A "Loafer's Paradise" – In Honolulu They Do Next to Nothing

1878

The Ohio State Journal publishes a letter from Gen. Comly, in which Honolulu is sketched with a free-and-easy hand, as a loafer's paradise.

The natives, he writes, are the most careless, improvident, laughter-loving people in the world. They have no winter to lay by for — even the proverbial rainy day needs nothing there; so they dance and sing, and deck themselves with garlands all the day long. Men go here with great garlands of the loveliest flowers and green leaves hanging in festoons, around the neck and shoulders, down the body, around the hat — everywhere.

These men are not the fops and loafers of the race, but the hard-working fellows — the herdsmen, the hackmen, even the draymen go about adorned in the most exquisite taste, with flowers and leaves wreathed into forms of beauty which come to an American like a revelation in art. They have no wealth — nothing that would satisfy an American — but they are always laughing, singing, playing jews-harps or making floral wreaths. The Hawaiian knows that there will never be a winter's day to provide for, and that it will always be the same — yesterday, to-day and forever.


American Lighthouses

The history of the illuminating of lighthouses is an interesting one, says the New York Evening Post, and the improvements that have been made from year to year in the manner of lighting these beacons on our coast have been in keeping with the growth of an ever-extending shipping interest.

Before 1789 the expense of keeping up the few lighthouses then standing was borne by the States in which the lights were placed. In 1791 the first lighthouse erected by the Federal government was lighted. At that time, including the new one, there were but nine lights on the whole American coast. During the following nine years the number was increased to sixteen. In 1822 there were seventy lights in all, and in 1838 two hundred and thirty-eight, including lightboats. In 1875 there were nine hundred and twenty-five lighthouses and twenty-three lightships; four hundred and eighteen of the number being on the Atlantic coast.