persisted in, it will destroy all stability of purpose and extended aim of statesmanship; and, while it generates a class who are willing to become pliant tools of power in return for official emolument, it will ultimately act the hopes and the enterprise of all those industrious citizens who are willing to labor and amass wealth by a slow, but safe course of national policy, wisely adopted and steadily pursued.
It was not my purpose, however, to address you a homily on national politics when I commenced this letter; but I thought these remarks altogether proper, as introductory to some account of the character, situation, and resources of the Hawaiian Islands and the Californias, in connection with the observations I design making upon our wide-spread interests in the Pacific, the Indian Seas, and the Western Coast of the Americas, and the encroachments of England.
I will proceed, then, without further preface, to offer some notices of the Sandwich Islands, and afterward of the Californias, showing their great importance, at least, to the trade of our country.
The eight Hawaiian Islands form a volcanic group in the Pacific, lying between 18° 50' and 22° 20' N. latitude, and 154° 53' and 160° 15' W. longitude, embracing a surface of rather more than six thousand square miles, of which the Island of Hawaii contains about four thousand. The whole population is estimated at one hundred and nine thousand, and although the soil is in many places not of a kindly character, and better adapted to grazing than agriculture, yet, in the upland valleys, there are extensive patches of rich land that may be easily cultivated, and capable of producing two crops of wheat annually. This, however, is all the better for the natives, as the comparative poverty of the earth requires the constant care of the laborer, and is, therefore, more likely to create an industrious class than in more prolific climates.
On the low grounds, coffee, sugar, tobacco, cotton, mulberry and cocoa, may be readily produced; and to these may be added, yams, potatoes, cocoanuts, bread-fruit, arrow-root, the kalo, or aurum esculentum; and among fruits, the strawberry, raspberry, ohelo, melons, chirimoyas, limes, oranges, guyavas, pine-apples, grapes, peaches, figs, citrons, tamarinds and kalo. Oil may be easily extracted from the nut of the kukui tree.
In former times, one of the chief productions of these Islands was sandalwood, with which the forests abounded. In the year ending in March, 1832, three hundred and ninety-five tuns of this article, valued at seventy-four thousand four hundred and seventy-one dollars, were imported into China from various places. In 1816 it was the chief source of revenue, and became, also, the chief source of the demoralization of this group. In that year, four hundred thousand dollars worth was exported to the Indies, where it was used by the Hindoos in their religious ceremonials, and by the Chinese in various manufactures of articles of luxury and taste. So great, however, was the demand, and so easily satisfied in the forests of the Sandwich Islands, that the natives were tempted by a ready sale to destroy almost every tree; until, under a wiser administration of their interests, they entirely forbade the cutting of the timber. The wood is represented as again beginning to flourish; so that, in the course of a few years, it will be made once more a source of fruitful revenue.
Besides the sandal-wood, a number of other richly-veined woods are found, and are said to be as valuable for articles of furniture, as the choicest products of the Brazilian forests,
