The Hawaiian gazette., 1903-06-19
THINGS THAT ATTRACT TOURISTS.

lulu could be made more attractive u
tourists by turning it, in it's architec
ture, streets and all it's internal anc
mainland city. People from Los An
geles or Omaha or Seattle would not &C
far to see just such town as they
have at home. The Omaha man when
he goes to Los Angeles for pleasure
and sightseeing looks about first for an
old Mission and any other relics or sug-
gestions there may be of alien occu-
pancy and other times and scenes; and
If Los Angeles man, going to Omaha,
could find the zigzag lanes between
hide tepees which once marked the
ancient Indian capital there. he would
spend far more time in them than he
would in looking at familiar sky
scrapers or ordered rows of trees.
Tourists are sometimes heard to COM
plain that Honolulu and Havana and
Yokohama and Juneau are being
spoiled" and advertisements of Japan
urge people to go there before the
march of civilization effaces the old
When one saunters down Gina, the
great thWoughfare of Toxic, it gives
him distinct shock to see stores with
modern show windows, streets with
telephone poles, and Japanese gentle
men wearing high hats, all of them
mixed in with ancient, tile-roofed go
downs, crooked lanes and kimono-clad
Samurai. The shock is due to the
things that look civilized and familiar,
not to the things that look alien. an
tiquated or bizarre. The tourist longs
for the old city, the ancient Yeddo,
with nothing in it but tiled roofs, wan
dering alleys and slashed and girded
denizens in their rustling silks.
This is the view point of the tourist
always. Mrs. Eames imagines that
when a sightseer comes here he first of
all looks for a pile of vitrified sewer
pipe. He doesn't. He wants to see
grass house and a hula. 1t delights
him to find a quiet, narrow, crooked
street, overhung with the branches of
the poinsetta and landmarked by tall
palms. He will pass any number of
power plants, electric light poles,
United States letter boxes and even
has one, by the way) to see this typi-
cally tropical thoroughfare. Lucky for
him If he does not meet a municipal
reformer who hurries him down to the
Waikiki road where one of the most
beautiful drives in the world has been
so vastly improved by the touch of
commercialism that it looks, for most
of the way, like a dusty avenue in
Topeka.
The Advertiser has long regarded
Mark Twain's panegyric of Hawaii as
the most persuasive thing in type that
has ever been put before the eyes of
the travelling public. The pity is that
more of them have never seen it. Here
it is:
mo alien land in all the world has
any deep, strong charm for me but that
one; no other land could so longingly
and beseechingly haunt me, sleeping
and waking, through half a lifetime as
that one has done. Other things leave
me, but ii abides; other things change,
but it remains the same. For me its
balmy airs are always blowing, its
summer seas flashing in the sun; the
pulsing of its surf-beat is in my ear;
can see its plumy palms browsing by
the shore; its remote submits floating
like islands above the cloudrack; l
can feel the spirit of it's woodland soil
tude: l can hear the plash of its
brooks; in my nostrils still lives the
breath of flowers that persisted twenty
years ago"
That prose poem now appears in the
al,
ing distributed by the Oceanic Steam
ship Company; but suppose. in the in
terests of progress, We go on and make
over Hawaii into a stereotyped modern
community, and advertise 1t according
ly, how would some such paraphrase as
this suit the mood of tourists?
No modern land has more attrac-
tons than Hawaii to the tourist who
wishes 10 exchange his skies but not
his surroundings. At the landing stage
he can take a train on the elevated
railway and in five minutes can pass
through a covered bridge to the foyer
of the largest hotel in the Pacitic-a
veritable sky-scraper, twenty-eight
stories high. From the roof on clear
days an excellent view can be had of
the up-to-date garbage crematory, the
largest glue factory in the world, the
fish phosphate works and the canneries
along the harbor front. The stranger
will be pleased to observe that the surf
has been utilized for power to supply
the city with electric lights. Elevators
on new and original plan will lift him
TO the tops of the mountain range back
OF the city where the land has been
leveled and covered with asphalt pave
ment, affording a delightful prone
made. For amusements, visits to the
great sewer system, the crematory and
the veterinary hospital can be made
on certains days of the week.
That is the sort of tourist resort
which the ultra reformers would
change Honolulu and Hawaii into-but
Heaven forbid The old, tropical
luxurious Hawaii. with Just enough
modern Improvement not to spoil tn,
Y charm and strangeness OF the place 1.