But bad management by no means accounts for all the non-success.  There are some natural disadvantages serious enough to be taken into the account.  In the first place, you must understand that the rain-fall varies extraordinarily.  The trade-wind brings rain; the islands are bits of mountain ranges; the side of the mountain which lies toward the rain-wind gets rain; the lee side gets scarcely any.  At Hilo it rains almost constantly; at Lahaina they get hardly a shower a year.  At Captain Makee’s, one of the most successful plantations on Maui, water is stored in cisterns; at Mr. Spencer’s, not a dozen miles distant, also one of the successful plantations, which lies on the other side of Mount Haleakala, they never have to irrigate.  Near Hilo the long rains make cultivation costly and difficult; but the water is so abundant that they run their fire-wood from the mountains and their cane from the fields into the sugar-houses in flumes, at a very great saving of labor.  Near Lahaina every acre must be irrigated, and this work proceeds day and night in order that no water may run to waste.

Then there is the matter of shipping sugar.  There are no good ports except Honolulu.  Kaului on Maui, Hanalei and Nawiliwili on Kauai, and one or two plantations on Oahu, have tolerable landings.  But almost everywhere the sugar is sent over vile roads to a more or less difficult landing, whence it is taken in launches to the schooners which carry it to Honolulu, where it is stored, coopered, and finally reshipped to its market.  Many landings are made through the surf, and I remember one which, last spring, was unapproachable by vessel or boat for nearly four weeks.

Each sugar planter has, therefore, problems of his own to solve.  He can not pattern on his neighbors.  He can not base his estimate on theirs.  He can not be certain even, until he has tried, which of the ten or a dozen varieties of cane will do best on his soil.  He must look out for wood, which is by no means abundant, and is often costly to bring down from the mountain; he must look out for his landing; must see that taro grows near at hand; must secure pasture for his draught cattle:  in short, he must consider carefully and independently many different questions before he can be even reasonably sure of success.  And if, with all this uncertainty, he embarks with insufficient capital, and must pay one per cent. a month interest, and turn his crop over to an agent in Honolulu, who is his creditor, and who charges him five per cent. for handling it, it will not be wonderful to any business man if he fails to grow rich, or if even he by-and-by becomes bankrupt.  Many have failed.  Of thirty-four plantations, the number worked in all the islands at this time, only six or seven are in the hands of their founders.  Some, which cost one hundred thousand dollars, were sold by the sheriff for fifteen or eighteen thousand; some, which cost a quarter of a million, were sold for less than a hundred thousand.