I have seen a field of thirty acres which two years ago produced nearly six tons of sugar to the acre.  Four tons per acre is not a surprising crop; and, from all I can hear, I judge that two and a half tons per acre may be considered a fair yield.  The soil, too, with proper treatment, appears to be inexhaustible.  The common custom is to take off two crops, and then let the field lie fallow for two years; but where they irrigate even this is not always done.  There is no danger of frost, as in Louisiana, and cane is planted in some part of the islands in almost every month of the year.  In Lahaina it matures in from fourteen to sixteen months; in some districts it requires eighteen months; and at greater altitudes even two years.

But under all the varying circumstances, whether it is irrigated or not, whether it grows on bottoms or on hill slopes, in dry or in damp regions, everywhere the cane seems to thrive, and undoubtedly it is the one product of the islands which succeeds.  A worm, which pierces the cane near the ground and eats out the pith, has of late, I am told, done some damage, and in some parts the rat has proved troublesome.  But these evils do not anywhere endanger or ruin the crop, as the blight has ruined the coffee culture and discouraged other agricultural ventures.  The sugar product of the islands has constantly increased.  In 1860 they exported 1,444,271 pounds of sugar; in 1864, 10,414,441 pounds; in 1868, 18,312,926 pounds; and in 1871, 21,760,773 pounds of sugar.

What is remarkable is that, with this rapid increase in the production of sugar, you hear that the business is unprosperous; and if to this you reply that planters, like farmers, are hard to satisfy, they show you that the greater number of the plantations have at some time been sold by the sheriff, some of them more than once, and that, in fact, only six or seven are to-day in the hands of their founders.

I do not doubt that there has been bad management on many plantations, and that this accounts in part for these failures, by which many hundred thousand dollars have been lost.  For the advantages of the sugar planter on these islands are very decided.  He has not only, as I showed you above, a favorable climate and an extraordinarily fertile soil, but he has a laboring population, perhaps the best, the most easily managed, the kindliest, and—­so far as habits affect the steadiness and usefulness of the laborer—­the least vicious in the world.  He does not have to pay exorbitant wages; he is not embarrassed to feed or house them, for food is so abundant and cheap that economy in its distribution is of no moment; and the Hawaiian is very cheaply housed.