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 property of the chiefs.  They are the old “lands.”  But when the kuliana law was made, the common people were allowed to take out for themselves such small holdings as they held in actual cultivation.  These kulianas they still hold; and thus it often happens that within the bounds of a large estate fifty or sixty families will live on their little freeholds; and these form a natural and cheap laboring force for the plantation or rancho.

On the Island of Niihau, I was told, there are still about three hundred native people.  The sheep are allowed to run at large on the island, there being no wild animals to disturb them; at lambing and shearing times the proprietors hire their native tenants to do the necessary work; and these people at other times fish, raise water-melons and other fruits, and make mats which are famous for their fine texture and softness, and sell at handsome prices even in Honolulu.

Where, as is the case almost universally, the relations between the stockman and the native people are kindly, there is a reciprocity of good offices, and a ready service from the people, in return for management and protection by the great proprietor, which is mutually agreeable, and in which the proprietor stands in some such relation to the people as the chief in old times, though of course with not a tithe of the power the ancient rulers had.