The Hawaiian Islands are a long way from Indianapolis and the rest of continental United States. The understanding of the average American with relation to the Hawaiian Islands is likely to be vague and sketchy as to detail. Conclusions as to conditions are likely to be based upon impressions received through some flash of the news rather than on actual information. For that reason it seems advisable to set out some of the primary facts that become obvious to one who visits the islands and goes about them in a thoughtful frame of mind. To begin with, one should remember that these islands are in the mid-Pacific, 2,000 miles out from the California coast, which is their nearest neighbor. When this is borne in mind, the fact that they are contenders in progressiveness with the most advanced communities on the mainland becomes a matter of some surprise. The Pacific Ocean is three to four miles deep through this area of its vast expanse, which is unbroken in 2,240 miles to Samoa, in a 3,400-mile reach to Japan or 5,000 miles to Australia or 4,660 miles to Panama. Even this break did not exist until these islands were born--an event quite recent from a geological point of view. The earth in its contortions some æons ago made a crack, small as such matters go, here in the mid-Pacific area. It was but some 2,000 miles long, but through it there began to be squeezed, like toothpaste from a tube, some of that molten material that still fills the inside of the earth. This lava hardened into stone and piled up until eventually some of it emerged above the waves and an island was born. Other peaks appeared along the line of the crack, and the individual island became a link in a chain. Some of them formed volcanic cones that continued to erupt lava, cinders, or ashes, that added to the island area about them. Thus they built themselves up; in fact, some of them are continuing to this day to enlarge themselves and can be seen in the process. So it came to pass that there are five principal islands-Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai--in the Hawaiian group, with three lesser near-by satellites--Kahoolawe, Lanai, and Niihau--and an outflung line of uninhabited shoals and reefs reaching out 1,500 miles to the west. All lie along this floor crack of the Pacific running from southeast to northwest about 20 degrees north of the Equator. Having thus emerged as comparative newcomers among the land surfaces of the world, some of them having thrust their cliffs miles high to buffet the trade winds, the processes of erosion began to have their way. Time smoothed the sides of jagged mountain chains and built plains at their feet. Birds in their flights and the currents of oceans brought seeds from far away and vegetation began to appear. In the end man came, although the manner in which he crossed the vast ocean expanses that intervene between this and any other land remains a wonder not yet entirely understood. Though they may have been visited by a Spanish mariner, the existence of the Hawaiian Islands was not generally known to white men at the time of the beginning of the Revolutionary War. At that time a Capt. James Cook, flying the British flag, was on a 10-year tour of exploration in the Pacific, the principal purpose of which was a continuance of that long-prosecuted search for a short cut to the East. In 1778 he deliberately struck out from the Society Islands, 2,300 miles to the south, for a try at reaching the North American coast, a distance of some 5,000 miles. It was in the course of this voyage that, quite by accident, he discovered Kauai, the large island farthest to the northwest. Friendly natives swarmed about his two ships and exchanged food for trinkets. Later, further exploration of the islands found all of them to be quite densely inhabited. It was estimated that there were 300,000 people on them, living through fishing and the cultivation of some 200,000 acres of land that lent itself to their peculiar type of farming, the chief element in which was the taro patches planted in the bottoms, from whose roots they made poi, their chief item of food to this very day. After further cruising about, Captain Cook returned and followed the chain down to the island of Hawaii, which is the largest of the group. Along the western side of that island, now known as the Kona Coast, in the area now given over to coffee plantations, the population was particularly dense. Here were a number of the sacred places of the Hawaiians, and these meant much to them.
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