been attracted to fill up their places. And this in spite of the facts
that the climate is mild and healthful, the price of living cheap, the
Government liberal, the taxes low, and life and property as secure as in
any part of the world. One would think that a country which offers all
these advantages must be a paradise for poor men; and I do not wonder that
in the United States there is frequent talk of "annexing the Islands."
But, in fact, they offer no advantages, aside from those I have named, to
white settlers, and they have such serious natural disabilities as will
always--or, at least, for the next two or three millions of years--repel
our American people, and all other white settlers.

In the first place, there is very little of what we call agricultural
land on the Islands. They are only mountains rising from the sea, with
extremely little alluvial bottom, and that usually cut up by torrents, and
water-washed into gulches, until it is difficult in many parts to find
a fair field of even fifty acres. From these narrow bottoms, where they
exist, you look into deep gorges or valleys, out of which issue the
streams which force their way through the lower fields into the sea.
These valleys are never extensive, and are always very much broken and
contracted. They are useless for common agricultural purposes. In several
the culture of coffee has been begun; but they are so inaccessible, the
roads into them are so difficult, and the area of arable soil they contain
is, after all, so insignificant, that, even for so valuable a product as
coffee, transportation is found to be costly.

But it is along and in the streams which rush through the bottoms of these
narrow gorges that the Hawaiian is most at home. Go into any of these
valleys, and you will see a surprising sight: along the whole narrow
bottom, and climbing often in terraces the steep hill-sides, you will see
the little taro patches, skillfully laid so as to catch the water, either