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THE MALTHUSIAN HANDBOOK

Designed to induce Married People to Limit their Families within their Means.

LONDON: W. H. REYNOLDS, NEW CROSS, S.E. 4th Edition.--1898.

INTRODUCTION.

In every civilised State the problem of poverty is one which presses for solution. In some European countries it has, at times, locally assumed a critical and menacing form, threatening the very foundations upon which society is based. Revolutions have sprung from the fact that people needed food and could not obtain it; and, even in our own "highly favored" land, honest, industrious men are often driven to despair because they can neither get work nor food.

Occasional outbreaks and demonstrations, however, are by no means the true measure of national poverty. Beneath the glittering surface of society there lies a seething mass of want and misery. The victims suffer in silence and make no sign, but their existence constitutes a permanent danger to the general welfare. Destitution is in numberless instances the parent of crime and prostitution, with their chain of disastrous consequences; overcrowding, semi-starvation and squalor are the fruitful sources of disease which scruples not to travel beyond its birthplace and to infect the homes of the wealthy. Modern society may be fitly compared to a magnificent palace reared in a miasmatic swamp, which fills the air with its death-dealing exhalations. No cunning artifices of builders or engineers can afford protection in such a case. In like manner, society cannot hope to escape from the influences which make for corruption and ultimate dissolution whilst it suffers poverty to remain in its midst.

It is, indeed, unnecessary to insist upon the evils and the national dangers arising from poverty; for they are admitted upon all hands. The problem is: How can poverty be abolished? Upon this vital point opinions differ widely. The evil is so complex and many-sided that observers are apt to be misled by a partial view of the symptoms. For example, a total abstainer, concentrating his attention upon instances in which poverty has been brought about by excessive indulgence in alcoholic liquors, urges that drink is the "cause of poverty." The Socialist asks "Why are the many poor?" and answers that the remedy consists in the nationalisation of land and the instruments of production, the abolition of competition, etc. Others attribute the existence of poverty to idleness or to want of thrift amongst the workers. In no case, however, is the alleged cause equal to the palpable effect; and it is necessary to extend the enquiry in another direction if we are to discover the cause which, above and beyond all others, produces the want and misery that everybody desires to remove.

The purpose of this little work is, first, to show that an excessive increase of population is the source from which these evils arise. In the second place, the means by which population may be kept under control will be explained, for it is useless to warn people of a danger if they are kept in ignorance of the means by which it may be avoided. Above all, it is to the poor that this knowledge must be conveyed, for, as we shall show in the following pages, the indigent class multiplies far more rapidly than the well-to-do, and it is upon themselves that the consequent misery necessarily falls.

Experience teaches that almost all the ills which afflict mankind can be obviated by a careful study of nature and by conduct based upon due observance of natural laws. In the darkness of ignorance men must stumble into many pitfalls; but in the clear light of reason and knowledge they can discern the path which leads to freedom and happiness.

THE MALTHUSIAN HANDBOOK.

MALTHUS AND THE LAW OF POPULATION.

If it be desired to discover a remedy for an admitted evil, the first step must necessarily be to ascertain its cause. All schemes for the mitigation of the effects of poverty must in the long run end in failure, no matter how ambitious may be the undertakings of those who engage in this futile work. The captain of a sinking vessel does not confine his attention to the pumps, he seeks without delay to stop the inrush of water. And in dealing with the question of poverty it is essential that its root-cause be discovered before any hope of arriving at a solution of the problem can reasonably be entertained.

An enquiry into the facts of nature will show that all forms of vegetable and animal life are capable of reproducing themselves in almost boundless profusion. Darwin, in his work on The Origin of Species, points this out with the greatest clearness. He says: "There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered with the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years; and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds--and there is no plant so unproductive as this--and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then, in twenty years there would be a million plants." After giving the example of the slow-breeding elephant, he continues: "Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals of many kinds which have run wild in many parts of the world; if the statements of the rate of increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses in South America, and latterly in Australia, had not been well authenticated, they would have been incredible. So it is with plants: cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, now most numerous over the wild plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of all other plants, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, which have been imported from America since its discovery. In such cases, and endless instances could be given, no one supposes that the fertility of these animals or plants has been suddenly and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The obvious explanation is that the conditions of life have been very favorable, and that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and young, and that nearly all the young have been able to breed. In such cases, the geometrical rate of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains the extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion of naturalised productions in their new homes. In a state of nature, almost every plant produces seed, and among animals there are very few that do not annually pair. Hence we may confidently assert that all plants and animals are tending to increase at a geometrical ratio; that all would most rapidly stock every station in which they could anyhow exist, and that the geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life."

It was the observation of this striking fact in nature which led an English clergyman, the Rev. Thomas B. Malthus, to study deeply the question of poverty, and to formulate as "the principle of population" that which is now almost universally regarded as a law of nature. Before he published his great work the view was generally accepted that the wealth of a country was in proportion to its population; and statesmen frequently attempted to stimulate, by the distribution of bounties to the parents of excessively large families, the natural rate of increase. A few far-sighted men, such as the elder Mirabeau, Quesnay, and Adam Smith, partially perceived the true doctrine; but it remained for Malthus to examine the question in all its bearings, and to collect patiently and laboriously an overwhelming array of facts which established his contention beyond all reasonable doubt. It will be well here to give some account of this remarkable man and of the work with which his name is indissolubly associated.

Thomas Robert Malthus was born at Dorking, Surrey, in 1766. At the age of thirty-one he became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and shortly afterwards took orders, officiating in a small village in Surrey.

In the closing years of the eighteenth century, the minds of men in England were powerfully influenced by the great social upheaval taking place in France, and political views in this country were entering upon a new phase. The rights of man were coming to be regarded as something more than a phrase, and a generous desire to promote the welfare of the people was gradually taking the place of selfish indifference. Condorcet in France, and William Godwin in England, promulgated the view that the happiness of mankind depended chiefly upon the justice of political institutions, and that national welfare could be indefinitely promoted by just government. Daniel Malthus , a man of sanguine and romantic temperament, warmly espoused the ideas set forth by Godwin, and frequently discussed the subject with his son. The younger man, however, by no means shared the paternal enthusiasm, and, following the lines suggested by Hume, Adam Smith, and other writers, he maintained that vice and misery were two powerful obstacles to the improvement of society, and urged, further, that the tendency of mankind to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence gave rise to these evils. His arguments made a deep impression upon the mind of Daniel Malthus, who requested his son to put them in writing. This was accordingly done, and in 1798 T. R. Malthus published the first edition of his work: An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future Improvement of Society; with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, Mr. Condorcet and other Writers.

This book aroused a lively controversy, the writer's theories and conclusions being attacked and defended by various writers. The great interest excited by his essay caused Malthus to enquire still more deeply into the phenomena of poverty, and he determined to travel through Europe for the purpose of collecting facts bearing upon the subject. In 1799 he visited the continent, passing through Denmark, Sweden, and part of Russia, and, later, Switzerland and Savoy. The results of his researches furnished overwhelming proof of the accuracy of his contention; and in 1803 he published a second and much enlarged edition of his Essay, in two volumes. During the remainder of his life, Malthus thrice edited new editions of his work, which to this day remains the greatest monument of his honorable career. He died on 29th December, 1834.

It is not intended here to give an exhaustive analysis of Malthus's Principle of Population. We are concerned only with his theory of population and the conclusions to which that theory points. "The principal object of this essay," says the author, "is to examine the effects of one great cause intimately connected with the very nature of man, which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the writers who have treated this subject. The cause to which I allude is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.

"Dr. Franklin has observed that there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only--as, for instance, with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, as, for instance, with Englishmen.

"This is incontrovertibly true. Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all-pervading law of Nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law, and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.

"In plants and irrational animals the view of the subject is simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species, and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts about providing for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted; and the superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment."

Malthus then adduces evidence of the extremely rapid increase of population amongst mankind under conditions in which food is abundant and easily obtainable. He calculates that population, if unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. But he points out that the food supply can by no means be increased with equal facility. Even if it were possible in one period of twenty-five years to double the amount produced, there is no reason to suppose that the operation could be repeated during the following twenty-five years. As the demand for food increased, less fruitful soils would be taken into cultivation, and the additions that could be made to the former average produce would be gradually and regularly diminishing. Malthus then makes the following calculation:

"Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be made to the former average produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly would do, were to remain the same; and that the produce of this island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a quantity equal to what it at present produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre in the island like a garden.

"If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if it be allowed that the subsistence for man, which the earth affords, might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces, this will be supposing a rate of increase much greater than we can imagine that any possible exertions of mankind could make it.

"It may fairly be pronounced, therefore, that considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.

"The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together, will be very striking. Let us call the population of this island 11,000,000 , and suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be 22,000,000, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the population would be 44,000,000, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 33,000,000. In the next period the population would be 88,000,000, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half that number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the population would be 176,000,000, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 55,000,000, leaving a population of 121,000,000 totally unprovided for."

Now let us see how this stupendous possible power of increase in the human race has been kept in check.

The positive checks to an excessive increase of population comprehend the premature death of children and adults by disease, starvation, war and infanticide. Nature has a short and sharp way of dealing with her superfluous children. Amongst savage tribes the positive checks alone are brought into operation. The pages of human history teem with tragic records of famines decimating the unhappy victims of over-population; of pestilence stalking through the land, slaying its tens of thousands; of wars devastating countries and overwhelming the inhabitants in ruin, misery and death. In certain parts of the world the pangs of hunger have destroyed in men and women the primal instinct of parental love; and, in the fifth chapter of his work, Malthus shows how, in the South Sea Islands, where the possible expansion of population was extremely small, the frightful expedient of infanticide was largely resorted to by the inhabitants to check their natural increase. Even then, however, the pressure on the means of subsistence was so great that food became scarce at certain seasons of the year, and destructive wars ensued. Captain Vancouver, visiting Otaheite for the second time in 1791, found that most of the natives whom he had known fourteen years before had perished in battle.

In the course of numerous examples of the effects of over-population upon the condition of the masses in various countries, Malthus gives a striking example of the appalling misery to which even industrious laborers were reduced in densely-peopled China. He quotes the words of a Jesuit missionary, who stated that a Chinaman "will pass whole days in digging the earth, sometimes up to his knees in water, and in the evening is happy to eat a little spoonful of rice, and to drink the insipid water in which it is boiled." This is obviously an exaggeration, since it would be impossible to maintain life under such conditions; but it serves to show the deplorable state to which the workers may be reduced by excessive population.

It is unnecessary here to follow Malthus through his exhaustive survey of the condition of nations affected by over-population in various stages of the world's history. Our purpose is rather to furnish an indication of the principle than to reproduce in detail the observations upon which it is based. The most concise formula in which the theory of Malthus has been expressed is as follows: "That population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence."

THE REMEDY: OLD AND NEW.

The principle stated at the end of the preceding chapter being assumed, the question arises: How can the evils caused by the constant tendency towards over-population be prevented? The method which Mr. Malthus proposed was the substitution of the prudential for the positive check. He advised late marriage and celibacy as the most moral means of restraining population. He urged that men should wait until they were in a position to provide for a family before undertaking the responsibilities consequent upon the marriage state. He says: "Our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect of being able to support our children will appear to deserve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved that an attention to these obligations is of more effect in the prevention of misery than all the other virtues combined; and that if, in violation of this duty, it was the general custom to follow the first impulse of nature, and marry at the age of puberty, the universal prevalence of every known virtue in the greatest conceivable degree would fail of rescuing society from the most wretched and deplorable state of want, and all the diseases and famines which usually accompany it."

This, then, was the prudential check advocated by Malthus; but since his time it has been perceived that his remedy is in itself the cause of evils scarcely less terrible than those which it was designed to remove. Further, it is one which, in the vast majority of cases, could not possibly be put into practice; for it assumes a power of mental control over the sexual passion which exists in a comparatively small number of individuals.

The physiological evils arising from celibacy, and, in lesser degree, from prolonged abstention from marriage, are of the most disastrous nature. Celibacy is necessarily a condition of privation and suffering, since it involves the deliberate and incessant suppression of the most powerful instinct of mankind. The pure and elevating joys of wedded and family life are shut out, and existence is shorn of its most delightful features. The unselfish pleasure of promoting the happiness of a loved wife and children is denied to the morbid and gloomy celibate, doomed to a solitary and cheerless existence. And even when permanent celibacy is not contemplated, marriage may be deferred until the bloom and brightness of life are gone for ever, until delay and disappointment have soured the temper and choked the fountain of affection.

Dr. Bertillon, of Paris, has proved conclusively by statistics derived from France, Holland and Belgium, that married persons, especially males, live much longer than single ones, and are less liable to become insane, criminal, or vicious. It has been shown that the married state reduces the danger of insanity by nearly one-half. With regard to the effects of celibacy upon individuals, Dr. Holmes Coote is reported in the Lancet to have said: "No doubt incontinence is a great sin; but the evils connected with continence are productive of far greater misery to society. Any person could bear witness to this who has had experience in the wards of lunatic asylums."

In addition to the personal ills arising from celibacy, it must be remembered that late marriage directly encourages prostitution, the most hideous blot upon our social state. Malthus, indeed, laid great stress upon the duty of chastity whilst young men were engaged in accumulating the means to enable them to marry and rear a family later in life. He might as fitly have preached to the whirlwind, or exhorted the storm to moderate its violence. The power of restraint is given to but few men; and, even when that restraint can be exercised, it is only at the cost of much suffering and physical and moral detriment.

The later school of thinkers, whilst adopting the principle formulated by Malthus, propound an infinitely better method of compassing the end which he had in view. They advocate early marriage and limited families. It is not necessary that young men and women should sacrifice the youth and freshness of their lives in order that they may marry when the evening shadows are lengthening around them. The blessings of domestic comfort, of intimate companionship and of family love are opened to them in the noontide of life, when the possibility of enjoyment is at its highest point. Mrs. Annie Besant says: "To be in harmony with nature, men and women should be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and until nature evolves a neuter sex celibacy will ever be a mark of imperfection.... No one who desires society to be happy and healthy should recommend late marriage as a cure for the social evils around us. Early marriage is best, both physically and morally; it guards purity, softens the affections, trains the heart, and preserves physical health; it teaches thought for others, gentleness and self-control; it makes men gentler and women braver from the contact of their differing natures. The children that spring from such marriages--where not following each other too rapidly--are more vigorous and healthy than those of middle-aged parents; and in the ordinary course of nature the parents of such children live long enough to see them make their start in life, to aid, strengthen, and counsel them at the beginning of their career."

Medical science has shown that the size of families is absolutely under the control of parents, if they will but exercise a reasonable degree of care and forethought. A young couple may now enter the marriage-state without misgiving: for the number of their offspring can be regulated in proportion to their means as surely as they can determine the amount of their expenditure upon clothing or luxuries.

Thus the teachings of Malthusianism, combined with the later development of innocent prudential checks, open up boundless possibilities for the improvement of social conditions. When the law of population--a law of nature--is clearly understood, it becomes possible for man, by the exercise of his reason, to control its operation, just as he constructs dykes to protect his crops from floods, or diverts the lightning harmlessly into the ground.

Let us see, then, how the general adoption of the New-Malthusian principle of early marriage and limited families would affect the welfare of individuals and of the nation at large.

The knowledge of prudential checks immensely increases the possibility of happiness for every man and woman whose means are "limited." Marriage ceases to be a hazardous enterprise, which may bring in its train liabilities terribly out of proportion to the power of meeting them. The husband is relieved from anxiety lest his children may increase whilst his ability to provide suitably for them remains a fixed, or even diminishing, quantity. The wife need no longer dread the burden of continual child-bearing and the incessant servitude of domestic drudgery. How much of the drunkenness that exists amongst the working-class is due to the discomfort of a crowded and cheerless home! The husband, wearied with his day's toil, returns to his narrow lodgings to find his wife, harassed and soured by the petty cares of a large family, sharp in temper and tongue. The tender romance of courtship is dispelled by the never-ending round of household slavery, with the constant need of "making both ends meet," of contriving that every sixpence shall do the work of a shilling. And over all there hangs the haunting fear that sickness or loss of employment may disable the bread-winner, and that the wolf of hunger, ever waiting outside, may show his fangs within the door. Little cause is there for wonder that in many cases the sweetheart of happier days becomes a shrew and slattern, or that the toil-worn husband flies to the ruinous joys of the tap-room in a vain attempt to escape from the vexations that surround him in his "home."

And what of the children? They are at once the innocent cause and the helpless victims of the misery that encompasses them. The wage that would amply provide for two or three is inadequate for the proper support of seven or eight, and their little frames suffer from insufficient nourishment. The overburdened mother cannot bestow upon so large a flock the loving care and attention that children need for their proper physical and mental development. Thus they grow up , enfeebled in mind and constitution, transmitting to the next generation their own defects in an aggravated form.

It is amongst the very poorest of our fellow-creatures that we see the horrors of over-population in their most heartrending aspect. In the squalid courts and alleys of our great cities the dismal stream of child-life is constantly at high-water mark. The parents, ignorant and hopeless, callous by reason of their daily contact with misery, "increase and multiply" instinctively, as do the beasts of the field. Amongst the poor the birth-rate is double as high as that of the richer classes. A few years ago the birth-rate in wealthy Kensington was 20 per 1,000; in the poor district of Bethnal Green it was 40 per 1,000. This deplorable state of things is not peculiar to Great Britain: it prevails, with slight variations as to details, in all so-called civilised countries.

It is an eight days' voyage by steamship from San Francisco to Honolulu, giving the traveller ample time to familiarize himself with many peculiarities of this waste of waters. Occasionally a whale is sighted, throwing up a small column of water as it rises at intervals to the surface. A whale is not a fish; it differs materially from the finny tribe, and can as surely be drowned as can a man. Whales bring forth living young; they breathe atmospheric air through their lungs in place of water through gills, having also a double heart and warm blood, like land animals. Flying-fish are frequently seen, queer little creatures, resembling the smelts of our northern waters. While exhibiting the nature of a fish, they have also the soaring ambition of a bird. Hideous, man-eating sharks are sure to follow in the ship's wake, watching for some unfortunate victim of a sailor or passenger who may fall overboard, and eagerly devouring any refuse thrown from the cook's galley. At times the many-armed cuttlefish is seen to leap out of the water, while the star-fish, with its five arms of equal length, abounds. Though it seems so apparently lifeless, the star-fish can be quite aggressive when pressed by hunger, having, as naturalists tell us, a mysterious way of causing the oyster to open its shell, when it proceeds gradually to consume the body of the bivalve. One frail, small rover of the deep is sure to interest the voyager; namely, the tiny nautilus, with its transparent covering, almost as frail as writing-paper. No wonder the ancient Greeks saw in its beautifully corrugated shell the graceful model of a galley, and hence its name, derived from the Greek word which signifies a ship. Sometimes a pale gray, amber-like substance is seen floating upon the surface of the sea, which, upon examination, proves to be ambergris, a substance originally found in the body of the sperm whale, and which is believed to be produced there only. Scientists declare it to be a secretion caused by disease in the animal, probably induced by indigestion, as the pearl is said to be a diseased secretion of the Australian and Penang oysters. Ambergris is not infrequently found floating along the shores of the Coral Sea, and about the west coast of New Zealand, having been ejected by the whales which frequent these waters. When first taken from the animal it is of a soft texture, and is offensive to the smell; but after a brief exposure to the air it rapidly hardens, and then emits a sweet, earthy odor, and is used in manufacturing choice perfumery.

The harbor of San Francisco abounds in big, white sea-gulls, which fly fearlessly in and out among the shipping, uttering defiant screams, or floating gracefully like corks upon the water. They are large, handsome, dignified birds, and are never molested, being looked upon as picturesque ornaments to the harbor; and they are also the most active of scavengers, removing all sorts of floating carrion and refuse which is thrown overboard. The gulls one sees off the coast of Norway are numbered by thousands, but they are not nearly so large as these bird monarchs of the Pacific. A score of these are sure to accompany us to sea, closely following the ship day after day, living mostly upon the refuse thrown out from the steward's department. In the month of October, 1884, one of these birds was caught by the passengers upon a steamship just as she was leaving the coast of America for Japan. A piece of red tape was made fast to one of its legs, after which it was restored to liberty. This identical gull followed the ship between four and five thousand miles, into the harbor of Yokohama. Distance seems to be of little account to these buoyant navigators of the air.

On approaching the Hawaiian group from the north, the first land which is sighted is the island of Oahu, and soon after we pass along the windward shores of Maui and Molokai, doubling the lofty promontory of Diamond Head, which rears its precipitous front seven hundred feet above the sea. We arrive at the dawn of day, while the rising sun beautifies the mountain tops, the green slopes, the gulches, and fern-clad hills, which here and there sparkle with silvery streamlets. The gentle morning breeze blowing off the land brings us the dewy fragrance of the flowers, which has been distilled from a wilderness of tropical bloom during the night. The land forms a shelter for our vessel, and we glide noiselessly over a perfectly calm sea. As we draw nearer to the shore, sugar plantations, cocoanut groves, and verdant pastures come clearly into view. Here and there the shore is dotted with the low, primitive dwellings of the natives, and occasionally we see picturesque, vine-clad cottages of American or European residents. Approaching still nearer to the city of Honolulu, it seems to be half-buried in a cloud of luxuriant foliage, while a broad and beautiful valley stretches away from the town far back among the lofty hills.

The steamer glides at half speed through the narrow channel in the coral reef which makes the natural breakwater of the harbor. This channel is carefully buoyed on either side, and at night safety-lamps are placed upon each of these little floating beacons, so that a steamship can find her way in even after nightfall. Though the volcanic origin of the land is plain, it is not the sole cause of these reefs and islands appearing thus in mid-ocean. Upon the flanks of the upheaval the little coral animal, with tireless industry, rears its amazing structure, until it reaches the surface of the waves as a reef, more or less contiguous to the shore, and to which ages finally serve to join it. The tiny creature delegated by Providence to build these reefs dies on exposure to the air, its work being then completed. The far-reaching antiquity of the islands is established by these very coralline formations, which could only have attained their present elevation, just below the surface of the surrounding sea, by the growth of thousands of years. This coral formation on the shores of the Hawaiian group is not peculiar to these islands, but is found to exist in connection with nearly all of those existing in the Pacific Ocean.

The lighthouse, placed on the inner side of the coral reef, is a structure not quite thirty feet in height. After reaching the inside of the harbor of Honolulu, the anchorage is safe and sheltered, with ample room for a hundred large vessels at the same time, the average depth of water being some sixteen fathoms. The wharves are spacious and substantial, built with broad, high coverings to protect laborers from the heat of a tropical sun. Honolulu is the commercial port of the whole group of islands,--the half-way house, as it were, between North America and Asia,--California and the new world of Australasia.

Upon landing at Honolulu we find ourselves in a city of some twenty thousand inhabitants, presenting all the modern belongings of a metropolis of the nineteenth century, such as schools, churches, hospitals, charitable institutions, gas, electric lights, and the telephone. Nearly all of the rising generation can read and write, and the entire population are professed Christians. Great is the contrast in every respect between these islands as discovered by Captain Cook in 1778, and their present condition. Originally they exhibited the same barbarous characteristics which were found to exist in other islands of the Pacific Ocean. They had no sense of domestic virtue, and were victims of the most egregious superstitions. "The requisitions of their idolatry," says the historian Ellis, "were severe, and its rites cruel and bloody." Their idolatry has been abandoned since 1819. In the early days the several islands of the group had each a separate king, and wars were frequent between them, until King Kamehameha finally subjected them all to his sway, and formed the government which has lasted to the present time.

Many of the streets of Honolulu afford a grateful shade, the sidewalks being lined by ornamental trees, of which the cocoanut, palm, bread-fruit, candle-nut, and some others, are indigenous, but many have been introduced from abroad and have become domesticated. The tall mango-tree, with rich, glossy leaves, the branches bending under the weight of its delicious fruit, is seen growing everywhere, though it is not a native of these islands. Among other fruit-trees we observe the feathery tamarind, orange, lime, alligator-pear, citron-fig, date, and rose apple. Of all the flowering trees, the most conspicuous and attractive is one which bears a cloud of brilliant scarlet blossoms, each cluster ball-shaped and as large as a Florida orange. Some of the thoroughfares are lined by pretty, low-built cottages, standing a few rods back from the roadway, with broad, inviting verandas, the whole festooned and nearly hidden by tropical and semi-tropical plants in full bloom. If we drive out to the race-course in the environs, we shall be pretty sure to see King Kalakaua, who is very fond of this sort of sport. He is a man of intelligence and of considerable culture, but whose personal habits are of a low and disgraceful character. He has reached his fifty-second year.

It will be observed that the women ride man-fashion here,--that is, astride of their horses,--and there is a good reason for this. Even European and American ladies who become residents also adopt this mode of riding, because side-saddles are not considered to be safe on the steep mountain roads. If one rides in any direction here, mountains must be crossed. The native women deck themselves in an extraordinary manner with flowers on all gala occasions, while the men wear wreaths of the same about their straw hats, often adding braids of laurel leaves across the shoulders and chest. The white blossoms of the jasmine, fragrant as tuberoses, which they much resemble, are generally employed for this decorative purpose. As a people the Hawaiians are very courteous and respectful, rarely failing to greet all passing strangers with a softly articulated "alo-ha," which signifies "my love to you."

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