s in the lava where it was a little decayed,
carrying a handful of earth to each of these holes, and planting there in
a wet season, he got a very satisfactory crop. Not only that, but being
desirous of something more than a bare living, this man had planted a
little coffee in the same way, and had just sold 1600 pounds, his last
crop. He owned a good wooden house; politely gave up his own mats for me
to sleep on; possessed a Bible and a number of other works in Hawaiian;
after supper called his family together, who squatted on the floor while
he read from his Scriptures, and, after singing a hymn, knelt in family
prayers; and finally spent half an hour before going to bed in looking
over his newspaper. This man, thoroughly respectable, of good repute,
hospitable, comfortable in every way so far as I could see, lived,
and lived well, on twenty or thirty acres of lava, of which not even a
Vermonter would have given ten cents for a thousand acres; and which was
worthless to any one except a native Hawaiian.

Take next the grazing lands. In many parts they are so poorly supplied
with water that they can not carry much stock. They also are often
astonishingly broken up, for they frequently lie high up on the sides of
the mountains, and in many parts they are rocky and lava-covered beyond
belief. On Hawaii, the largest island, lava covers and makes desolate
hundreds of thousands of acres, and on the other and smaller islands,
except, perhaps, Kauai, there is corresponding desolation. Thus the area
of grazing lands is less than one would think. But on the other hand,
cattle are very cheaply raised. They require but little attention; and the
stock-owners, who are now boiling down their cattle and selling merely
the hides and tallow, are said to be just at this time the most prosperous
people on the Islands. Sheep are kept too, but not in great flocks except
upon the small island of Niihau, which was bought some years ago by two
brothers, Sinclair by name, who have now a flock of fifteen or eighteen
thousand sheep there, I am told; on Molokai and part of Hawaii; and upon
the small island of Lanai, where Captain Gibson has six or eight thousand
head.

One of the conspicuous trees of the Hawaiian forests is the Kukui or
candle-nut. Its pale green foliage gives the mountain sides sometimes a
disagreeable look; though where it grows among the Ko trees, whose leaves
are of a dark green, the contrast is not unpleasant. From its abund