A Hilo Plantation [pp. 186-191]

A Hilo Plantation.
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 olia 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 MIauna 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 tinted 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 flume
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 imipurities, 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
1885.]
189