SAMUEL LANGHORNE LANGHORNE CLEMENS

("MARK TWAIN")

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

[Lecture (in part) by Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain "), humorist (born in Florida, Missouri, November 30, 1835; -), delivered in the Academy of Music, New York City, about 1877. The manuscript was not preserved, and this fragment is reprinted from a newspaper report made at the time. "Hawaii," as it was popularly called, was one of Mr. Clemens' early lectures, and, repeated in many parts of the country, it added materially to his fame as an American humorist of high degree.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-There doesn't appear to be anybody here to introduce me, and so we shall have to let that go by default. But I am the person who is to deliver the lecture, and I shall try to get along just the same as if I had been formally introduced. I suppose I ought to apologize for the weather [the night was very stormy], but I can't hold myself altogether responsible for it, so I will let it go as it is.

The only apology which I can offer for appearing before you to talk about the Sandwich Islands is the fact that the recent political changes there have rendered it rather necessary for us to post ourselves concerning that country; to know a little something about the people; what we have forgotten, to gather up again; and as I have spent several months in the Islands, several years ago, I feel competent to shed any amount of light upon the matter. [Laughter.]

These islands are situated 2,100 miles southwest from San Francisco, California, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Why they were put away out there, so far away

from any place and in such an out-of-the-way locality, is a thing which no one can explain. [Laughter.] But it's no matter. They are twelve in number, and their entire area isn't greater than that of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. They are all of volcanic origin and volcanic construction. There is nothing there but lava and pumice stone-except sand and coral. There isn't a spoonful of legitimate dirt in the entire group. Eighty or ninety years ago they had a native population of full 400,000 souls, and they were comfortable, prosperous, and happy. But then the white people came, and brought trade, and commerce, and education, and complicated diseases, and civilization, and other calamities, and as a consequence the poor natives began to die off with wonderful rapidity, so that forty or fifty years ago the 400,000 had become reduced to 200,000. Then the white people doubled the educational facilities, and this doubled the death rate. The nation is doomed. It will be extinct within fifty years, without a doubt. Some people in this house may live to hear of the death of the last of the "Kanakas." In color the natives are a rich dark brown. The tropical sun and their easy-going ways have made them rather indolent. They are not a vicious, but a very gentle, kind-hearted, harmless race. In the rural districts the women wear a single long loose gown. But the men don't. [Laughter.] The men wear, well, as a general thing, they wear-a smile, or a pair of spectacles, or any little thing like that. [Laughter.] But they are not proud. They don't seem to care for display. [Laughter.]

In the old times the King was the owner of all the lands, and supreme head of Church and State. His voice was superior to all law. If a common man passed by the King's house without prostrating himself, or came near the King with his head wet, or even allowed his shadow to fall upon the King's person, that man had to die. There was no hope for him. The King exercised absolute authority over the lives and property of his subjects. He could place a "taboo" (we get that word from the Hawaiian) upon land, or article, or person, and it was death for any man to walk on the ground or touch the article or speak to the person so "tabooed." And this

King, Kamehameha, who died the other day, never had ceased to chafe at the restrictions imposed upon the power of his ancestors by the laws and constitution promulgated by the American missionaries.

Next after the King, at least in authority, came the priests of the old superstition. And they regulated "church affairs "-that is, they decreed the human sacrifices, they captured the victims and butchered them. After the priests came the chiefs, who held land by feudal tenure as they do in England to-day from the King-and did him service. But both the chiefs and priests were little better than slaves to the King. After them came the plebeians, the common men, who were slaves to priests and chiefs and King, a class who were cruelly treated and often killed upon any trifling provocation. After all this at the bottom of this hideous pyramid of brutality, and superstition, and slavery-came the women, the abject slaves of the whole combination. They did all the work; they were degraded to the level of brutes, and were considered to be no better. They were cruelly maltreated, and they had absolutely no rights nor privileges. It was death for a woman to sit at table with her own husband, and even to eat from a dish from which he had eaten; and at all times it was death for a woman to eat of certain of the rarer fruits of the Islands, at any time, or in any place. Perhaps the men remembered the difficulty between another woman and some fruit some time back and didn't feel justified in taking any more chances. [Laughter.]

But by and by the American missionaries came, and they struck off the shackles from the whole race, breaking the power of the kings and chiefs. They set the common man free, elevated his wife to a position of equality with him, and gave a piece of land to each to hold forever. They set up schools and churches, and imbued the people with the spirit of the Christian religion. If they had had the power to augment the capacities of the people, they could have made them perfect; and they would have done it, no doubt.

The missionaries taught the whole nation to read and write, with facility, in the native tongue. I don't suppose there is to-day a single uneducated person above.

It is the

eight years of age in the Sandwich Islands! best educated country in the world, I believe. That has been all done by the American missionaries. And in a large degree it was paid for by the American Sundayschool children with their pennies. I know that I contributed. [Laughter.] [Laughter.] I have had nearly two dollars invested there for thirty years. But I don't mind it. I don't care for the money [laughter], if it has been doing good. I don't say this in order to show off. I only mention it as a gentle humanizing fact that may possibly have a beneficent effect upon some members of this audience. [Laughter.]

These natives are very hospitable people indeed-very hospitable. If you want to stay a few days and nights in a native's cabin, you can stay and welcome. They will make you feel entirely at home. They will do everything they can to make you comfortable. They will feed you on baked dog, or poi, or raw fish, or raw salt pork, or fricasseed cats, all the luxuries of the season. [Laughter.] Everything the human heart can desire they will set before you. Perhaps now, this isn't a captivating feast at first glance, but it is offered in all sincerity, and with the best motives in the world, and that makes any feast respectable whether it is palatable or not. But if you want to trade, that's quite another thing -that's business! And the Kanaka is ready for you. He is a born trader, and he will swindle you if he can. He will lie straight through from the first word to the last. Not such lies as you and I tell [laughter], but gigantic lies, lies that awe you with their grandeur, lies that stun you with their imperial impossibility. He will sell you a mole-hill at the market price of a mountain and will lie it up to an altitude that will make it cheap at the money. [Laughter.] If he is caught he slips out of it with an easy indifference that has an unmistakable charm about it. [Laughter.] Every one of these Kanakas has at least a dozen mothers-not his own mothers, of course, but adopted ones. They adhere to the ancient custom of calling any woman "mother," without regard to her color or politics [laughter], that they happen to take a particular liking to. It is possible for each of them to have one hundred and fifty mothers, and even that num