The coffee bush produces from three to
five pounds of berries the third year after planting. The average
yield of sugar is two and a half tons to the acre. Pineapples grow
like weeds in some districts, and water melons are almost a drug.
The bamboo is known to grow sixteen inches in a day. Wherever there
is a sufficient rainfall, the earth teems with plenty.
Yet the Hawaiian Islands can hardly be regarded as a field for
emigration, though nature is lavish, and the climate the most
delicious and salubrious in the world. Farming, as we understand
it, is unknown. The dearth of insectivorous birds seriously affects
the cultivation of a soil naturally bounteous to excess. The narrow
gorges in which terraced "patch cultivation," is so successful,
offer no temptations to a man with the world before him. The larger
areas require labour, and labour is not to be had. Though wheat and
other cereals mature, attacks of weevil prevent their storage, and
all the grain and flour consumed are imported from California.
Cacao, cinnamon, and allspice, are subject to an apparently
ineradicable blight. The blight which has attacked the coffee shrub
is so severe, that the larger plantations have been dug up, and
coffee is now raised by patch culture, mainly among the guava scrub
which fringes the forests. Oranges suffer from blight also, and
some of the finest groves have been cut down.
