There has been no lack of ingenuity, enterprise, or industry among the inhabitants.  The Government has imported several kinds of trees and plants, as the cinnamon, pepper, and allspice, but they have not prospered.  Private effort has not been wanting either.  But nature does not respond.  Sugar and rice are and must it seems continue to be the staples of the Islands; and the culture of these products will in time be considerably increased.

This, it appears to me, decides the future of the Islands and the character of their population.  A sugar or rice plantation needs at most three or four American workmen aside from the manager.  The laboring force will be Hawaiians or Chinese; for they alone work cheaply, and will content themselves in the situation of plantation laborers.  It is likely, therefore, that the future population of the Islands will consist largely, as it does now, of Hawaiians and Chinese, and a mixture of these two races; and, no doubt, these will live very happily there.

[Illustration:  NATIVE HAY PEDDLER.]

For farming, in the American sense of the word, the Islands are, as these facts show, entirely unfit.  I asked again and again of residents this question:  “Would you advise your friend in Massachusetts or Illinois, a farmer with two or three thousand dollars in money, to settle out here?” and received invariably the answer, “No; it would be wrong to do so.”  Transportation of farm products from island to island is too costly; there is no local market except Honolulu, and that is very rapidly and easily overstocked; Oregon or California potatoes are sold in the Islands at a price which would leave the local farmer without a profit.  In short, farming is not a pursuit in the Islands.  A farmer would not starve, for beef is cheap, and he could always raise vegetables enough for himself; but he would not get ahead.  Moreover, perishable fruits, like the banana, have but a limited chance for export.  The Islands, unluckily, lie to windward of California; and a sailing vessel, beating up to San Francisco, is very apt to make so long a passage that if she carries bananas they spoil on the way.  Hence but 4520 bunches were shipped from the Islands in 1872—­which was all the monthly steamer had room for.

These circumstances seem to settle the question of annexation, which is sometimes discussed.  To annex the Islands would be to burden ourselves with an outlying territory too distant to be cheaply defended; and containing a population which will never be homogeneous with our own; a country which would neither attract nor reward our industrious farmers and mechanics; which offers not the slightest temptation to emigration, except a most delightful climate, and which has, and must by its circumstances and natural formation continue to have, chiefly a mixed population of Chinese and other coolies, whom it is assuredly not to our interest to take into our family.  I suppose it is a proper rule that we should not encumber ourselves with territory which by reason of unchangeable natural causes will repel our farmers and artisans, and which, therefore, will not become in time Americanized.  If this is true, we ought not to annex the Hawaiian Islands.