The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1896-02-27
HAWAII,
1.-THE Pearl, OF THE PACIFIC
The Seventh of Series of Letters by
John K. Musick-AuthOr of The
Columbian Historical Novels, y
'.BrOther Against Brother, ETC., etc.
lCopyright, 1896, by Funk and WagnallS
Company, New York.

Coffee is said to be the hope Of the
| Hawaiian Islands, as it will bring emf
grants of class greatly desired. Many
| OF the sugar plantations are of no ad-
vantage 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 planta-
ton has its own store which all the en-
ployees 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 claimed,
must be conducted by large corpora
tons; no small cane-grower has ever
been found who could successfully con-
duct the business. But with coffee it is
different Coffee is the 'spoor 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 Con-
nectiCut farmers. How i; would be
possible 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 gentle
man who has been making some scien
tiic investigation into coffee growing,
says that lava covered soil is the very
best in which to plant coffee. This
gentleman has a coffee plantation Of
| forty acres, with over one thousand
trees to the acre, and his trees yield
two pounds to the tree. The bli ,ht,
and the fungus which is the result OF
the blight, has injured the trees to
considerable extent, and at one time
threatened the destruction of the in
dustry, but it was discovered that by
sIr' ing young trees with resin water
and potash, the blight could be des
,royed Then the ladybird was intro
duced, and has proven destructive
enemy to the blight.
There is great rivalry between the
Puma and Kama districts in coffee grow
ing The latter is ,he older district,
and claims to produce superior arti
Gle and more to the acre. On the other
hand Puma coffee growers claim a bet
ter soil than Kama, and the work, SO
far as they have gone, is certainly prom
i>ing. Puma district is, to a great ex
tent, a wild unexplored region on the
grea; 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 peo-
Die, as it has been discovered that in
these Islands one acre of good land
will support 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 Ha-
wai, is very rocky and sterile. The
northern part is covered with dense
lauhala forest, and is very thinly inhab-
tied.
This district is covered with ancient
lava flows The only flow of recent
date is that of $40, which flowed under
ground for many miles, and then burst
forth in the woods aud went down to
the sea, overwhelming a small village
in its 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 tree with such force as to
splash the molten lava up one side,
sometimes to the height of hundred
feet, where it cooled and hardened
| and, after the wood burned out in the
centre, it left a lava tree
There something remarkable about
the fertility of Hawaiian soil Lava
flows are soon covered with ferns,
which are great fertilizers. Then fol-
lows a dense growth oftorest vines and
thickets forming an impene,rable jun
gle, so that one is compelled to cut his
way through.
Deep unfathomable ChasmS and cav
ems are quite abundant in Puma. Some
of these caverns extend miles under
ground with many branches leading off
from the main entrance. 1t is not safe
to venture into cave without a COM
petent guide.
Mr.. Wright, of the Wilder Steam
ship Company, has incorporated a
coffee association with paid-up capital
of $4,000 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 Amer
leans of small means to emigrale to
the islands and engage in coffee grow
ing. 1t is proposed to give them one
plantation in return for improving one
for the company. The company itself
will have one hundred acres in coffee.
fifty IN cocoa, ten to twenty in citron
roots, and will utilize the balance OF
its three hundred in fine apples and
guavas for jelly.
| kana, the rival of Puma, is about as
barren and sterile country as it has
ever been my lot to see. One travels
over miles and miles of blackened
rocks and lava flow, most OF it in this
portion of the Island being the rugged
flow called by the natives ga On
the first day we crossed the flow OF
1887. This is black, but after a travel