celestial Empire, contrary to what is done in Western America, to combat the infliction to which has been given the significant name of the “Yellow Plague.”
After the arrival of Floating Island within sight of the capital of Oahu, many of the local boats often sailed round it. With this magnificent weather, this sea so calm, nothing could be pleasanter than an excursion of some twenty kilometres at a
cable’s length from the steel shore, over which the custom-house officers exercised such strict surveillance.
Among these excursion boats one could not help noticing a small vessel which every day persisted in sailing in Floating Island waters. It was a kind of Malay ketch, with two masts and a square stern, manned by twelve men under the orders of a captain of energetic appearance. The Governor, however, took no objection to this, although the practice might have seemed suspicious. These people, in fact, kept a constant watch on the island all round it hanging about from one port to the other, examining through the glasses every part of the coast. After all, supposing that their intentions were unfriendly, what could such a crew undertake against a population of ten thousand inhabitants? So that there was nothing to be uneasy about in the proceedings of this ketch during the day and night, and the maritime administration of Honolulu was not appealed to in the matter.
The quartette bade farewell to the island of Oahu on the morning of the 10th of July. Floating Island got under way at the dawn, obediently to the impulsion of its powerful propellers. Turning quite round, it headed south-west, to come in sight of the other Hawaiian islands. Moving obliquely across the equatorial current running from east to west, it moved in an inverse direction to that in which the archipelago lies towards the north.
For the convenience of the inhabitants on the larboard side, Floating Island boldly entered between the islands Molokai and Kauai. Over the latter, one of the smallest of the group, rises a volcano of eighteen hundred metres, Nirhau, which is always giving forth a few fuliginous vapours. At the foot are rounded hills of coralline formation, dominated by a range of sand-hills, against which the echoes are reflected with metallic sonority when the surf beats fiercely on the shore. The night had come when the island entered the narrow channel; but there was nothing to fear under the command of Ethel Simcoe. When the sun disappeared behind the heights of Lanai, the look-outs could not have noticed the ketch, which left the harbour after Floating Island, and endeavoured to keep in its wake. Besides, as we may again remark, why should any one have been uneasy at the presence of this Malay vessel?