The Arizona sentinel., 1896-02-29
HAWAII, THE PEARL OF THE PACIFIC." s'he StIl of a Series of Aetfers
 by ohm R. Musick. Author of 'sThe Columbian Hister. teal NOVels," ''BrOther Against
 Brother" etc., etc.
Copyright, 1896, by FUNK & WAaSALLs COMPANY,
 New York.)
The Two Great Coffee Growing Dis.
 tricts.- COIee is Grown.

The Two Great Coffee Growing Dis-
 tricts.-.HOW CO1ee is Grown.
 Coffee is said to be the hope of the
 Hawaiian Islands, as it will bring emi
 grants of a class greatly desired
 Many of the sugar plantations are of
 no advantage to the country save for the taxes they pay. One of the largest sugar plantations in Hawaii is owned
 by non-res;dents. The manager and
 every wEite man on this plantation
 are citize s of California, and every
 lahore is a Chinese or Japanese. The
 plantation has its own store which all
 the employees patrOnize, so that, year
 by year, every dollar of the products of this plantation of twenty thousand acres is sent out of the country to the
 United States, to China, to Japan.
 Sugar plantations, it is claimedi must be conducted by large corpora tions; no small cane-grower has ever been found who could successfully conduct the business. But with cof- fee it is different. Coffee IS the "poor mans crop" From five to ten acres may be cultivated by one person, and a single crop has been known to yield five hundred dollars per acre.
 Coffee lands would disgust even Connecticut farmers How it wouli be possible to produce any thing at all from the stone ana lava would puzzle any one fully conversant with the stony lands of New England, and yet the best coffee trees are found growing out of this same rock and lava. A gentleman who has been making some scientific investigation into coffee growing, says that lava-coyered soil is the very best Tn which to plant coffee. This gentleman has coffee plantation of forty acres, with over one thousand trees to the acre, and his trees yield two pounds to the tree. The blight, and the fungus which is the result of the blight, has injured the trees to a considerable extent, and at one time threatened the destruction of the in- dustry, but it was discovered that by spraying young trees with resin water potash, the blight could be destroyed. Then the ladys'-d was introduced, and has proven 8 destructiyo enemy to the blight
 There is great rivalry between the Puma and Kama districts ir coffea-grow- i ing The latter is the older district, and claims to produce. superior article and more to the acre. On the other hand Puma cofee-growers claim a better soil than Kama, and the work so far as they have goGe, is certainly promising. Puma distric6 is, to great ex elt, wild, unexplored region on the great island of Hawaii, and has but two thousand inhabitants, most | of whom are natives living in their aboriginal style in grass huts. The district is capable of supporting in comfort and prosperity one hundred thousand people, as it has been dis covered that in these Islands one acre | of good land will support eight people. The Puma district Is about ten miles | wide aHd fifty long. so one can under stand what an enormous population it is capable of sustaining. Puma, like most of Hawaii, Is a very rocky and sterile. The northern part is covered | with dense lauf1ald forest, and is very thinly inhabited.
 This district is overed with ancient lava flows. The only flow of recent date is that of 1840, which flowed 1 under ground for many miles, and then burst forth in the woods and went down to the sea, overwhelming a small village in it's course. In the course of this flow may be found lava vases and trees made by tine hot tide rushing like an avalanche down the mountain side, and striking tree with such force as to splash the molten ava up one side, sometimes to the height of q hundred feet, where it cool eJ and hardened, and, after the wood burned out in the center, 1t left lava tree.
 There is something remarkable about he fertility of Hawaiian soil. Lava lows are soon covered with ferns, which are great fertilizers. Then fol- ows dense growth of forest vines and hickets forming an impenetrable uhgle, so that one Is compelled to ,nt his way through.
 Deep unfathomable ehasms and ;averns are quite abundant in Puna. Some of these caverns extend miles