The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1898-01-29
ISLAND RESOURCES.


lands is beginning. For years Molo- {
kai has lain aside from the general ,
route of travel The steamers hurry ,
ing from the capital to busy landings
on Maui and Hawaii have passed ten
miles or so from its southern coast,
and the passengers have specialized
upon it's rugged outlines and it's deep
ravines. But actual visitors have been
rare.
However, all this is to be changed.
That people are beginning to realize
that on the Island are possibilities for
considerable investment is made clear
from the fact of the number of people
who are preparing to bid for that part
of the Island which is occupied by the
Bishop estate.
The history of Niolokai viii be
somewhat similar to that of Hamakua
in Hawaii. Thirty years ago there
was only bride trail through Ha-
makua, and a few scattered huts. No
and . dead silence brooded over its
grass covered slopes and its forest
lands. Now you can drive from one
end of the district to the other. There
are thriving villages, continuous cane
fields, and where there was a popula-
ton of a few hundreds there are now
nearly six thousand people, and the
population is still growing.
At the present time the whole pop
ulation of Molokai is 23O0, and the
bulk of that is in the settlement at
the north of the Island. For the re-
mainder of the Island, spread along
its shores in scanty villages, there are
not 1000 people. But this will
change as soon as capital and skill
come in.
The present idea is to establish a
sugar plantation at Kaunakaiai. The
land there is as fine as the land on Eva
plantation. and everyone knows how
excellent have been the yields there.
ne lllttlbt VI IL X 'i'lhS WIZ li"'N "
be similar, the water will have to be
pumped from the wells. In this way
land can be fortified which will make
one of the largest plantations on the
Islands.
And with the advent of IA plantation,
the land which is of no use for cane
,+b ,,
Homesteads will be needed. Fruits
will be cultivated. Coffee will rise
from its present languishing condition
on the Island In fact the place Will
wake up.
But Molokai is by no means the on
ly neglected Island. Lanai is anoth-
err. With "A population at present of
barely one hundred it is capable of
containing a population of at least
twenty times that number, and prob
ably double of that again. There are
cane lands on Lanai equally as good,
and of similar character to the cane
lands of Olowalu. In the extinct era
Ltl VI dldNdl. NlilNh ottul'iNS wv
main portion of the uplands, there are
some ten thousand acres of magnifi-
cent land only awaiting capital and
skill to make it yield its increase.
When people like Professor Bryce
talk about these Islands being filled
up and there being no more land to be
occupied, they are talking upon IL
subject which they know very super
ficially. A few days stay in Honolulu,
drive to the Pail, trip to the Vol
cano and "a view of the Kona coast
from the deck of a steamer, does not
give any one an idea of the resources
of the Islands. 1t is only by going
over them, inspecting their plains and
their valleys, that any adequate idea
can be formed.
The Hawaiian Islands are quite ca
pable of supporting population five
times larger than they do today, and
there are those who think that they
can support one ten times larger. OF
the lower and more conservative fig
ure there can, however, be no doubt
The wonderful growth of the coun-
try in the last twenty-five years strikes
any one who has lived through those
years and will think of the past, and
it will serve as "A criterion of the
growth of the future if only our po-
litical conditions prove satisfactory.
Given annexation and the expansion
of the resources of the Islands will be
as certain as that the sun rises in the
east and sets in the west.