The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1908-09-11
THE BIGGEST
TIE SAWM|LL
lstaf correspondenee.l

PAHOA, Puma, haWaH5 StptempSi
3.-A tie sawmill, the biggest mill of
its kind in the world, will be started
ND here next week, on Wednesday If
1he weather is propitious. A great deal
depends upon the weather, for IN
Puma, MS elsewhere on this island, the
drought is being felt, and there are
four great s0,00Ugallon tanks yawning
10 be filled with water in order that
the boilers in the mill may have suftl-
eient supply to run. Back mile IN
the forest, hedged in by wild bamboo
aud banana fronds, dense and tropical,
is a dank mudpuddle, the biggest
waterproof within many more square
miles of Jungle, and this is to be tapped
soon for water supply, but the main
dependence is placed for steam for
the mill upon the rain that falls upon
the big corrugated iron roof of the mill
itself The mudpudde, pond or lake
1t is called either, and both of the
latter two in Puna-itself is only a
catch. basin for the rain, saucer in
the lava, the one place for miles in any
direction where water can collect
Everything else about the mill is
prepared. The big solid building is
ready to echo to the whine Of the null
tiple saws, the conveyor belts are
stretched to whirl away the product
the squared and solid ohia ties-to
where fiatears will be waiting to re-
eeive them, the boards from the cut
tings to yard where they will be piled
for drying and subsequent shipment,
aud the slabs and sawdust to a giant
Java urn, where fire will reduce the
waste bulk to ashes. The mill is mod
ern, as new as the industry it serves,
rs up-to-date as the men creating the
new industry for Hawaii, as complete
as money will buy and brains plan for
and supply. When running at guaran-
teed capacity, $500 ties day will go
from saw cradle to fatcar, 100000
Aoard feet each twenty-four hours.
In readiness for the opening and
starting up of the mill, n mountain of
shia logs have been piled up behind
the building, yanked from lumber
trains by steel cables and stacked up
sixty feet high, tossed about by the
tentacles Of donkey engines as matches
are snapped from the fingers. In the
forest clearings n mile mauka, other
donkey engines snort and puff loading
these trains from piles snaked by cable
from a Thousand feet on either side
the little narrow guage railroad line,
while deeper in the forest, where the
slias stand thick, towering above the
tangled and almost impenetrable un-
dcrgrowth and down timber, other
donkey engines are pulling down the
trees. pulling them down literally in
lunches, the steel cables being looped
in the arc Of a great circle and in the
tautening everything within the sweep
must come crashing to the ground.
And the initial purpose of all this
activity is to clear the way for that
first thing of all in Hawaii mel, sugar
zane. The land the Hawaiian Ma
hogany Company is working on at pres
ant in Puma is land belonging to the
Puma plantation, and the cane planter
Is on the. heels of the lumberman
Where only short time ago the jungle
held the land, between the hamlet of
Pahoa and the forest mauka, now
stretches the bright green rows of cane
and, in one place, the planters swept
round and past the clearers and in the
very shadow of the forest itself an
arm of the cane field has been thrust
Originally, before it was known
abroad that ohia is of all woods the
finest for railroad ties, the cleaners
stacked logs and brush together and
made the pyre for many thousands OF
potential dollars. The land was needed
and the ohia growth was regarded as
Just that much worth less than nothing
MS it cost to rip the spreading roots
from their hold on the ground and drag
the tree to the burning piles. Now
one mainland railroad company is will
ing and glad to spend many hundreds
OF thousands year to get that which
formerly was burned up as trash and
Hid not even make good bonfire.
Next year, where now is forest, fast
dwfndIing before the force of steam,
directed by brainy men, mt least five
hundred acres of cane will go in. BY
that time some million ties will haN e
passed. between the big mill saws and
many thousands of mainland dollars
Kill have been distributed in wages
tnd dividends in Hawaii.
In the meanwhile the Mahogany
Company is pushing on through the
plantation lands for it's own forest
property, the jungle hinterlands, that
lie in great stretch from the fringe
of Puma toward Kau through a dis
trict unexplored, and of which there
% no data beyond the fact that 1t is
hrsyily wooded and that this wood is
rrershle. In the Puma end are miles
of ohia, on the upper slopes of the
eompany's tract in Kau are the great
koa forests, the trees from which the
Hawaiian mahogany is sawn, ma
hogany unexeelled anywhere in the
world, and for which, so soon as it can
be placed upon the market, the dealers
of the world are waiting.
As rapidly as eighty men can slash
tie right ofway, cut and fill for grade
aud lay the iron, the little pioneer lum-
herring railroad is being pushed ahead
through the ohia jungle, towards the
spper heights where the giant koa
have been maturing for hundred
years The mahogany people cali that
seetion of their own lands which abuti
0n the plantation limits, "the home
steads,'' and this is country wher,
the ohia grows big. They want tC
reach this with their railroad as soor
rs possible and there is active work
going ON along the ripht -of.wav Ru-