LITTLE JOURNEYS THROUGH PARADISE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3125, 4 May 1915, Page 7

LITTLE JOURNEYS THROUGH PARADISE.

(No. 9.)

(Rights Reserved.)

Written for the Wanganui "Chronicle' by Jas. H. Stevens.

The prisoners dressed in striped bed ticking, seem to have a daily garden party and picnic cleaning up one or ether of the many lovely parks which they keep in such good order. They chat, and laugh, and lounge in the shade, while a burly Hawaiian warder snoozes on a seat nearby. Most of the prisoners are Phillipinos or foreigners in for petty offences. The warder carries no weapon and has no anxiety about his charges. Honesty, though an outstanding characteristic of Hawaiian and Hindu, Jap or Jew, Anglian or American, in these islands, is not always found even among the small prison gang. Recently a number of daring daylight robberies occurred day after day, baffling the police for a month; when by accident, one of the prisoners was seen to steal away in the shadow of a tree, leaving the warder nod, nod, nodding in the noonday. The whole of the missing articles were subsequently found in and under his mattress in the cell! If there is any better way to teach virtue than to practice it, one would like to know. Living in a homely cot beneath flowering trees is a Hawaiian woman with three little ones about seven years old, each of whom calls her Mama' We asked if they were her children, and after a good deal of hesitation she said "No, the mother no can keep, I take um." Then with a merry twinkle and a happy laugh in which all heartily joined, she said, "I tink I alia same te hoki (mule), I can't have no bebe never." The average family of the Jap here is twelve, but the Hawaiian and American family seldom exceeds a pigeon pair. The election of a representative at Congress is proceeding. There are 5000 Hawaiians out of a total vote of 8000. One American and two natives are candidates. TTie result of course will be the election ,of "Prince Cupid" who claims to have Royal blood. He was previously elected and is regarded as a political joke A quaint old Chinese, endeavouring in faulty English to explain to us th.-> intricacy of his written language, in which each character represents a word or even a short sentence, showed us the two figures which stand for peace and tiouble. Peace is one horizontal stroke, trouble is tw<j; "because," said the exEounder of wisdom, "one woman in the ouse, peace, quiet: two, big row." On one of the Hawaiian islands, two sons of Major von Tempsky, the "Bobs ' of New Zealand, have extensive ranches. >old New Zealanders and those lads find mutual pleasure in meeting and once again recounting the battles of Ngutu o te Manu and Ruaruru.

the horrors of war bring to mind the American-German attitude as exemplied in the Phillipine incident, where a bombastic protest from the Emperor brought forth a rousting song from Captain Coghlan of the U.S. Army, in which he transposed Germany's motto "Gott mi: uns into "Ich und Gott," for which he was promptly court-mar-tialled and reduced, but later on promoted to the post lof Admiral. He should be immortalised for coining that characteristic phrase "Me and God. ' just as our John Tenniel lives in the memory of many by his celebrated cartoon of the pious old Emperor on the awful field of Sedan—kneeling amid the mangled soldiers he is made to cast his eyes to Heaven and piously recite "Thank the Lord my dear Augusta, We' ve had another awful buster:

Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below, Thank God from whom all blessings flow." Perhaps this also had some influence towards his Knighthood which followed the "Times" protest. Through the war otir letters of credit and banking security were seriously threatened. The council of seven, five of whom were ladies, decided, perhaps wisely, to draw all in gold and place it in the safe deposit vault. Then came the problem of transmitting our balance home, and with it the negatived suggestion to follow the method of Nathan Rothschild the founder of the family fortune. When Napoleon overran Europe and threatened to dispossess the Jews, Rothschild called upon every goodly Jewish woman he knew, there were some 500 of them, anxious to reach London and safety by any means. To each he said separately and in strictest confidence, " My tear voman, this belt contains all I have in the vide vorld. Take it with the plessing of Gott and this old man, to my poor son Lionel in I/ondon." Each belt held £IOOO in gold, which was safely clasped mound the ample waist of a good old Jewess under her kirtle, whether by Nathan's own hand, history does not bay. Each one of them, proud of her exclusive secret and trust, did not fail the man who paid her so "reat a com* pliment. Thus was the Rothschild ban* founded.

The Governor is a practical squareheaded man of the non-political typr-. "one who makes quick decisions and :s sometimes right." On one occasion there arose grave danger of a certain highly infectious disease reaching thos 2000 bluejackets on a visit. Governor Pinkham put the case before the missionaries who then controlled the board o? health; but they refused to allow thb hospital to be a refuge for such cases. He then pointed out that £I2OO a year Government subsidy came through him and that supplies would be stopped. The result was that the hospital ambulance manned by the Governor's staff forcibly conveyed a score of offending omen to the hospital and kept them prisoners until the warships departed. It's said that the ancient Hawaiian was singularly free from all known diseases until the arrival of the first ship. Every such ailment they called "Mai akee" (Maori, Mate Pakeha). A Queenly Marriage.—ln the old mission building brought from America on Christmas day, 1820, we saw, anions others the memorial tablet of Queen Kaahumanu, favourite wife of Kamehameha the first, who died in 1823. On the death of her husband, whom she had married at the age of 13, she, in nccordance with the custom of her race, sought a new mate. She did so with the queenly grace of the Orient, not sis would the Maori, with a greenstone "Mere." Lying upon the large slightly raised platform of the meeting-place, she espied the king of another island, a man of fine presence and signified her desire to speak with him. Upon his rerlining near her, she caused the Royal tappa cloth to be spread over them both. This constituted summary marriage with King Kaumualii. Her first husband was a real Solomon, both as a man of judgment and conqueror of the Suffragette; for, in making a tour he is described as being accompanied by his four favourite wives and seventeen of the others. That was when his people questioned the safety of venturing 90 miles to sea in a canoe. By what can we steer the course? asked his paddlers. "By your five fingers," and he expanded the digjts of his strong rieht hand. The pali (Maori, pari, cliff) magnificent cliffs 1000 feet high and twenty Utiles long overlooking scenery which

lives in one's memory, is the scene _of Kamehameha's wondrous feat of 1790 in driving the King of Oahu and about 10,000 men through a defile and over this cliff, which to this day is named Lele Kanae, the leap of the mullet. In the ground below may still > be found masses of the bones. This incident is without parallel m history. Away beyond the pali is a historic little island 100 yards from the shore, Kualoa Mokolu. Here a deposed queen and the heir presumptive were hidden by the remnant of her devotees for four years. Their food was drifted out by the tide which regularly flowed into a cleft in the island, and thus the prisoners remained undiscovered. They were taken by canoe to another island and eventually the lad came to his own kingdom. Sugar, upon which the islands subsist to the value of twenty millions sterling, was first obtained from bamboo and was used as medicine a century before Christ. Now the world's yearly output is about twenty million tons. The original discovery of sugar refining was accidental. It was known as the wet clay process. Now it is done by centrifugal force, the colouring and moisture being whirled out of it by rapidly revolving the treacly syrup iu wire gauze screens, throwing out the heavier moist particles after the principle of the cream separator. Rice is transplanted by hand like spring onions, harvested and threshed by the same means. No white man would work in the water like these Chinks, who find increasing difficulty in obtaining labour for it. As their children are educated they despise the job. The sodden fields, kept at water level and banked for constant flooding, are ploughed and cultivated by wooden ploughs, drawn by caribou or water buffalo, an animal with the action and skin of an elephant, the horns and the nature of an ox, and the squeak and the manners of a pig. A good caribou is worth £IOO here. He is tractable, except when kept from wallowing, when he simply becomes insane and runs a muck. Though he can only make a sound like a wheezy squeak,—the bellow of a bull, or even an imitation of it maddens him. This js probably the survival of a fued with an ancient enemy, who was more than likely a near relative. Ho probably thinks that God gives us our friends and the Devil furnished us with our relatives.