The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-05-15
A SYMP OSIUM
On HAWAII NE|
The New York Independents
Special Edition for
These Isles.

|
terday at some of the bookstores. Il
contains the following articles, each IL
Illustrated by a picture of the author:
Progress in Hawaii, Serene E. Bishop;
Americanizing Hawaii, Bishop Resta-
rick; Is Hawaii Making Good? Dore-
mus Scudder; Land Settlement in Ha-
wall, Sanford B. Dole; The Hawaiian
judiciary, Chief Justice Frear; Homo
lulu, Walter G. Smith.
| Speaking of the symposium, the m
dependent says editorially:
We are very fortunate this week in
being able to give our readers a very
valuable series of articles about our
new Hawaiian possessions. We need
add nothing here as to the worth of
these Islands to US, or as to their i'm
portance as the hating place for all
commerce which must cross the Pa
cific Ocean. That commerce has but
| just fairly begun. In a hundred years
the Pacific commerce will equal or sur
pass that which crosses the Atlantic
San Francisco or Seattle will be as
large a city as New York. Then Ha-
wall will hardly be large enough to
find room for all the steamers that
must stop in its ports. The country
which holds Hawaii will hold control OF
all that commerce.
| We are very glad to learn that our
Congress made no mistake when it in
sisted on universal democratic suffrage
for the Islands. The wise men of Ha-
wall doubted. They would have re-
stricted suffrage to the educated and
the welI-to-do; but with no small cou-
rage we said that we must trust the
people at all hazards. The hazards
seemed too great for a few years; but
now the wise men tell us that the
native Hawaiians are just like other
| people, amenable to the teachings of
experience, lovers of honesty, and that
an honest government is now achieved.
They are poor ethnologists who
| imagine that only Anglo-Saxons can
become fit to rule the world.
So we pass from these matters, so
| fully argued by our Hawaiian contrib
utors, to ask a question which not one
of them has here raised, but which one
of them, DIR. Serene E.. Bishop, an au-
thority on volcanoes, has elsewhere
asked and answered-Where did the
Hawaiian Islands come from? How
came they there, left alone, in the
middle of the great Pacific?
| That carries us back many millions of
years. What is the cause of the deep
hollow of the Pacific Ocean, which
covers half the globe? One likely an
| swer is, that when, in the course of the
| evolution of our solar system, the moon
separated from the earth, flew off
from it, it escaped from that side of
the earth where now is the Pacific
Ocean. Then, say some astronomers,
the outer crust of the earth had be-
gun to harden. the equator bulged
much more than it now does, and the
velocity of revolution was much greater
than now, and the separation of that
portion of the earth which has made
the moon caused the first great break
ing UP of the earth's crust and raised
the great Eastern Continent opposite
the hollow left to be filled by the wa
ters of the Pacific, while portion OF
the crust that remained broke off from
Asia and moved westward to form the
American continent.
The specific gravity of the rocks on
the surface of the earth averages about
81, while that of the total earth is as
high as 5.6. This shows that the ligh-
ter portions of the earth are near the
surface, and the heavier are toward the
center. Now, the specific gravity of the
n Al.
off from the earth, at time when the
earth's shape was much more clip
soidaI, and it was revolving in four
hours, instead of twenty -four, the CEN
trifugal force which threw off the ma
terial of the moon must have taken a
considerable portion of the lighter
crust, and not a little of the heavier
portion below it, so as to bring up its
specific gravity to "a. Now, to return
to Hawaii, We find that the specific
gravity Of the upper part of the noun
tain, Mauna Loa, is 81, while that Of
the lower part is 81. This may be
explained from the fact that this ma
terial comes from the lower level of the
crust of the earth, left under the ocean
when the moon escaped, while the up
per portion comes from volcanic scoria.
The volcanoes of Hawaii are caused by
the thinner crust of the earth under
the ocean, just as those along the edges
of the continents are due to the cracks
in the breaking of the strata that had
their first origin when the continents
We're created by the pushing and
crowding and moving Of the crust Of
the earth when the moon was flung off.
The authority for this theory of the
origin of the Pacific Ocean is our most
distinguished astronomer, Prof. w. II. |
Pickering, of Harvard Observatory, |
who in these conclusions develops the
researches of Prof. George H. Darwin, |
and whose discussion may be found in
a late paper entitled THE Place and |
Origin of the Moon Just now it in |
terests US for HaWaii's sake. It has
been flippantly remarked that it must |
not be suggested that, because the |
moon came from Hawaii, the people of |
those islands are lunatics, for all the |
lunacy was carried off, and there was
left only what is sane.
EXAMPLE rs BETTER THAN
PRECEPT. SET A GOOD EXAMPLE
urrr