a handful of earth to each of these holes, and planting there in a wet season, he got a very satisfactory crop.  Not only that, but being desirous of something more than a bare living, this man had planted a little coffee in the same way, and had just sold 1600 pounds, his last crop.  He owned a good wooden house; politely gave up his own mats for me to sleep on; possessed a Bible and a number of other works in Hawaiian; after supper called his family together, who squatted on the floor while he read from his Scriptures, and, after singing a hymn, knelt in family prayers; and finally spent half an hour before going to bed in looking over his newspaper.  This man, thoroughly respectable, of good repute, hospitable, comfortable in every way so far as I could see, lived, and lived well, on twenty or thirty acres of lava, of which not even a Vermonter would have given ten cents for a thousand acres; and which was worthless to any one except a native Hawaiian.

Take next the grazing lands.  In many parts they are so poorly supplied with water that they can not carry much stock.  They also are often astonishingly broken up, for they frequently lie high up on the sides of the mountains, and in many parts they are rocky and lava-covered beyond belief.  On Hawaii, the largest island, lava covers and makes desolate hundreds of thousands of acres, and on the other and smaller islands, except, perhaps, Kauai, there is corresponding desolation.  Thus the area of grazing lands is less than one would think.  But on the other hand, cattle are very cheaply raised.  They require but little attention; and the stock-owners, who are now boiling down their cattle and selling merely the hides and tallow, are said to be just at this time the most prosperous people on the Islands.  Sheep are kept too, but not in great flocks except upon the small island of Niihau, which was bought some years ago by two brothers, Sinclair by name, who have now a flock of fifteen or eighteen thousand sheep there, I am told; on Molokai and part of Hawaii; and upon the small island of Lanai, where Captain Gibson has six or eight thousand head.

One of the conspicuous trees of the Hawaiian forests is the Kukui or candle-nut.  Its pale green foliage gives the mountain sides sometimes a disagreeable look; though where it grows among the Ko trees, whose leaves are of a dark green, the contrast is not unpleasant.  From its abundance I supposed the candle-nut might be made an article of export; but the country is so rough that the gathering of the nuts is very laborious; and several persons who have experimented in expressing the oil from the nut have discovered that it did not pay cost.  Only two thousand pounds of Kukui nuts were exported in 1872.

Sandal-wood was once a chief article of export.  It grows on the higher mountain slopes, and is still collected, for 20,232 pounds were exported in 1872, and a small quantity is worked up in the Islands.  The cocoa-nut is not planted in sufficient quantities to make it an article of commerce.  Only 950 nuts were exported last year.  Of pulu 421,227 pounds were shipped; this is a soft fuzz taken from the crown of a species of fern; it is used to stuff bedding, and is as warm, though not as durable, as feathers.  Also 32,161 pounds of “fungus,” a kind of toad-stool which grows on decaying wood, and is used in China as an article of food.