At Kauai you will also see rice growing.  This is one of the products which is rapidly increasing in the Islands.  Of rice and paddy, or unhulled rice, the exports were in 1871, 417,011 pounds of the first, and 867,452 of the last.  In 1872 there were exported 455,121 pounds of rice and 894,382 pounds of paddy.

The taro patches make excellent rice fields; and it is an industry in which the Chinese, who understand it, invest their savings.  They employ native labor; and it is not uncommon to find that a few Chinese have hired all the taro patches in a valley from their native owners, and then employ these natives to work for them; an arrangement which is mutually beneficial, and agreeable besides to the Hawaiian, who has not much of what we call “enterprise,” and does not care to accumulate money.  The windward side of the Islands of Oahu and Kauai produces a great deal of rice, and this is one of the products which promises to increase largely.  The rice is said to be of excellent quality.

[Illustration:  IMPLEMENTS. a, Calabash for poi.—­b, Calabash for fish.—­c, Water bottle.—­d, Poi mallets.—­e, Poi trough.—­f, Native bracelet.—­g, Fiddle.—­h, Flute.—­i i, Drums.]

Kauai contained once the most important coffee-plantations; and the large sugar-plantation of Princeville at Hanalei was originally planted in coffee.  But this tree or shrub is so subject to the attacks of a leaf-blight that the culture has decreased.  Yet coffee grows wild in many of the valleys and hills, and here and there you find a small plantation of a few hundred trees which does well.  The coffee shrub thrives best in these Islands among the lava rock, where there seems scarcely any soil; and it must be sheltered from winds and also from the sun.  I have seen some young plantations placed in the midst of forests where the trees gave a somewhat dense shade, and these seemed to grow well.

[Illustration:  GRASS HOUSE.]

CHAPTER V.

THE HAWAIIAN AT HOME:  MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

As we rode one day near the sea-shore I heard voices among the rocks, and sending the guide ahead with the horses, I walked over to the shore with the lady and children who were my companions.  There we saw a sight characteristic of these islands.  Three women decently clothed in a garment which covered them from head to foot, and a man with only a breech-clout on, were dashing into the surf, picking up sea-moss, and a little univalve shell, a limpet, which they flung into small baskets which hung from their shoulders.  They were, in fact, getting their suppers, and they were quite as much surprised at our appearance as we at theirs.  They came out politely, and showed the children what was in their baskets; the man, understanding that our horses had gone ahead, kindly volunteered to pilot us over the rocks to a village near by.