The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1878-01-12
TIE PACIFIC
SATURDAY Y. JANUARY u.
Habits Of the HaWaiians.

S4TURDAY Y. JANUARY II.
Habits Of the Hawaiians.
THEIR MODE OF LIFE AND LOVE OF FLOWER DECORA-
TIONs-LETTER IRON MINISTER Comfy.
The Columbus (Ohio) State Journal prints a
private letter from Gen. James Comfy, the new
Minister to Hawaii, in which he describes the in
cidents of his voyage to Honolulu, with his
family, gives a graphic account of the terrible
effects of seasickness (Which, he says, is a con-
gestion of the brain and all the nerve tissues,)
and then mentions some of the peculiarities of
the native Hawaiians, as follows
1.-The native products are all ~cheap-every-
thing else is dear. But most American residents
even American born here-never learn to eat
like the Datives-always want to eat the same as
their fathers did before them in Boston, or New
Bedford, or New York. So living is enormously
dear for Americans, while the natives q am told)
can live easily on s. a week. They eat poi, taro,
bananas, melons, and so on, and nothing of flesh
kind, except fish or game. The fish they eat raw,
perhaps as a rule-thOugh they sometimes cook
them. 1t is common to see them take a fish still
alive. and cat 1t right down, crunching bones and
all up together with their great strong white
teeth. Some other time | may have leisure to
give you some interesting particulars about the
large variety of fish eaten by the Hawaiians, and
the garnish Of sea-weed with which the fish and
the poi are eaten. The poi is almost invariably
eaten with cured fish, something like a salt cod
in tasto-yery pleasant eating. The taro is very
much like Il superior kind of Irish potato in taste
and In nutrition. There is no article of diet any,
where that has more nutriment to the square
inch than the tarO. The natives are the most
careless, improVident, laughterloving people in
the world. They have no Winter to slay by' for
even the proverbial rainy day needs nothing
here. So they dance and sing, and deck them
selves with garlands all the day long. Men of
the class which, if they were Americans, would
think 1t dandyIsh or silly to wear a button-hole
hnnupf nn hpra with roc -o,I.-I- T. IL
liest flowers and green leaves hanging in ~festoons
around the neck and shoulders, down the BODY
around the neck, around the hat, everywhere.
These men are not the tops or loafers of the race
but the Woodworking fellows-the herdsmen,
the hackmen, even the draymen, 60 about
adorned In the most exquisite taste, with
flowers and leaves wreathed into forms of beauty
which come to an American like q revelation in
art. Some of our bellies at home, | think have a
moderately good conception of what NAV be done
with flowers. in the a%dornment of a ball-dress for
example. Well, Sir, [ verify believe | have seen
wild herdsmen come riding into town at a reck-
less gallOp, baretooted, with a lasso in hand who
could show one of those bellies such lovely con-
ceptions in the effect of flowers as she never
dreamed OF. These natives apparently live a life
of perpetual Joyousness. They are always laugh
ing, singing, playing jewsharps, making floral
w%reathes, or something of the sort. They have
no withdrawing that would satisfy an Ameri-
can. An American would feel squalid and
wretched if he had no more worldly possessions
than most of the natives seem contented with
Gen. Comly's letter also contains this para
graph: When we reached Honolulu the first
thing we learned was that the only hotel was
shut up for repairs, and would not be open again
Tor three months! A son of William E. Dodge,
of New York-who came here with a daughter
on the Zealandia, to meet his wife and spend
some months with her, found that she had left
some time ago for the United States, in conse-
quence of the closing of the hotel, and so he had
no wife to meet him, and no hotel to meet her in.
vi course he had to wait a month before he could
hear from her or get a steamer to return in, and
he could not be at all certain even then that she
would not be returning to meet him here, and he
would pass her on the way back. In fact, l had
a sort of dreary feeling that they were doomed to
go on that way. like a couple Of Flying Dutch
men, sailing back and forth forever and ever,
trying to reach each other and always passing on
the way"