The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1896-03-21
HAWAII TEE PEARL or THE PAcIF1c.l

HAWAII TEE Pearl. OF THE PACIFIC.
The Two Great Coffee Growing DISTRICTS.
How Coffee 1s Grown.
Copyright, 1921. BY Funk = Wagnalls Co.. ID
Coffee is said to be the hope Of. Ha-
Waiian Islands as it will bring emiGrants
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 residents The
manager and every white man on this
plantation are citizens of California, and.
every laborer 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. 50.
Sugar plantations, tits claimed, must
be conducted by large corporations; no
small cane-grower has ever been found
who could successfully conduct the bus
mess. But with coffee it is different.
Coffee is the s: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. :: .@s
Coffee lands would disgust even Con-
necticut farmers. How it would be pos
sible to produce anything at all from the
stone and 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 investiga-
tion into coffee growing, says that lava
covered soil is the very best in which to
plant coffee. This gentleman has cof-
fee 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 atone time
threatened the destruction of the indus
try, but it was discovered that by spray,
lne young trees with resin water and
potash, the blight could be destroyed.
Then the ladyblrd was introduced, and
has provensa destructive enemy to the
blight. '-.. !
There is great rivalry between the Pu-
ma and Kama districts in coffee growing.
The latter is older district, and claims to
produce superior article and more to
the acre. On the other hand Puma cof-
fee-growers claim better soil than Kama
and the work. SO far as they have gone,
is certainly promising. Puma district is,
to great extent, a wild unexpiored re-
glon on the great island of Hawaii, and
has but two thousand inhabitants, most
OF whom are natives living in their, abo-
riginal style in grass huts. The district.
is capable Of supporting il comfort and
prosperity one hundred thousand people,
as it has been discovered that in these
islands one acre OF good land will sup
port eight people. The Puma district is
about ten miles wide and fifty long, So
one can understand what an enormous
population it is capable OF sustaining.
Puma, like most of Hawaii, is very rocky;
and sterile. The nothern part is covered
with dense lauhala forest, and is very
thinly inhabited. 49,.
This district is covered with ancient
lava flows. The only flow of recent date
is that of 1910, which flowed under
ground for many miles, and then burst
forth in the woods and went down to the
sea, overwhelming small village in it's
course. In the course of this flow may,
be found lava vases and trees made by,
the hot tide rushing like an avalanche
down the mountain side, and striking g.
tree with such force as to splash the
molten lava up one side, sometimes to the
height of a hundred feet, where it cooled
and hardened, and, after the wood burned
out in the centre, il left lava tree. ].
There is something remarkable about
the fertility of Hawaiian soil. Lava
flows are soon covered with ferns, which
are great fertlizers.s Then follows a
dense growth of forest vines and thickets
forming an impenetrable jungle, SO that
one is compelled to cut his way through.
Deep unfathomable chasms and cayerns
are quite abundant in Puma Some of
these caverns extend miles underground
with many branches leading off from the
main entrance. It isnot safe to venture
into cave without a competent guide.
Mr.. Wright, of the Wilder Steamship
Company, has incorporated a coffee assoc
citation with paid-up capital Of 5000
for the purpose of opening up the coffee
country in Puma. The company has
purchased three hundred acres Of the
best coffee lands in Puma, to be divided
into ten acre lots, and it is intended to
induce industrious Americans OF small
means to eniprafn RI fhn iolon1,