The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1908-10-08
work Of their stalls.

|
"The gorilla in the African jungle
pounds his chest until the noise Of il
can be heard half mile away" he
will announce suddenly, and thereat
beat hair raising devils tattoo on his
own chest.
One day he noticed set Of boxing
gloves on the wall, and promptly his
eyes frightened.
, do YOU box?" I asked.
Il used to give lessons in boxing
when I was at Stanford was the re-
ply.
And then and there We stripped and
put on the gloves. Bang! long goril-
la arm flashed out. landing the gloved
end on my nose. Biff! he caught me,
| in a duck. on the side of the head,
nearly knocking me over sidewise.
f! carried the lump raised by that blow
| for a week. ducked under straight
| left. and landed a straight right on his
stomach. 1t was a fearful blow. The
| whole weight of my body was behind
| il and his body had been met as 1t
| lunged forward. 1 looked for him to
crumple up and go down. Instead or
which his face beamed approval, and
| he said, THAT was beautiful" The
| next instant / was covering up and
striving to protect myself from hur-
ricane of hooks, jolts and upper cuts
| Then I watched ny chance and drove
| in for the solar plexus. hit the mark.
| The Nature Man dropped his arms,
gasped, and sat down suddenly.
"I'll be all right" he said. Just walt
| a moment"
And inside thirty seconds he was on
| his feet-aye. and returning the COM
pliment, for he hooked me in tee solar
plexus, and l gasped dropped my hands
and sat down just trifle more sudden
| ly than he hadi
All of which I submit as evidence
! that the man I boxed with was total
| ly different man from the poor, ninety
pound weight CT twelve years before,
who, given up by physicians and alien
! lists, lay gasping his life away In a
closed room in Portland, oregon. The
book that Ernest Darling has written
is a good book, and the binding is good
too
Hawaii has walled for years her need
| for desirable immigrants. She has
l
money in importing desirable citizens,
and she deported the Nature Man. She
refused to give him a chance. So it is,
to chasten Hawaii's proud spirit, that
I take this opportunity to show her
what she has lost in the Nature Man.
When he arrived in Tahiti he proceed
ed to seek out piece of land on which
to grow the food he ate. But land was
difficult to find that is, inexpensive
land The Nature Man was not roll
ing in wealth. He spent weeks in wan
dering over the steep hills, until, high
up the mountain, where clustered sew
eral tiny canons. he found so acres or
brush jungle which were apparently
unrecorded as the property of any one.
The government officials told him that
If he would clea- the land and till it
for so years he would be given a title
for it.
Immediately he set to work. And
never was there such work. Nobody
farmed that high up. The land was
covered with matted jungle and over |
run by wild pigs and countless rats.
The view of Papeiti and the sea was
magnificent, but the outlook was not |
encouraging. He spent weeks in build |
ing a road in order to make the plan |
tation accessible. The pigs and the |
rats ate up whatever he planted as fast |
as it sprouted. He shot the pigs and |
trapped the rats. OF the latter he |
quickly caught fifteen hundred. Ev-
erything had to be carried up on his |
back He usually did his packhorse |
work at night.
Gradually he began to win out. A
grass walled house was built. On the |
fertile volcano soil he had wrested from |
the jungle and the jungle beasts were |
growing 500 cocoanut three 500 papaia |
trees, 800 mango trees, many bread |
fruit trees and alligatOr-pear trees, to |
say nothing of vines, bushes and We
getables He developed the drip OF the |
hills in the canons and worked out an
efficient irrigation scheme, dltchlng the
water from canon to canon and parall-
elling the bitches at different altl-
tudes His narrow canOns became bO-
tanical gardens. The arid shoulders
of the hills. where formally the blazing
sun had parched the jungle and beaten
it close to earth. blossomed into trees
and shrubs and flowers. Not only had
the Nature Man become self-supporting |
but he was now prosperous agrlcul-
turist with produce to sell to the city |
jewellers of Papeiti.
Then it was discovered that his land,
which the government officials had in
formed him was without an owner,
really had an owner, and that deeds, |
descriptions, etc. were on record. All |
his work babe fair to be lost. The land |
had been valueless when he took 1t |
up, and the owner, a large landhOlder,
was unaware of the extent to which the
Nature Man had developed it. A just
price was agreed upon, and Darling's
deed was officially f1leu.
Next came a more crushing blow.
Darling's access to market was des-
troyed. The road he had built was
fenced across by triple barb wire
fences 1t was one of those jumbles in
human affairs that is so common In
this absu-dest of social systems. Be
hind it was the fine hand OF the same
conservative element that hailed the
Nature Man before the Insanity Com
mission in Los Angeles and that de-
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