In fact they have died out pretty fast, though there is reason to believe that the mortality rate has largely decreased in the last three years; and careful observers believe even that in the last year there has been an actual increase, rather than a decrease in the native and half caste population.  In 1832 the Islands had a population of 130,315 souls; in 1836 there were but 108,579; in 1840, only 84,165, of whom 1962 were foreigners; in 1850, 69,800, of whom 3216 were foreigners; and in 1860, 62,959, of whom 4194 were foreigners.  The native population has decreased over sixty per cent. in forty years.

In the same period the foreigners have increased very slowly, until there are now in all 5366 foreigners and persons born here, but of foreign parentage, on the Islands.  You will see that while the Hawaiians have so rapidly decreased that all over the Islands you notice, in waste fields and desolate house places, the marks of this loss, foreigners have not been attracted to fill up their places.  And this in spite of the facts that the climate is mild and healthful, the price of living cheap, the Government liberal, the taxes low, and life and property as secure as in any part of the world.  One would think that a country which offers all these advantages must be a paradise for poor men; and I do not wonder that in the United States there is frequent talk of “annexing the Islands.”  But, in fact, they offer no advantages, aside from those I have named, to white settlers, and they have such serious natural disabilities as will always—­or, at least, for the next two or three millions of years—­repel our American people, and all other white settlers.

In the first place, there is very little of what we call agricultural land on the Islands.  They are only mountains rising from the sea, with extremely little alluvial bottom, and that usually cut up by torrents, and water-washed into gulches, until it is difficult in many parts to find a fair field of even fifty acres.  From these narrow bottoms, where they exist, you look into deep gorges or valleys, out of which issue the streams which force their way through the lower fields into the sea.  These valleys are never extensive, and are always very much broken and contracted.  They are useless for common agricultural purposes.  In several the culture of coffee has been begun; but they are so inaccessible, the roads into them are so difficult, and the area of arable soil they contain is, after all, so insignificant, that, even for so valuable a product as coffee, transportation is found to be costly.

But it is along and in the streams which rush through the bottoms of these narrow gorges that the Hawaiian is most at home.  Go into any of these valleys, and you will see a surprising sight:  along the whole narrow bottom, and climbing often in terraces the steep hill-sides, you will see the little taro patches, skillfully laid so as to catch the water, either directly from the main stream, or from canals taking water out above.