Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-01-03
NEWS IN HONOLULU

preclated by the Honolulu folks.' said an
American newspaper man who recently re-
turned to this country after being employed
Tor many years on the star Of Honolulu
newspaper. II suppose the cable Is just
about being buoyed down there as am
speaking. and when the cable instrument
first begins to click in Honolulu you can
wager that therell be a celebration among
the Americans and English and Germans
there that'l cause a good many Of them to
get up on the next morning with that katz-
en5ammerish feeling.
have knocked about the world a good
bit, and 4 don't know of any place that has
been more in want of cable communication
for years past than Honolulu. The white
population of the city Is composed exclu-
siveiy of hustling men and thoroughly up
to-date women from all parts of the United
States and Europe and their feeling of iso-
lation, even while living in so modern a
city as Honolulu, has long been acute, with
no other news brought from the outside
world than reaching them in heaped-up
form in the American newspapers that we
get to the islands by steamers at from four
to ten days intervals between them. They
are alert people, who before settling in
Honolulu were in the habit of closely fol-
lowing the news OF the world from day to
day, and the business of waiting for days
at stretch for information as to the
worlds doings, especially at periods when
they knew something big was going on, has
been extremely irksome to them.
ITO illustrate: Our first news of the erup-
ton of Mont Pelee was brought down to
US on the steamer Australia. The Austria
liza brought the San Francisco papers, con-
tanning the bare announcement of the great
catastrophe, published the day after the
great eruption, before any of the details of
the horror were known. There were just
four or five double-leaded lines on the first
pages of the newspapers, telling of the
thing he OF Ans
tralia had left San Francisco FOR Honolulu
just seven days before, and there was no
other steamer from the states due for some
thing more than a week.
Now, If there's any one thing that the
people living in the Hawaiian Islands are
particularly interested in it's volcanoes.
They're most Of them living in the shad-
ows. so to speak, of volcanoes themselves.
and good many Of them live pretty ner-
vously, too, on account of the rather too
close propinquity of the volcanoes, active
and extinct-if there really is such thing
as an extinct volcano, which I myself do
not believe. So, when the Australia brought
the San Francisco papers, cont aiming only
those few lines about the Mont Pelee affair,
the people longed for cable as they had
never longed before. The brief announce
idents of st. Pierre had been sacrificed, and
the Honolulu folks, living themselves right
below the Punchbowl, a volcano that is
supposed to be extinct, weren't very cheer
full just about then.
1.-The Warimoo, bound for Samoa and
Australia, was late. and didn't get down
until ten days after the arrival of the Aus
tralia, and we had to wait all that time to
get the details of the Pelee affair. Then we
each got our big bundle of newspapers, ten
days of them, and we had to sit down and
spend night wading through the horrible
history of the dreadful Martinique calam-
ity. Honolulu was the gloomiest city mag
Unable for several days after the arrival Of
the Warimoo, whereas if the town had been
in constant daily communication with the
United States by cable the news of the
great catastrophe would have come out
gradually and naturally, and the shock of
swallowing it all at a gulp would not have
rendered the city dismal and depressing as
it did.
again: The first we heard Of the shoot
ing Of President Mckinley was contained in
the bunch of San Francisco newspapers
brought down to Honolulu by a steamer
that left San Francisco on the morning
following the deed of the assassin. The &C
counts were given In detail, of course, but
it ~ seemed certain from the telegraphed
stories In those papers that the President
could not possibly live, and some of the
merchants even draped their stores in
mourning upon receipt Of this first infor-
nation. Then, about five days later, If I
remember correctly, another steamer came
along, and we were astonished to find, not
only that the President was still alive, but
that there seemed quite a fair prospect
rejoicing over this still when. a week later.
another steamer came in, bringing newspa-
pers containing not only the information
that Mr.. Mckinley was dead, but giving in
detail the accounts Of his funeral.
$50 that living in a place cut off from
cable communication with the rest of the
world gives one a constant series of shocks.
The Kanakas didn't know that their king,
United States cruiser Charleston arrived
down in the harbor Of Honolulu with his
body. The Charleston made the swiftest
time on record between San Francisco and
Honolulu on that occasion, but there was
no softening of the blow for the Kanakas,
who all but worshipped the easy-going
Kalakaua. If there had been a cable there
would have been time for them to recover
and control themselves by the time the
body of their dead king got down to Homo
lulu. but when they heard, upon the arrival
of the Charleston, that Kalakaua's body
was even then ready to be brought ashore
to be placed In the grave, they were at first
stunned, and then they went into sort Of
long time. Thousands of them assembled
at the wharf to chant the weird death chant
Of the Kanakas when the body of the dead
king was brought onto the beach by the
CharIeston's sailors and marines, and when
the body was laid away they dropped their
daily work for long time and gave them
selves over to grief and despair, sadly en-
barrassing their employers.
newspapers have been sorely overworked
lot for a good many years. A steamer gets
in, say, at noon. The 'rewrite man for an
afternoon Honolulu paper gets hold of a
bundle Of newspapers covering, say, the
news of the whole world for period of ten
days-the interval since the arrival of the
previous steamer. His paper is due to come
out at o'clock in the afternoon, and so his
copy has to be ready by, say, 8 o'clock or
$780, You can figure for yourself the kind
of move he has got to get on himself in
order to get together in readable shape a
news, properly assorted, ground down,
time. And the Honolulu people have been
mes in their own newspapers for the rea-
son that few of them have possessed the
time or the patience to calmly sit down and
try to read their bundles of American news
papers one by one, and date by date. Did
you ever try to do that? If not. you don't
know what real patience means. man
who can sit down and read ten days copies
of his newspaper, say from January 1 to
January 10. and do the thing consecutively
and in order, without trying to find the out
come of something that he gets interested in
in the later numbers before he has ab-
sorbed the entire contents of the first num-
bers, is worthy to rank alongside of Job.
I've tried to do it innumerable times, but
never got away with the task. once
knew a missionary who had spent many
years in the heart of Africa, and who only
got his papers once a year, and then all in
a bunch and he told me that he read them
copsacutivaIv In temafjc manner huf