Part 74 (1/2)
THE CHIEF CITY.
Honolulu, the capital city, is to Hawaii what Havana is to Cuba, or better, what Manila is to the Philippine Islands. Here are concentrated the business, political and social forces that control the life and progress of the entire archipelago. This city of 30,000 inhabitants is situated on the south coast of Oahu, and extends up the Nuuanu Valley.
It is well provided with street-car lines--which also run to a bathing resort four miles outside the city--a telephone system, electric lights, numerous stores, churches and schools, a library of over 10,000 volumes, and frequent steam communication with San Francisco. There are papers published in the English, Hawaiian, Portuguese, j.a.panese, and Chinese languages, and a railroad is being built, of which thirty miles along the coast are already completed. Honolulu has also a well-equipped fire department and public water-works. The residence portions of the city are well laid out, the houses, many of which are very handsome, being surrounded by gardens kept green throughout the year. The climate is mild and even, and the city is a delightful and a beautiful place of residence. Hawaii is peculiarly an agricultural country, and Honolulu gains its importance solely as a distributing centre or depot of supplies. Warehouses, lumber yards, and commercial houses abound, but there is a singular absence of mills and factories and productive establishments. There are no metals or minerals, or as yet, textile plants or food plants, whose manufacture is undertaken in this unique city.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SUGAR CANE PLANTATION, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
About one-fifth of the entire population is engaged in sugar culture.
The average product is about three tons per acre.]
The Hawaiian Islands are, without question, on the threshold of a great industrial era, fraught with most potent results to the prosperity and development of that land. Its climate is delightful and healthful, and its soil so fertile that it will easily support 5,000,000 people.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SENOR MONTERO RIOS
President of the Spanish Peace Commission whose painful duty required him to sign away his country's colonial possessions.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL RAMON BLANCO
Who succeeded Weyler as Captain-General of Cuba in 1897. He was formerly Governor-General of the Philippine Islands.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ADMIRAL CERVERA
Commander of Spanish Fleet at Santiago.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: SAGASTA
Premier of Spain during the Spanish-American War.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: PROMINENT SPANIARDS IN 1898]
OUR NEW POSSESSIONS (CONTINUED).
CUBA, ”THE CHILD OF OUR ADOPTION.”
Although Cuba is not a part or a possession of the United States, it has since the war with Spain, in 1898, come under the protection of this government, and is, therefore, ent.i.tled to a place in this volume. In the hand of Providence, this island became the doorway to America. It was here that Columbus landed, October 28, 1492. True, he touched earlier at one of the smaller islands to the north; but it was merely a halting before pus.h.i.+ng on to Cuba. ”Juana” Columbus called the island, in honor of Isabella's infant son. Afterward it was successively known as Fernandina, Santiago, and Ave Maria; but the simple natives, who were there to the number of 350,000, called it _Cooba_, and this name prevailed over the Spanish t.i.tles, as the island has finally prevailed over Spanish domination, and it has come under the protection of America with its Indian name, slightly changed to _Cuba_, remaining as the sole and only heritage we have of the simple aborigines who have utterly perished from the face of the earth under Spanish cruelty.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TOMB OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS IN THE CATHEDRAL AT HAVANA.
The ashes of the great discoverer were removed from this tomb to Spain in December, 1898.]
In 1494 Columbus visited Cuba a second time, and once again in 1502. In 1511 Diego Columbus, the son of the great discoverer, with a colony of between three and four hundred Spaniards, came, and in 1514 he founded the towns of Santiago and Trinidad. Five years later, in 1519, the present capital Havana, or _Habana_, was founded. The French reduced the city in 1538, practically demolis.h.i.+ng the whole town. Under the governor, De Soto, it was rebuilt and fortified, the famous Morro Castle and the Punta, which are still standing, being built at that early date.
THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
The natives, whom Columbus found in Cuba, were agreeable in feature, and so amiable in disposition that they welcomed the white man with open arms, and, besides contributing food, readily gave up their treasures to please the Spaniards. Unlike the warlike cannibal tribes of the Lesser Antilles, known as the Caribs, they lived in comparative peace with one another, and had a religion which recognized the Supreme Being. Columbus held several conferences with these simple natives, who numbered, according to his estimate, from 350,000 to half a million souls, and his a.s.sociations and dealings with them on his first visit were always friendly and of a mutually pleasing nature. But when he returned to Spain he left soldiers, who brutally maltreated them, until the natives rose in revolt and exterminated every white man. Even Columbus himself, in 1494, had to fight the Indians at the landing-place.
A salubrious climate, a fertile soil, and simple wants rendered it unnecessary for the native to do hard work; and although it is well proven that he did mine copper and traded in it with the mound builders of Florida, yet the native was not accustomed to arduous toil, and rebelled against it. This, perhaps, was unfortunate, for the perpetuity of his race at that time depended upon this very quality. The Spanish ”friend” who came to the island was incapable of work. He neither would nor could, under his ethics of self-respect, abase himself to labor, so he proceeded to enslave the native to labor for him. The Cuban rebelled, and fled before the superior Spanish weapons from the coasts to the mountain fastnesses of the interior.