The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1909-11-09

bilities that the little island offered the
small farmer. He invited me to walk
around the island with him. 1t was
July, but 1 accepted and moreover
tramped the one hundred miles or
more without hat.
Six miles out from Honolulu we came
to the windward side of the island.
Three miles through the guava, and we
reached the first small farmer, an
Englishman who on an acre grows sew
eral score of alligator pea rtrees. One
of them, higher far than his house,
fruit, for which the Japanese paid him
five cents pear-on the tree. In San
Francisco or New York they would
bring thirty-fve to fifty cents apiece.
Some of the other pear trees were
stunted. Leckenby went after them
with his magnifying glasses like a ter
rier after a cat, and soon l heard him
roundly berating the owner for not
pruning them. A little topping he
explained would give the trees plenty
of strength to draw up an abundance
of sap that would kill off the parasites
The tree near the house being taken
care of as a pet, has grown to be the
largest of it's kind in the islands. 1t
bears fruit that should net annually
considerably more than "a hundred
dollars profit. Seventy of these trees
may grow on an acre with vegetables
grown between.
Proper cooperation and creation of
transportation facilities could make
many wealthy small farmers anywhere
on the windward side of Oahu. The
territory, recognizing this, is building a
splendid auto road around the island,
and James Castle who has introduced
pineapple culture in this section, also
the raising of cocoanuts, is building a
railway that when completed, will form
the last link of a belt line The dried
kernel of the cocoanut is called copra
and sells for about $50. 90 ton. 1t is
used for oil, soap and butter making;
the refuse for cattle food. 1t is the
current coin of the South Seas, and
should Hawaii put up an oil mill and
send her steamers to gather this pro-
duct in the Pacific, the transportation
relations to the islands and continents
of the Pacific would be revolutionized.
Cattle are grazed under the growing
cocoanut trees.
think the thing that astonisheG
Leckenby most was the fact that there
was but one sprayer in Hawaii and
that at an experiment station. The
small farmers have followed the lead
OF the sugar planters and depend en-
tiIely on science to discover the ma
tural eneby of their garden pests,
Leckenby stated that the small farm
ers who bring their sprayers with them
can raise crops three-fold larger than
is now common on the islands. Leck-
enby was a papaia fiend and saw a
fortune in this pepsin fruit that has
become of late years, after generations
of use as hog food the breakfast fruit
of the tropics. 1t grows everywhere
without care.
We followed the rubber trees far up
the mountain sides, for they are plant
ed everywhere, in search of the best To-
cations and came upon areas suitable
for cotton. William Langton, editor
of the Paradise of the Pacific, set out
in 1905 some Queensland cotton.
grows in Hawaii without irrigation
The bushes, almost trees, bear year
after year a fibre that brings 20 cents
pound for the picking, and there ar,
100000 now waste acres in Hawai-
suitable to its cultivation.
Nothing that could bring money t.
the lover of the soil seemed to escape
the eye Of my companion. II W,
climbed a mountain he saw in the won
derful Lakapodia dendroida a forum
for the man or company that woul
gather and ship this at Christmas tim
to the coast. He observed a halle
on a mule and the fibre puzzled him
1t was from the Hau-tree. Rope mad
from this bark will last for genera
tions and dampness only strengthen
it.
The Hau-tree grows iuxuriousl
everywhere on the beach, in the noun
tains, sending up ten-foot shoots in
: ltWelye-mOnth. and Leckenby saw ther