CHAPTER II MID-PACIFIC AMERICA San Francisco and Manila United by Cable-Mission- WHE HEN Admiral Dewey cut the cable in Manila because the Spaniards would not surrender it, he little thought that within five years an American cable would be laid across the Pacific with every landing on American territory. Yet such was the result: San Francisco and Manila were united on July 4, 1903, with intermediate stations at Honolulu and on the islands of Midway, Wake and Guam, over each of which the Stars and Stripes proudly float. Twenty-two hundred miles nearly southwest from San Francisco, steamers for Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and Samoa stop at Honolulu for a day or two and enable passengers to get their first glimpse of a tropical island, with its palms and flowers and fruits and volcanoes and lepers and a high degree of civilization. Men are yet living who were born when the Hawaiian Islands were the homes of savages engaged in war upon one another. Then came Kamehameha, the chief of a powerful tribe, who conquered one tribe after another until he was able to unite the whole group under one government and proclaim himself king. In his reign missionaries began their work among the people of the Sandwich Islands, as they were called at that time, and civilization, schools, churches and hospitals followed. The words of John Quincy Adams on the Hawaiian Islands, contained in a report to Congress in 1843, are germane: "It is a subject of cheering contemplation to the friends of human improvement and virtue that, by the mild and gentle influence of Christian charity, dispensed by humble missionaries of the Gospel, unarmed with secular power, within the last quarter of a century the people of this group of islands have been converted from the lowest abasement of idolatry to the blessing of the Christian Gospel; united under one balanced government, rallied to the fold of civilization by a written language and a constitution providing security for the rights of persons, property and mind, and invested with all the elements of right and power which can entitle them to be acknowledged by their brethren of human race as a separate and independent community." To whom should the Hawaiians look for suggestion if not to the men and women who had rescued them from barbarism? If one wishes to read an informing chapter on the attitude of Europe toward the Pacific Islands, he will find it in "American Diplomacy in the Orient," by the Hon. John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State of the United States. Twice did the British raise their flag over what Mr. Foster terms "The Paradise of the Pacific"; once the Russians claimed the island, and twice the French were in control; "but the little kingdom outlived LEGISLATION FOR HAWAII 31 the designs of these powerful States," and "with the good will of all the nations, was left to work out its A short time before the close of President Harrison's second administration, a treaty was submitted providing for the annexation by the United States of the eight islands, a little larger in area than the State of Connecticut, and containing a population of one hundred and fifty thousand people. The Senate did not vote on the treaty, and President Cleveland withdrew it soon after he was inaugurated. Four years later a new treaty similar to the earlier one was sent to the Senate by President McKinley. Under its terms the Hawaiian Government offered all rights of sovereignty to the United States Government if the latter would assume the public debt of Hawaii, to an amount not to exceed four million dollars. While the Senate of Hawaii ratified the treaty, the United States Senate took another form of legislation. President McKinley, on July 7, 1898, signed the resolutions providing for annexation which had passed the Houses of Congress. By them he received power to provide for the government of the islands until Congress should enact laws for that purpose. A commission was appointed to recommend suitable legislation for the islands, and on April 30, 1900, the bill establishing a territorial government in Hawaii became a law. The volcanoes on these islands are among the most prominent in the world. Mauna Loa and Kilauea lic near together on Hawaii, the largest island of the group. The former is nearly fourteen thousand feet above the sea level, and has several times menaced the towns of Hilo on the eastern coast. A recent writer at Honolulu gives the following graphic description of a stream of lava from Mauna Loa: "I spent a night at the end of a black glossy river of humpy rock, over half a mile wide, sluggishly eating its way through a dense and lofty forest. Out of its irregular, billowy front line of black tongues of rock among the trees, fresh red tongues of molten rock were here and there pushing forward, wrapping in flame the lofty trees and broad ferns. One broad tongue slowly crept down a brook channel licking up the water pools with loud explosions. In half an hour we could step across the congealed lava, although it bent like ice under the weight. We boiled our coffee on the hot rounded ends of a tongue as on a stove. When our breakfast was finished the rock opened and emitted a fresh stream. It ran sluggishly like pitch. It was forty miles from its source, whence it had come through a few covered tunnels where it ran swiftly, near the end ramifying into a multitude of streamlets. The general rate of advance averaged perhaps one hundred feet a day. Much of the lava was expended in piling up behind to an average depth of ten feet or more. The whole formed a cruel monster, slowly creeping toward its prey, the beautiful town on the bay. It was a long agony for the people, for month after month the terrible fire drew nearer, until after thirteen months of fears and prayers, it suddenly ceased only six miles away." The Japan steamers pass the Midway Island 1,160 miles northwest of Honolulu; Yokohama is 2,245 miles farther west. Wake Island lies in a southwesterly direction from Honolulu, 2,044 miles distant, with Guam |