the pastures shall not be overstocked; and the vast number of horses kept
by the natives is on all the Islands a serious injury to the pasturage of
both sheep and cattle.

The Hawaiian, who seventy-five years ago did not know that there existed
such a creature as a horse, and even fifty years ago beheld it as a
rarity, now can not live without this beast. There are probably more
horses than people on the Islands; and the native family is poor, indeed,
which has not two or three hardy, rough, grass-fed ponies, easy to ride,
sometimes tricky but more often quite trustworthy, and capable of living
where a European donkey would die in disgust. At a horse auction you see a
singular collection of good and bad horses; and it is one of the jokes of
the Islands to go to a horse auction and buy a horse for a quarter of a
dollar. The Government has vainly tried to put a check to the reckless
increase of horseflesh by laying a tax on these animals, and by impounding
them if the tax is not paid. I was told of a planter who bought on one
occasion fifty horses out of a pound, at twenty-five cents a head, and had
them all shot and put into a manure pile. But if the horse is worth his
tax it is pretty certain to be paid; and it is not easy to keep them off
the pastures.

Cattle ranchos usually extend over from fifteen to thirty thousand acres
of land; though many are smaller, and some, on Hawaii, larger. The grass
is of different varieties, but the most useful, as well as now the most
abundant, is the _manienie_, of which I have before made mention. Horses
and sheep, as well as cattle, become very fond of this grass, and eat it
down very close. The handling of the cattle is intrusted to native people,
who live on the rancho or estate; and the planter or stock farmer has
an advantage, in these Islands, in finding a laboring population living
within the bounds of his own place. The large estates were formerly the