[begin page 431]
CHAPTER 63
On a certain bright morning the Islands
hove in sightⒺ, lying low on the lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to
look. After two thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As
we approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond
Head rose up out of the ocean,Ⓐ its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the details of the
land began to make themselves manifest: first
the line of beach; then the plumed cocoanutⒶ trees of the tropics; then cabins of the natives;
then the white townⒶ of Honolulu, saidⒶ to contain between twelve and fifteen thousandⒶ
inhabitants,Ⓐ
Ⓐ spread over a dead level; withⒶ streets from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them
straight as a line and a fewⒶ as crooked as a corkscrew.
The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every step revealed
a new
contrast—disclosed something I was unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored
brown
stoneⒶ fronts of San Francisco, I saw dwellingsⒶ built of straw,
adobes
Ⓐ and cream-coloredⒶ pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral cut into oblongⒶ blocks and laid in cement; also a great number ofⒶ neatⒶ white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place of front yards like billiard-tables
with iron fences around them, I saw
these homesⒶ surrounded by ample yardsⒶ, thickly clad with green grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage
the sun could scarcely penetrate; in place
of the customary geranium, calla lily, etc.,Ⓐ languishing in dust and general debilityⒶ, I saw luxurious banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a rain, and
glowing with the richest dyes; in place of
the dingy horrors of
San Francisco’s pleasure grove,Ⓐ the “Willows,”Ⓔ
Ⓐ I saw huge-bodied, wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance—trees
that cast a shadow like
a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without being tied to green poles; in
place ofⒶ
[begin page 432] gold-fish, wiggling around in glass globes,Ⓐ assuming countlessⒶ shades and degrees of distortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities
of their transparent prison houses, I saw catsⒺ—Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed
cats, bob-tailⒶ 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, regiments of
cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek,
fat, lazy and sound asleep.
I looked on a multitude of people, some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons,
even white
cloth shoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majority of
the people were almost as dark as
negroes—women with comely features, fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the
voluptuous, clad in a single [begin page 433] bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from shoulder to heel, long
black hair falling loose, gypsy
hats, encircled with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty
of dark men in various costumes, and some with
nothing on but a battered stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-clout;—certain
smoke-dried children were
clothed in nothing but sunshine—a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel indeed.
InⒶ place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners, I saw long-haired,
saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens
sitting on the ground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever
or whoever happened along; instead of wretchedⒶ cobble-stone pavementsⒶ, I walked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the bottom of the sea by the
absurd but persevering insect of that name,
with a light layer of lava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of fathomless
perditionⒶ long ago through the seared and blackened crater that stands dead and harmlessⒶ in the distance now; instead of cramped and crowded street carsⒶ, I met dusky native women sweeping by, free as the wind, on fleet horses and astrideⒶ, with gaudy ridingsashes streaming like banners behind them; instead of the combined
stenches of ChinadomⒶ and BrannanⒶ street slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance of jessamine, oleander, and
the Pride of India; in place of the hurry
and bustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a summerⒶ calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of the Golden City’sⒶ skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one side a frameworkⒶ of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in refreshing green, and cleft
by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys—and
in front the grand sweep of the ocean:Ⓐ a brilliant, transparent green near the shore, bound and bordered by a long white
line of foamy spray dashing against the reef,
and further out the deadⒶ blue water of the [begin page 434] deep sea, flecked with “white caps,” and in the far horizon a
single, lonely sail—Ⓔ
Ⓐ
a mere accent-mark to emphasize a slumberous calm and a solitude that were
without sound or limit. When the sun sunk down—the one intruder from other realms
and persistent in suggestions of
them—it was tranced luxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any
world but these enchanted islands.
It was such ecstasyⒶ to dream, and dream—till you got a bite. A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was
to get up out of the grass and kill the
scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next
to resolve to keep out of the grass in future.
Then came an adjournment to the bed-chamberⒶ and the pastime of writing up the day’s journal with one hand and the destruction
of mosquitoes with the other—a
whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy approaching,—a hairy tarantula
on stilts—why not set the
spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous idea
of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and
become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot
enough to burn a hole through a raw-hide. More
soaking with alcohol, and a resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future.
Then wait, and suffer, till all the mosquitoes
in the neighborhood have crawled in under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them
in and [begin page 435] sleep
peacefully on the floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse the tropics
in occasional wakeful intervals.
We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges, pine-apples, bananas,
strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes, guavas, melons, and a rare and curious luxury
called the chirimoya, which is deliciousness
itself. Then there is the tamarind.
I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several,
and it seemed to me that
they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end
of a tomato, and I
had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my
teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave
them a “wire edge” that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said “no, it will come
off when the enamel does
Ⓔ“—which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers
eat tamarinds—but they only eat them once.
Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 63
Ⓐ
ocean, (C) ●
ocean
⁁
(A)
Ⓐ
cocoanut (C) ●
coacoanut (A)
Ⓐ
then the white town (A) ●
indented from right
Honolulu,
March, 1866.
centered
Our Arrival Elaborated a Little
More. [¶] We came in sight of two of this group of islands, Oahu and Molokai (pronounced
O-waw-hoo and Mollo-
ki), on the morning of the 18th, and soon exchanged the dark blue waters of the deep
sea for the brilliant light
blue of “soundings.” The fat, ugly birds (said to be a species of albatross) which
had skimmed after us on tireless
wings clear across the ocean, left us, and an occasional flying-fish went skimming
over the water in their stead. Oahu loomed high,
rugged, treeless, barren, black and dreary, out of the sea, and in the distance Molokai
lay like a homely sway-backed whale on the
water.
centered
The Hawaiian Flag. [¶] As
we rounded the promontory of Diamond Head (bringing into view a grove of cocoa-nut
trees, first ocular proof that we were in the
tropics), we ran up the stars and stripes at the main-spencer-gaff, and the Hawaiian
flag at the fore. The latter is suggestive of the
prominent political elements of the Islands. It is part French, part English, part
American and is Hawaiian in general. The union is
the English cross; the remainder of the flag (horizontal stripes) looks American,
but has a blue French stripe in addition to our red
and white ones. The flag was gotten up by foreign legations in council with the Hawaiian
Government. The eight stripes refer to the
eight islands which are inhabited; the other four are barren rocks incapable of supporting
a population.
centered
Reflections. [¶] As we came in sight we fired a gun,
and a good part of Honolulu turned out to welcome the steamer. It was Sunday morning,
and about church time, and we steamed through
the narrow channel to the music of six different church bells, which sent their mellow
tones far and wide, over hills and valleys,
which were peopled by naked, savage, thundering barbarians only fifty years ago! Six
Christian churches within five miles of the ruins
of a Pagan temple, where human sacrifices were daily offered up to hideous idols in
the last century! We were within pistol shot of
one of a group of islands whose ferocious inhabitants closed in upon the doomed and
helpless Captain Cook and murdered him,
eighty-seven years ago; and lo! their descendants were at church! Behold what the
missionaries have wrought!
centered
The Crowd on the Pier. [¶] By the time we had worked
our slow way up to the wharf, under the guidance of McIntyre, the pilot, a mixed crowd
of four or five hundred people had
assembled—Chinamen, in the costume of their country; foreigners and the better class
of natives, and “half
whites” in carriages and dressed in Sacramento Summer fashion; other native men on
foot, some in the cast-off clothing of white
folks, and a few wearing a battered hat, an old ragged vest, and nothing else—at least
nothing but an unnecessarily slender rag
passed between the legs; native women clad in a single garment—a bright colored robe
or wrapper as voluminous as a balloon,
with full sleeves. This robe is “gathered” from shoulder to shoulder, before and behind,
and then descends in ample
folds to the feet—seldom a chemise or any other under-garment—fits like a circus tent
fits the tent pole, and no hoops.
These robes were bright yellow, or bright crimson, or pure black occasionally, or
gleaming white; but “solid colors” and
“stunning” ones were the rule. They wore little hats such as the sex wear in your
cities, and some of the younger women
had very pretty faces and splendid black eyes and heavy masses of long black hair,
occasionally put up in a “net;” some
of these dark, gingerbread colored beauties were on foot—generally on bare-foot, I
may add—and others were on
horseback—astraddle; they never ride any other way, and they ought to know which way
is best, for there are no more
accomplished horsewomen in the world, it is said. The balance of the crowd consisted
chiefly of little half-naked native boys and
girls. All were chattering in the catchy, chopped-up Kanaka language; but what they
were chattering about will always remain a mystery
to me.
centered
The King. [¶] Captain Fitch
said, “There’s the King! that’s him in the buggy; I know him far as I can see him.”
[¶] I had never
seen a King in my life, and I naturally took out my note-book and put him down: “Tall,
slender, dark; full-bearded; green frock
coat, with lappels and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat—broad
gold band around it; royal costume looks too
much like a livery; this man isn’t as fleshy as I thought he was.” [¶] I had just
got these notes entered when
Captain Fitch discovered that he had got hold of the wrong King—or, rather, that he
had got hold of the King’s driver or
a carriage-driver of one of the nobility. The King was not present at all. It was
a great disappointment to me. I heard afterward that
the comfortable, easy
| going King Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ah-may-ah) 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 to me my lost King.
centered
Honolulu. [¶] The town (SU)
Ⓐ
Honolulu, said (A) ●
Honolulu
⁁ (said (SU)
Ⓐ
twelve and fifteen thousand (A) ●
12,000 and 15,000 (SU)
Ⓐ
inhabitants, (C) ●
inhabitants (A)
inhabitants) is (SU)
Ⓐ
brown stone (SU) ●
brown (A)
Ⓐ
dwellings (A) ●
not in
(SU)
Ⓐ
adobes
(C) ●
adobies (A)
’dobies (SU)
Ⓐ
cream-colored (A) ●
dull cream-colored (SU)
Ⓐ
oblong (A) ●
oblong square (SU)
Ⓐ
cement; also a great number of (A) ●
cement, (SU)
Ⓐ
corkscrew . . . neat (A) ●
corkscrew; houses one and two stories high, built of wood, straw, ’dobies and dull
cream-colored
pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral cut into oblong square blocks and laid in cement,
but no brick houses; there are great yards,
more like plazas, about a large number of the dwelling-houses, and these are carpeted
with bright green grass, into which your foot
sinks out of sight; and they are ornamented by a hundred species of beautiful flowers
and blossoming shrubs, and shaded by noble
tamarind trees and the “Pride of India,” with its fragrant flower, and by the “Umbrella
Tree,” and I do
not know how many more. I had rather smell Honolulu at sunset than the old Police
Court-
| room in San Francisco.
centered
Almost a King. [¶] I had not shaved
since I left San Francisco—ten days. As soon as I got ashore I hunted for 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.
centered
Landsmen on “Sea Legs.” [¶] Walking about on shore was very
uncomfortable at first; there was no spring to the solid ground, and I missed the
heaving and rolling of the ship’s deck; it
was unpleasant to lean unconsciously to an anticipated lurch of the world and find
that the world did not lurch, as it should have
done. And there was something else missed—something gone—something wanting, I could
not tell what—a dismal vacuum
of some kind or other—a sense of emptiness. But I found out what it was presently.
It was the absence of the ceaseless dull hum
of beating waves and whipping sails and fluttering of the propeller, and creaking
of the ship—sounds I had become so accustomed
to that I had ceased to notice them and had become unaware of their existence until
the deep Sunday stillness on shore made me vaguely
conscious that a familiar spirit of some kind or other was gone from me. Walking on
the solid earth with legs used to the
“giving” of the decks under his tread, made Brown sick, and he went off to bed and
left me to wander alone about this
odd-looking city of the tropics.
centered
New Scenes
and Strong Contrasts. [¶] The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every step revealed
a new
contrast—disclosed something I was unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored
brown stone fronts of San Francisco, I
saw neat (SU)
Ⓐ
these homes (A) ●
those cottages (SU)
Ⓐ
yards (A) ●
yards, about like Portsmouth Square (as to size) (SU)
Ⓐ
geranium, calla lily, etc., (A) ●
infernal geranium (SU)
Ⓐ
debility (A) ●
debility on tin-roofed rear additions or in bedroom windows (SU)
Ⓐ
San Francisco’s pleasure grove, (A) ●
not in
(SU)
Ⓐ
“Willows,” (A) ●
“Willows,” and the painful sharp-pointed shrubbery of that funny caricature of nature
which they call
“South Park,” (SU)
Ⓐ
of (A) ●
of those vile, tire-some, stupid, everlasting (SU)
Ⓐ
globes, (A) ●
globes and (SU)
Ⓐ
countless (A) ●
all (SU)
Ⓐ
bob-tail (SU) ●
bob-tailed (A)
Ⓐ
asleep . . . In (A) ●
asleep; in (SU)
Ⓐ
wretched (A) ●
that wretched (SU)
Ⓐ
pavements (A) ●
pavement nuisance (SU)
Ⓐ
perdition (A) ●
hell (SU)
Ⓐ
harmless (A) ●
cold and harmless yonder (SU)
Ⓐ
street cars (C) ●
street-cars (SU)
Ⓐ
astride (A) ●
astraddle (SU)
Ⓐ
Chinadom (A) ●
Sacramento street, Chinadom (SU)
Ⓐ
Brannan (A) ●
Brannon (SU)
Ⓐ
summer (C) ●
Summer (SU)
Ⓐ
the Golden City’s (A) ●
our familiar (SU)
Ⓐ
framework (C) ●
frame-work (SU)
Ⓐ
ocean: (A) ●
ocean; (SU)
Ⓐ
sail— (A) ●
sail—— [¶] At this moment, this man Brown, who has no better manners than to read
over one’s
shoulder, observes: [¶] “Yes, and hot. Oh, I reckon not (only 82 in the shade)! Go
on, now, and put it all down, now that
you’ve begun; just say, ‘And more ‘santipedes,’ and cockroaches, and fleas, and lizards,
and red ants, and
scorpions, and spiders, and mosquitoes and missionaries’—oh, blame my cats if I’d
live here two months, not if I
was High-You-Muck-a-Muck and King of Wawhoo, and had a harem full of hyenas!” [Wahine
(most generally pronounced Wyheeny),
seems to answer for wife, woman and female of questionable character, indifferently.
I never can get this man Brown to understand that
“hyena” is not the proper pronunciation. He says “It ain’t any odds; it describes
some of ’em,
anyway.”] [¶] I remarked: “But, Mr. Brown, these are trifles.” [¶] “Trifles be—blowed!
You get nipped by one of them scorpions once, and see how you like it! There was Mrs.
Jones, swabbing her face with a sponge; she felt
something grab her cheek; she dropped the sponge and out popped a scorpion an inch
and a half long! Well, she just got up and danced
the Highland fling for two hours and a half—and yell!—why, you could have heard her
from Lu-wow to Hoola-
| hoola,
with the wind fair! and for three days she soaked her cheek in brandy and salt, and
it swelled up as big as your two fists. And you
want to know what made me light out of bed so sudden last night? Only a ‘santipede’—nothing,
only a
‘santipede,’ with forty-two legs on a side, and every foot hot enough to burn a hole
through a raw-hide. Don’t
you know one of them things grabbed Miss Boone’s foot when she was riding one day?
He was hid in the stirrip, and just clamped
himself around her foo
and sunk his fangs plum through her shoe; and she just throwed her whole soul into
one
war-whoop and then fainted. And she didn’t get out of bed nor set that foot on the
floor again for three weeks. And how did
Captain Godfrey always get off so easy? Why, because he always carried a bottle full
of scorpions and santipedes soaked in alcohol,
and whenever he got bit he bathed the place with that devilish mixture or took a drink
out of it, I don’t recollect which. And
how did he have to do once, when he hadn’t his bottle along? He had to cut out the
bite with his knife and fill up the hole
with arnica, and then prop his mouth open with the boot-jack to keep from getting
the lockjaw. Oh, fill me up about this lovely
country! You can go on writing that slop about balmy breezes and fragrant flowers,
and all that sort of truck, but you’re not
going to leave out them santipedes and things for want of being reminded of it, you
know.” [¶] I said, mildly:
“But, Mr. Brown, these are the mere——” [¶] “Mere—your grandmother! they ain’t
the mere anything! What’s the use of you telling me they’re the mere—mere—whatever
it was you was going to
call it? You look at them raw splotches all over my face—all over my arms—all over
my body! Mosquito bites! Don’t
tell me about mere—mere, things! You can’t get around them mosquito bites. I took
and brushed out my bar good night
before last, and tucked it in all around, and before morning I was eternally chawed
up, anyhow. And the night before I fastened her up
all right, and got in bed and smoked that old strong pipe until I got strangled and
smothered and couldn’t get out, and then
they swarmed in there and jammed their bills through my shirt and sucked me as dry
as a life-preserver before I got my breath again.
And how did that dead-fall work? I was two days making it, and sweated two buckets
full of brine, and blame the mosquito ever went
under it; and sloshing around in my sleep I ketched my foot in it and got it flattened
out so that it wouldn’t go into a green
turtle shell forty four inches across the back. Jim Ayres grinding out seven double
verses of poetry about Waw-
hoo! and crying about leaving the blasted place in the two last verses; and you slobbering
here about—there you are!
Now—
now, what do you say? That yellow spider could straddle over a saucer just like nothing—and
if I hadn’t been here to set that spittoon on him, he would have been between your
sheets in a minute—he was traveling
straight for your bed—he had his eye on it. Just pull at that web that he’s been stringing
after him—pretty near
as hard to break as sewing silk; and look at his feet sticking out all round the spittoon.
Oh, confound Waw-
hoo!” [¶] I am glad Brown has got disgusted at that murdered spider and gone; I don’t
like to be interrupted
when I am writing—especially by Brown, who is one of those men who always looks at
the unpleasant side of everything, and I
seldom do.
indented from right
Mark
Twain. (SU)
Ⓐ
ecstasy (C) ●
ecstacy (A)
Ⓐ
bed-chamber (C) ●
bed-
| chamber (A)
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 63
Ⓔ the Islands hove in sight]
The
Ajax docked at Honolulu at 11 A.M. on Sunday, 18 March (“The Pioneer Steam Line,” Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 24 Mar 66, 2).
Ⓔ then
. . . sail—] Mark Twain based this portion of the text (except for the paragraph at
432.11–433.11)
on his letter in the Sacramento
Union of 19 April 1866, revising it for inclusion in
Roughing
It (
SLC 1866l
).
Ⓔ San Francisco’s
pleasure grove, the “Willows,”] Clemens was well acquainted with this popular resort,
located at Mission and
Eighteenth streets, whose attractions included a hotel and restaurant, gardens with
tables and chairs, a minstrel and variety theater,
an aquarium and zoo, and facilities for bowling and dancing (
ET&S1
, 494).
Ⓔ I saw cats] On 19
May the Honolulu
Advertiser reported the publication of Mark Twain’s first letters to the
Union and reprinted much of his description of Honolulu, commenting:
“His
letters abound in genuine good humor and fun, though if he would stick a little closer
to facts, they would be more reliable.”
In particular, the passage on cats struck the
Advertiser as apocryphal: “We half suspect he
[begin page 709] brought the cats with him,” suggested the paper (“Mark Twain,” Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 19 May 66,1). Soon after his arrival in Honolulu, however, Clemens wrote in his
notebook,
“1000
s of cats and nary snake” (
N&J1
, 220).
Ⓔ they were rather sour
that year . . . it will come off when the enamel does] Mark Twain adapted this description
of tamarind tasting
from a similar account, in a section entitled “Fruit,” in his letter in the Sacramento
Union of
20 April. He did not use this letter elsewhere in
Roughing It (
SLC
1866m).
