The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1869-07-03
The Pacific Railroad-Open.

An article in the Atlantic for June, with th.
above caption, by Samuel F. Bowles, editor o
Springfield (Mass.) Republican, is SO full of vigol
and freshness, and written with such a compre
hensive knowledge of the subject in hand, that il
will well repay the reader. The writer has one
paragraph among others on California, which
those who have Travelled in that State will admit
as truthful, however strangers may take it:
With such suddenly developed yet securely held
wealth as these few facts illustrate, the future of
California looms before the visitor in proportions
that astound and awe. In her, nature is as
Doundless in its fecundity and variety, as it is
strange and startling in its forms. While Swift
erland has only four mountains that rise to a
height OF thirteen thousand feet, California has
one or two hundred, while Mount Whitney scars
to fifteen thousand feet, and is the highest peak
OF the Republic. She has q waterfall fifteen
times as high as Niagara. All climates are her
own; what variety her long stretch north and
south does not present, her mountains and valleys
introduce. Dead volcanoes and sunken rivers
abound in her mountains the largest animal of
the continent makes his covert in her chaparrals ;
the largest bird floats over her plains for car
rion the remains of the Oldest lnhabitant, so
tar as identified, have been Dug out of her depths ;
the biggest nugget of gold (weighing one hundred
and ninety-fve poundsand worth thirty-seven thou
saudfour hundred dollars) has been found among
her Soiu OepOslCs sne mas lakes SO VOraclOuS that
they Will eat up a man, boots, breeches and all, in
thirty days, and rich enough in borax, sulphur,
and soda to supply the worlds apothecaries she
has mud volcanoes and the Yosemite Valley she
grows beets of one hundred and twenty pounds,
cabbages of serenty-fve, onions of four, turnips
OF twenty-six, and watermelons of eighty pounds,
and has a grapevine fifteen inches thick, and
bearing s~ixty-fve hundred pounds in one season.
Her men are the most enterprising and audacious,
her women the most self-reliant and the most
dressed, and her children the ~stoutest,
s~turdlest, and sauciest in all the known world.
Let us worship and move on!
One chapter is devoted to our islands, and is so
fair and truthful, that we copy it entire. Although
we would not seek to rob Mr.. Bowles of one iota
OF merit due to the writer of it, yet we think
this chapter could only have been penned by one
who has ridden through the lovely ravines of
Hamakua, witnessed a moonlight from the top of
Haleakala, and picnic-ed in the charming valley
of Wailuku. We stake our reputation as a Yam
koe on the guess that this chapter is from the pen
Of a lady traveller, who made the tour of the
Stands some two or three years ago. The story
IS prettily told, and in marked contrast with
: Social Life in the Tropics"
To us of the East, the Sandwich Islands are a
'emote, foreign kingdom, where our whalers re6t,
md to the conversion of whose heather we dedi-
But here In California, they are counted as
dependecies, ay, surely and soon pos
essions of the American Republic. We have 1
their heather, We have occupied their c
ugar plantations; we furnish the brains that d
AIRY on their government, and the diseases that
re destroying their people; we want the profit on A
heir sugars and their tropical fruits and vege- :
lbles why should we not seize and annex the
stands themselves? At any rate, the familiarity
nth which the Eastern visitor finds az the Isl
II y oil. AE - IT, - 7
e receives of their strange scenery, their won
srful volcanoes, their delightful climate, will p,