Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-06-17
HAWAIIAN.
THE OLD AND THE NEW MINIS sRY-TEE
NEW PREMIER.
Hawthorne's Description of Gibson-What
Gibson Proposes to po-A Strange
overnme1t-singular Situation.
Correspondence of the RrooRD-UMOs-l

Governme1t-stugular Situation.
fCo-respondence of the REooRD-USIoS.l
HoNoLULU tH. L. June 3, 1882.
The last few weeks vicissitudes in Gov
eminent affairs have been such as no one,
even the most astute, dreamed of, and the
surprise occasioned is slow to subside.
The nature Of the complications leading
ND TO this state of affairs has already been
limited at in the REcoRD-UNIoN. 1t has
been shown that the Legislature was har-
RAISING the Cabinet daily, but it was not
thought those officials would throw up the
$ oonge so soon, and without showing at
least an inclination to face the music.
Such, however, is the case. They turned
their portfolios over to the King, who ac-
cepted them with an slacrity for which
they were unprepared, as they seemed to
be for anything else. The new Cabinet is
8 strange conglomerate, the uniquest part
being its Premier, w. NJ Gibson, South
erner, born in Biscay Bay, and upon whose
account the United States nearly declared
war upon the Dutch some twenty-five years
ago. His life is a romance, which Haw-
thorne, while United States Consul at Liv-
erpool, had fine opportunity of learning,
and records as follows Like many men
of adventurous cast, he had SO quiet de-
pertinent, and such an apparent disinclina-
ton to general sociability, that you would
have fancied him moving always along
some popular secluded walk of life. When
his dignified reserve was overcome, he had
the faculty OF narrating these adventures
with wonderful eloquence, working up his
descriptive sketches with intuitive percep-
ton Of the picturesque points, go that the
whole was thrown forward with positively
illusive effect, like matters of your ewn
visual experience. In fact they were
so ADMIRABLY DONE
That could never more than half believe
them, because the genuine affairs of life are
not apt to transact themselves so artistic
ally. Literally from his first hour he had
been tossed upon the surges of most va
ried and tumultuous existence, having been
born at sea, of American parentage, but on
board of a Spanish vessel, and spending
many of the subsequent years in voyages,
travels and outlandish incidents and vicis-
STUDIES which, we thought, had hardly
been paralleled since the days of Gulliver
or De Foe. Many of his scenes were laid
in the East, and among those seldom WIS.,
tied archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean, SO
that there was aa Oriental fragrance
breathing through his talk, and an odor of
the Spice Islands still lingering in his gar
ments. He had much to say Of the de-
lightful qualities of the Malay pirates. who,
indeed, carry on predatory warfare against
the shios OF all civilized nations, aud cut
every Christian throat among their prison.
ers but they are gentle nurtured people
of primitive Innocence and integrity. But
his best story was about race OF men ut
men they were) who seemed so fully to
realize Swift's wicked fable OF the 1ahoos
that nv friend was much exercised with
speculations whether or no
they had any souls. They dwelt in the
wilds of Ceylon, like other savage beasts,
hairy and spotted with tufts of fur, filthy,
shameless, weaponless Though warlike in
their individual bent), tooliess, houseless,
except for a few cultural
sounds, hideously dissonant, whereby they
held the rudest kind of communication
among themselves. They lacked both
MEMORY AND FORESIGHT,
And were wholly destitute of government,
social institutions, or law, or worship OF
any description except the immediate
tyranny of the strongest radically un-
tamable, moreover, save that the people
of the country manage to subject few
of the less fsrocious and stupid ones to
outdoor servitude among other cattle.
They were beastly in almost all their at
tributes, and that to such degree that
the observer, losing sight of any link
betwixt them and manhood, could gener-
ally witness their brutalities without
greater horror than those Of some dis
agreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And
vet, at times, comprising what were the
lowest general traits in his own race,
with what was highest in these abomin-
able monsters, he found CHASTITY similitude
that half compelled him to recognize
them as human brethren. had accepted
his Oriental fantasies, not as matters OF
indubitable credepce, but as allowable
specimens of an maginative travellers vivid
coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse
texture and dull neutral tints of truth.
After these Gulliverian researches, my
agreeable acquaintance had fallen under
the ban of the Dutch Government and
had suffered this, at least, being matter
of fact) nearly two years imprisonment,
with confiscation Of large amount OF
property, for which Mr.. Belmont, our
Minister at the Hague, had just made
peremptory demand of reimbursement and
damages. Since arriving in England on
his way to the United States, he had been
providentially led to inquire into the cir
cumstances of his birth on shipboard, and
discovered that not himself alone, but
another baby, bad come into the world
during the same voyage of the prolificvessel,
and that there were almost irrefragable
reasons for believing that these two
children had been assigned to the wrong
mothers. Many "reminiscences of his early
days confirmed Linn In the idea that his
nominal parents were aware of the ex-
change. The family to which he felt
authorized to attribute his lineage was
that of nobleman, in the picture gallery
Of whose ccuntry-seat (whence, if | mis-
take not our adventurous friend had just
returned) he had discovered portrait
bearing striking resemblance to himself.
As soon as he should have reported the
outrageous action OF the Dutch Govern
ment to President Pierce and the Secretary
of State, and recovered the confiscated
property, he proposed toreturn to England
and establish his claim to the noblsman's
title and estate.
THE ENGIJSI
Was among the latest communications that
he intrusted to my ear, and as coon as l
heard the first chapter-so wonderfully
akin to what might have wrought out of
my own head, not Impractical in such
figmeuts-I began to repent having made
myself responsible for the nobleman's pas.
sage homewsrd in the next Collins steamer.
should his English rent. roll
fall little behindhand, his Datch cl,im
for 500, 900 was certainly in the hands OF
our Government, and might at least be
valuable to the extent of ESQ, which had
d, 49,, 30, ~, 1nbolf IA I have