The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1908-01-13
THE MINISTRY Of
VINES AND TREES
nlN John @. wnollenl

culture and the deep and spiritual
carnestness shown by the missionaries
10 these islands, there was one feature
of their enterprise that marked them
for extraordinary success; they came
to stay. Here" said one of them as
the sailing vessel which had carried
them via Cape Horn from Boston TO
Honolulu, let go her anchor in this
port, Here we are to live and labor
until the land is filled with churches
and school houses. fruitful fields and
pleasant dwellings" That was i'm 1928
nine years after the first mission had
been begun. Where the city now stands
was jungle of cookie burrs, with here
and there soce scattering CLAMPS of
cocoanupt trees, and the mountains
round about were bare brown lava UNI
relieved by any tint Of green. 1t was
no Paradise of the Pacific then.
But they had come to stay until the
lava and lava-Coiored people. sown to
beauty fruitfulness and truth, should
come to bear incalculable harvests to
their husbandry Of faith ana love. And
they were missionaries to the plains
and the mountains as well as to the
natives. And so the cookie burrs gave
way to avenues of palm and groves of
fiC and lime and orange hedged with
hibiscus. Exotic trees from every land
began to line the trails with food for
man and beast until the very lava was
il blossom.
Not tracts, but seeds, they carried III
their pockets as they went about
spreading the news of brotherhood, and
SO the ministry Of grass and vines and
trees went forward nightly. No seed
was allowed to escape. Whatever fruit
or flowers came ashore from whalers OF
man-of-war was planted by the stream
or in sheltered places of the velley, and
the mails, thought few and far between
brought seeds of everything that grows
from homes and mission stations every
where. So the magnolia came, the
golden shower, the ponciana regta,
the acacia, the frangipani So, too the
mango, grape, avocado, fig and fifty
kinds of bananas, not to speak Of
melons and vegetables almost innu-
merable, grew and multiplied.
The seeds and the soil understood
each other without an interpreter and
iong before the people had been Chris
tanned the barren hills had been dis
cipled with the gospel of seeds until
today they fairly stagger under the
burden of their gracious, luscious COM
missary and fairly clamor with de-
lights for every sense. Thus, each ISL
and has become a rendezvous for every
tree that loves the tropics and some
that hail from other zones.
Of course, these leafy, flowery, fruit
ing immigrants, once given the freedom
of the islands. have had to take their
chances, for the missionaries were only
a handful and men, not trees, were
what they came to dress and till But
any old missionary homestead here is
a notable arboratum where the the tor
rid zone displays her floral master
pieces.
l am no botanist. nor even a careful
observer and / only write of things
that catch me and compel me. Hay
ing tasted the delights of ignorance
through many years, nothing would
tempt me into the realm of dates, num-
bers and sums of statistics and catalo-
CUES and scientific habit.
"A primrose by the rivers brim
yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more"
Except a yellow invisible miracle
which he would take and delight in
and give to somebody's woman-and
say: There. my lady, fasten that at
your throat and multiply it's whiteness
or man, and say; There, man, stick
that in your buttonhole and be the
better for it."
The most impressive tree of the
tropics is the cocoanut palm. 1t is the
pathfinder of fertility. Long before
any other tree tackles, or would tackle,
a patch of emerging coral in midocean,
or brown heap of crumbling lava on
the windward shore of some volcanic
island, a cocoanut, blown from some
wind-swept headland out to sea, will
arrive and take possession in the name
of life and struggle and victory Then
it begins to push a wrinkled, crooked
cylinder skyward, surmounted with a
ball of plumes, while it's slim roots ne
gotiate the lava crevasses for supplies
And there is sticks and grows. After
a few years it drops 100 to 200 other
trees, wrapped safe in thick brown
fiber. every season, and begins to set
} the earth to cocoanuts.
z 1t is ready then, with milk and fruit
and rope and thatch and carpeting, fol-
the coming man, whom it was made &c
serve. 1t is the tree reformer lorna,
does twist its body, but it stays. The
stingy lava tries to starve it, but il
stays. The brackish tide water tries CC
poison it, but it stays The sun burns
it's green pennants to yellow brown